In his reflections on the problems raised by the Christian ethics, Troeltsch’s starting point has always been a general theory of ethics, which should have been structured of a theoretical and of a practical part. In this sense he can be seen as a representative of the development of the modern moral thought; in particular his intention was to develop Herrman’s idea of integrating Kant’s subjective ethics with Schleiermacher’s objective ethics. This Grundkonzeption of Troeltsch’s is extremely evident when analysing his courses of lessons held at WS in 1905/06 and in 1911/12, where he indicates the concepts of moral duty or moral law, of evil (or of what is against morality), of a system of moral aims or of objective or cultural values, as the “fundamental concepts” of ethics. As for the Christian ethics, if the fact that morality and religiosity are tightly intertwined implies that “all the moral commandments of reason, which aim at the conquest of personality, are presented as emanations of God’s divine will”, then “theonomy speaks in autonomy’s name”, and the respect of the moral law is immediately recognised as a “divine obligation”. From this point of view the Christian ethics intersects the law of nature, and its story can be identified with that of the Christian natural law, interpreted and practiced from time to time “either in a more conservative, either in a more radical or democratic form”.
