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

NATURE OP THE MORAL FACULTY 3!$
is feeling, its deliverances are almost certainly determined
by non-ethical factors, yet we have agreed that the
admission of free will is essential to ethics. If it is reason,
then it insists on taking into account the consequences of
actions; and not only the consequences of actions but also
the motive and the circumstance, the training, the heredity
and the constitution of the agent. To this criticism I have
added two more. (2) The deliverances of the moral sense
are changing and capricious. If it is argued that they
are not, therefore, arbitrary, since they support society, it
is not, I suggested, clear that the maintenance of society is
always a good; if it is said that societies progress, I have
replied that this is a dogma which cannot be known to
be true, while, even if it is true, the fact that societies
progress does not suffice to endow the deliverances of the
moral sense with authority, unless it can also be shown
that societies progress as part of a plan, in accordance
with a law, or in fulfilment of a purpose. Moreover, the
moral sense which prevails at an existing level of the
development of a society has often impeded progress to a
new level. (3) Finally, if the moral sense is feeling, its
judgments are subjective and only report events occurring
in the biography of the judger; if reason then, as before,
it insists on taking consequences into account.
Books
For an account of the views of the intuitionists see L. SKLBY
BIGOB'S, British Moralists.
ROGERS, A. K. Morals in Review, Chapters VIII and IX.
SHAFTESBURY, ANTHONY. Inquiry concerning Virtue.
Discussions of Intuitionism.
MOORE, G. . Principia Ethica.
SIDGWICK, HENRY. The Methods of Ethics. Books III and IV.
RASHDALL, H. H. The Theory of Good and Evil.
MILL, J. S. Utilitarianism.
MUIRHEAD, J. H. The Elements of Ethics, especially Books II
and V.
HOBHOUSE, L. T. Morals in Evolution.