[14] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, pp. 82-83.
[15] Personality is a better translation, as it avoids the rather legal and technical meaning of “person” in English.
[16] In a footnote to this passage, Renouvier states his own preference for “moral obligation” rather than “imperative of conscience.”
This doctrine of Personalism is an assertion not only of _Liberté_, _Egalité_, _Fraternité_ as necessary and fundamental principles, but also of the value of personality in general and the relativity of “things.” It constitutes an ethical challenge to the existing state of society which is not only inclined, in its headlong pursuit of wealth, its fanatical worship of Mammon, to treat its workers as purely “means” to the attainment of its end, but further minimises personality by its legal codes and social conventions, which both operate far more readily and efficiently in the defence of property than in the defence or protection of personality. From the ethical standpoint the world is a realm of ends or persons and all other values must be adjusted in relation to these.
We have been told by religious ethical teachers that we must love our neighbour as ourself, and have been reminded by moralists continually of the conflict between Egoism and Altruism. Renouvier points out that ultimately obligation towards others is reducible to a duty to oneself. He does not do this from the point of view of Hobbes, who regarded all actions, however altruistic they appeared to be, as founded purely upon self-interest, but rather from the opposite standpoint. “We should make our duty to others rank foremost among our duties to ourselves.”[17] This is the transcendent duty through the performance of which we achieve a realisation of the solidarity of persons, demonstrate an objective value for our own existence, and gain a fuller and richer life.
[17] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. 85.
The idea of personal and moral reciprocity was formulated by the Chinese and the Greeks; at a later date it reappeared in the teaching of Jesus. This ancient and almost universal maxim has been stated both positively and negatively: “Do not to others what you would not have them do unto you,” “Do as you would be done by.” The maxim itself, however, beyond a statement of the principle of reciprocity rather vaguely put, has no great value for the science of ethics. Renouvier regards it not as a principle of morality but a rule-of-thumb, and he considers the negative statement of it to be more in harmony with what was intended by the early ethical teachers—namely, to give a practical warning against the committing of evil actions rather than to establish a scientific principle of right action.