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

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ETHICS
The notion of merit or desert which requires us when
judging actions, especially those of a retributive type, to
take into account the past relations between the person acting
and the person who suffers, or benefits from, the action,
figures prominently in writings op ethics. We must, it is
obvious, when passing moral judgment, take all the circumstances
into account, a fact which makes it extremely
difficult to say precisely what it is that, in the case
of a moral judgment, is to be regarded as the object
1
of the judgment I shall develop this point on a later page.
Conscience, again, must, Butler insists, when passing
judgment upon actions, take into account the character
and disposition of the agent. You would naturally expect
different behaviour from a lunatic and from a sane man,
from a savage and a civilized man, from a child and an
adult. In judging, therefore, whether the action is such
as the agent ought to have done, Conscience must con*
aider what may reasonably be expected of him. Conscience
must, in other words, judge by the standard appropriate
to die behaviour ofthe person whose actions are in question.
The notion of standard entails that of ideal. Butler's suggestion
is, then, that we shall have in our minds, when
judging, some ideal conception of the savage, the civilised
man, the child and the adult, and then consider how
far the conduct under judgment approximates to it
The Authority of Conscience. More important than
the cognitive is die authoritative aspect of Conscience.
In the account of Aristotle's ethics 8 1 included a discussion
of the parts played by reason and feeling respectively
in die motivation of action, mentioning in particular
Aristotle's general view that it is desire that sets the ends
of our actions, while reason plans the steps for their
attainment The question, what part of our natures is it
that is responsible for our actions, is highly important for
ethical theory, if only because, as I shall try to show in
1 See Chapter VIII, pp. 387-202.
* See Chapter IV, pp. 110-116.