This, therefore, is the task of the philosophical science of "ethics," as understood by Fichte: to provide an a priori deduction of our moral nature in general and of our specific duties as human beings.
His philosophical contribution to the rationalist tradition, Science of Ethics (1882), attempted to wed evolutionary theory to ethics, and An Agnostic's Apology appeared in 1893.
Sir Leslie Stephen, for example, the impeccably intellectual editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and father of Virginia Woolf, was an early president of the Alpine Club and wrote Peaks, Passes and Glaciers alongside The Science of Ethics.
As Fichte states in The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge (1794), "That whose being (essence) consists merely in the fact that it posits itself as existent is the ego as absolute subject.
The science of "ethics" (akhlâq, pl. of khuluq, character) does not concern itself simply with knowledge of right behavior, but aims rather at understanding the soul's rootedness in the divine names and mapping out the path of becoming characterized by them.
For Cohen, just as epistemology and philosophy of science must begin by accepting the theories of pure natural science as given, ethics according to the transcendental method must begin with a science of humanity.
As a family, these differ from the practical sciences of ethics and politics, which concern human conduct, and from the theoretical sciences, which aim at truth for its own sake.
This work occupied a central place in a growing literature about human actions, which in turn influenced views about the nature of psychology, of the social sciences, and of ethics.
Another key aspect of this section of the course is a discussion of ethics in science (using, in part, the AAAS video vignettes on Integrity in Scientific Research ).
