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

l68 ETHICS
We are denying, in other words, that we can give reasons
for what "we just tec". Or, we may try to give reasons;
health, we may say, is better than disease because health
makes for happiness, and disease for pain and misery.
But why prefer happiness to pain and misery? With this
question we have reached the same point as before. We
can either say that "we just see" happiness to be preferableand
most people would be prepared to make
this judgment- or we may take the argument a step further
and try to give reasons for preferring happiness. But if
we do this, we shall, sooner or later, reach the same point
at which we have already twice tried to stop, the point
at which we cease to give reasons and fall back upon the
assertion "we just see". Now it is at this point that we are
passing a judgment of absolute, ultimate, and unique
value; it is unique in the sense that no reasons can be
given in defence of it; it is ultimate in the sense that no
end of value is affirmed beyond what it is judged to be
valuable, and it is absolute in the sense that it cannot be
resolved into, or derived from any other judgment
Nature of Absolute Judgments. An analogy may here be
of service. Let us suppose that I make the judgment, this
curtain is red. This judgment, too, is absolute, ultimate
and unique in the sense in which I have just claimed that
moral judgments are absolute, ultimate and unique; for
if I am asked why I judge the curtain to be red, or what
reason I have for judging it to be red, I can again give no
answer. I can only say that I just see it to be so. No doubt
it is true that I have been taught to give the name of red
to colours of the particular kind which I am now seeing
or, more correctly, to colours which give me the particular
visual sensations which I am now experiencing but for
my implied judgment that this kind of colour which I
am now seeing or which gives me the visual sensations
which I am now experiencing belongs to the class which
I have been taught to call red, I can give no reasons at
all. And since the reasons which we are accustomed to