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What Morality is

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Anne Maclean
Anne Maclean
Affiliation:
University Of Newcastle Upon Tyne
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Extract

I shall in this paper defend a universalizability thesis against certain objections. It will shortly be clear that the thesis defended is not the universalizability thesis as generally understood but something which differs crucially from it in that it claims no role whatsoever in ‘the definition of morality’. My title may therefore be misleading in this respect.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 59 , Issue 227 , January 1984 , pp. 21 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1984

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References

1 E. Gellner, ‘Logic and Ethics’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1954–1955), 163.

2 Philosophy (1957) reprinted in Wallace and Walker (eds), The Definition of Morality (Methuen, 1970). All page references in the text will be to this book.

3 The Monist 49 (1965); reprinted in P. Winch, Ethics and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). All page references in the text will be to this book.

4 H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn (London: Macmillan, 1907), 384-385; quoted by Winch on p. 151.

5 J. Kovesi, Moral Notions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967; paperback 1971), 83.

6 In fact it is not necessary that Smith's values be in all respects the same as ours, although they must be recognizable as values. Nor is it necessary that he should not encounter highly unusual circumstances. All that is necessary is that he gives reasons for his particular moral judgments which will refer to certain facts.

7 Not all responsible non-pacifists are patriots or only patriots. Byron, for example, fought to liberate Greece, not Britain, from the Turks. I am also aware that those who insist upon ‘my country right or wrong’ may refuse to call my responsible patriot a patriot at all.

8 The Pros and Cons of Consequentialism’, Philosophy 56 No. 218 (October 1981).

9 Compare the discussion of Winch's treatment of this example by Konstantin Kolenda in ‘Moral Conflicts and Universalizability’, Philosophy 50 (1975). Kolenda argues that if Vere's decision to convict Billy Budd is to have any moral content then he (Vere) must have regarded it as correct ‘for him or for any other captain’ (p. 464). However, notwithstanding some similarity between our respective discussions, Kolenda accepts the (i.e. Hare's) universalizability thesis, whereas I do not. I am grateful to the Editor of Philosophy for drawing my attention to Kolenda's paper.

10 It is apparently the case that membership of Scott's expedition was conditional upon a declared readiness to sacrifice one's life in such circumstances as those in which Captain Oates sacrificed his. I owe this point to Willie Charlton.

11 A draft of this paper was read to a meeting of the Northern Branch of the Royal Institute of Philosophy in December 1981. I am indebted to all those who contributed to the discussion, especially to Mary Midgley and Geoffrey Midgley.