GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

8 INTRODUCTION
to find man's raison fftre in the next world rather than in
this one, and locating his spiritual home in the city of
God rather than in the city-state, had from the first
introduced a distinction. This distinction became under
the influence of Protestantism a division, so that by the
time the Reformation had run its course, we find that we
have on our hands what are in effect two distinct sub-
jects, ethics and politics. Ethics discusses such matters as
the meaning of the words good and bad, the criterion of
right action, and the nature and source of moral obligation.
Is there, it asks, one good, or are there many? Are
right and wrong fundamental and independent principles
in the universe, or merely the names which we give to the
objects of our approval and disapproval? Is a right action
one which is approved of by a moral sense, or one which
proceeds from a free, moral will, or merely one which has
the best possible consequences? If the latter, what do we
mean by "best possible consequences"? These questions,
which form the subject matter of ethics, will be set out in
greater detail at the. beginning of Chapter V. For the
present, it is sufficient to point out that, though they are
obviously interdependent it is, for example, difficult to
answer the question, what do I mean by saying that so
and so is good?, without also implying an answer to the
action? For ifwe hold
question, what is the criterion ofright that the word " good " means something, a right action must,
presumably, be one which promotes that which is good
they do not directly involve any reference to political
questions. Questions which relate to the nature and the
source of moral obligation for example, what is the
meaning of the word "ought",
and what the source of
its authority can be, and historically have been, discussed
without any reference to the principles which underlie
that form of human association which we call society, and
writers of bodes on moral philosophy Shaftesbury and
Butler in the eighteenth century, Martineau in the nine-
teenth, and G. E. Moore in the twentieth have not thought
it necessary to enrich the conclusions of their ethical