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

l66 ETHICS
Ethical Nihilism. It is important to distinguish this
view firom the purely sceptical attitude to ethics which
underlies the group of theories that I have termed sub-
jective intuitionist. This attitude is one which in the last
resort denies validity to ethical notions, and may thus
be called ethical Nihilism. There is nothing good or evil
in the world, it urges, but thinking makes it so, while the
words right and wrong are merely the names with which
men choose to dignify the things they happen to like or
dislike. It follows that those conceptions with which ethics
deals, the conceptions of right and duty
and moral
obligation and good, have no basis in the nature of things,
nor do they own any counterpart in the universe outside
men's minds. They are merely concepts which men have
generated and projected for their comfort and assurance
upon the canvas of an ethically meaningless universe.
For the universe itself the ethical nihilist might continue,
is ethically neutral: it contains no principles to guide our
conduct, no Being to watch over our endeavours, no goals
to reward our efforts. It is merely the hurrying of material
endlessly, meaninglessly. This nihilistic attitude which
underlies the theories to be considered in Chapter X has
the effect, as I have already hinted, of robbing ethics of
all validity and meaning; for, if the terms right and wrong
have no meaning in themselves, it is meaningless to say
that we ought to do the one and refrain from the other;
if good and evil are not factors in the universe which
exist independently of us, it is meaningless to say that we
ought to pursue the one and avoid the other.
Ethical Silence. But the view which I now wish to
consider is not ethical Nihilism. This view, which I propose
to label "ethical Silence", admits that ethical expressions
have a meaning. It agrees, too, that it is not impossible
that we may come to know what that meaning is; but we
cannot, it asserts, communicate it. The reason for this
conclusion, a conclusion which is sometimes known as
ethical Positivism, may be stated briefly as follows. All