[512] and behaviors of a society. This word^a, however, has received a negative context [i.e. connotation]. Today, if one speaks of morals, then in Germany---as I experienced in my lectures in Hamburg two years ago, and here also, to a great extent---perhaps least in France, the word morale, moralia, morals, etc., has received the connotation of moralism. So if you use that word, you have a negative feeling against it, as you have for instance against the word virtue, which has become completely unusable in serious and practically relevant discussions. In theoretical discussions, it still has---you are right---but it has not in the ordinary kind of talking. If you say of someone "He is virtuous," you do it with a smile---that is always the characteristic, that a word has lost its original and full meaning. Now the same is the case very much so in Germany, less in the

Anglo-Saxon countries, and least in France, because in France, moralisme means actually the humanities, the doctrine of man, including ethics, but also the general interpretation of man's essential and existential structure. Therefore the language has tried to escape this word by using a nobler and less abused word, namely the Greek word "ethics^b," ethikos, which is also derived from ethos, the behavior, but which has still preserved the possibility of being used. And so today the two words, "ethical" and "moral", are used interchangeably. This is not good! And I make the

suggestion that when we (and you, later on) speak about these two words, reestablish the old word "morals," which in English is still possible, in German is not possible any more, I am afraid, and which is easy in France---namely as the reality itself, the moral behavior, the moral act, the moral imperative, the moral contents; and that you use the word "ethics" for the SCIENCE of morals,