This article concerns the status of ethics according to Schleiermacher. In his view, ethical pronouncements have a descriptive, not a prescriptive or prudential, aim. His ethics is a form of naturalism whose paradigm is provided by chemistry (as understood by the Romantics). On the basis of Schleiermacher’s determination of the relation between natural law and moral law, in contradistinction with the Kantian dichotomy in these matters, the article then seeks to reconstruct Schleiermacher’s conception of the moral law, drawing on Philippa Foot’s conception of what is good, as well as, more specifically, on her analysis of “Aristotelian categoricals.” In that light, Schleiermacher’s fundamental ethics can be seen as a form of normative naturalism.