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Scarcity and the Concepts of Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

V. C. Walsh
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Extract

Moral philosophers have often felt the need of a concept which would cover all those cases where we are prevented from achieving our ends through no fault of our own: a criterion for saying when failure is not blameworthy. The deontologists thought we were not to blame for actions done in genuine ignorance of the facts. Kant declared in a famous passage that we were not morally responsible for failures due to the “niggardliness of stepmother nature.” In this article I want to introduce into moral philosophy a new concept for clarifying the failures for which we are not to blame: the notion of scarcity, taken from economic theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1958 , pp. 249 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © 1958, The Williams & Wilkins Company

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References

1 A criticism of the deontologist language is due to appear in an article called “Ascriptions and Appraisals” in the Journal of Philosophy. A criticism of the Kantian language is in preparation. An early version of part of the latter appeared in England, in The Cambridge Journal, in 1954, under the title “The Theory of The Good Will”.

2 To the Lighthouse, (Everyman edition) pp. 71-2 and p. 214.

3 This use of the concept of scarcity, while perfectly good contemporary economics, involves departing from the ordinary use of the word “scarce.” Some of the implications of this departure will be taken up in the next section.

4 D. H. Lawrence, The First Lady Chatterley, printed from the manuscript of the first draft of Lady Chatterley's Lover by the Dial Press, Australian edition, pp. 48-53.