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

CHAPTER VII : THE PROBLEM OF
FREE WILL
Thit Ethics Trnplict Freedom of Choice. A discussion
of die problem of free will is introduced at this stage
for two reasons. First, unless the will is in some sense
free, ethics, as a separate branch of philosophical study,
must be dismissed. Secondly, the problem is, as I hope
to show, intimately bound up with the question of the
nature of the moral faculty; for it is only if it is with
a faculty that is reason, or is at least rational, that we will
morally and judge morally that, most philosophers are
agreed, the moral will and the moral judgment can
be held to be free.
The first of these contentions, that the freedom of the
will is indispensable to ethics, has been widely denied.
Canon Rashdall, for example, whose book, The Ttuory
of Good and Evil, is one of the best-known works on ethics
written during the present century, was an avowed
detenninist, who was nevertheless an objective-intuitionist.
He held, that is to say, as a matter of theory, that actions
and characters possessed the characteristic of goodness
in their own right, and that this characteristic is unique
in the sense that it cannot be resolved into any other
characteristic; he also held that we ought, as a matter of
practice, to try to achieve a good character and to
perform good actions. Again, modern rationalists insist
upon die practical importance of morality, although in
theory they subscribe, to the iron determinism entailed
by the metaphysical philosophy of mechanism which,
conceiving of the universe after the model of a gigantic
dock, regards every event as completely determined by
a preceding event. Moreover, so far as conduct is concerned,
it cannot be denied that determinists have led good lives