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

NATURE OF THE MORAL FACULTY 303
time in history. On these lines, then, an endeavour is
made to preserve the authority of moral judgments in
spite of the admitted fact that they are relative, relative,
that is to say, to the needs and circumstances of society;
in spite of the fact, therefore, that they reveal themselves
as being in the long run determined by what appear to
be non-ethical considerations. The point of the argument
is that the admission that moral judgments are
relative does not justify us in concluding that they are not,
therefore, binding. To admit that they were not binding
would be to undermine the whole basis of'the objective
intuhionist position. "It is because", says Professor Muirhead,
" morality is always and in all places relative to
circumstances, that it is binding at any time and in any
place."
CRITICAL COMMENTS
(A) That the Continuance of a Society is Not
Necessarily a Good
The questions raised by the foregoing argument
go far beyond the confines of ethics and cannot
be adequately discussed in this book. For what precisely
does the argument entail? The moral sense has been
charged with being arbitrary and capricious. It is neither*
the argument contends, for its deliverances are relative
to the needs of society, and are consequently such as
are conducive to the maintenance of society.
But why, we may ask, should societies be maintained?
Or rather, why should it be taken for granted that any
and every society should be maintained? Some societies
are good, others bad. Hence, while that which is conducive
to the maintenance of a good society is itself good and
worthy to be trusted, that which conduces to the maintenance
of a bad society is bad and ought to be rejected.
It is difficult, for example, to believe that the moral sense
of the ruling class of pre-revolutionary France, which was
relative to the maintenance of a society based on property