A Historical Introduction to Ethics (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II THE ETHICS OF ABSOLUTE MORALITY Introduction Hitherto we have followed, in our presentations of the types of ethical theory, an order which was at the same time logical and almost perfectly historical. Except in the case of Rousseau it was possible to arrange the typical exponents of conditionate morality logically in a perfectly historical order. This could scarcely be done with the systems of absolute morality. There is a great variety of such theories, and they are best held in mind by adhering to a purely logical classification. The ground for distinction between these systems lies in the various ways in which, conceivably, one might distinguish the difference between right and wrong actions. Perhaps none of the commonly recognized faculties of the mind is capable of perceiving that an act is right or wrong, and therefore we must postulate a special moral sense. This theory, originating in Shaftesbury, was crystallized and further developed by Hutcheson. If right and wrong are perceived by some one of the commonly recognized faculties, it might either be through the affective or by the representative faculties. In the ethics of sympathy maintained by Adam Smith we have a type of the former class. Since Smith was a pupil of Hutcheson, the consideration of his philosophy follows naturally upon that of his master. In the Stoic ethics of instinct another example of this class is afforded. If the perception of right and wrong is to be ascribed to ourrepresentative powers, it might take place immediately by intuition, as was maintained by Cudworth, or the distinction might be made for the most part mediately by reason. To this class belongs the ethics of Kant, who by an analysis of the concept of duty and speculations built thereon developed bis autonomo...