Psycho-Analysis and Ethics

This paper was originally written (all but the last section in the spring of 1948) for readers with a general philosophic, rather than a specialized psycho-analytic, interest.1 In deciding to keep it for the special Birthday Number of this Journal, I had therefore to consider whether I should not redraft it for the other type of reader. But, as my aim was only to apply some of Melanie Klein's ideas in a philosophic field, to have gone into greater analytic detail would have tended to obscure my main argument. I hope this will explain, and excuse, my elementary and over-simplified treatment of analytic theory. The best account of the relevant part of such theory is to be found in Melanie Klein's own paper: 'A Contribution to the Theory of Anxiety and Guilt' (1948).

1. The Transfer of an Ethical Problem from Philosophy to Science

Philosophers are now divided into two main schools of thought: those who try to ask and answer metaphysical questions, and those who try to show that all metaphysical questions are meaningless.2 But if logic is on the side of the second school, we still need not dismiss all speculative philosophy as a sterile pursuit. The questions it formulated may often have been grammatically meaningless, but those who formulated them were clearly wrestling with some problem which they felt to be important. What was wrong was not that there was no problem, but that there was a failure to formulate it in such a way that an answer would be possible. So the essential difference between science and philosophy would seem to be, not that science deals with significant and philosophy with meaningless problems, but that science deals with those that are clear cut and philosophy with those which have not got beyond the stage of being only dimly felt.3 Many centuries of philosophical endeavour may be required before such questions get beyond this stage, and when they do they cease to be philosophical and are immediately transferred to scie