Principia Ethica 27

Principia Ethica 27

71.= By exposing this ambiguity, then, we are enabled to see more

clearly what must be meant by the question: Can Ethics be based on

Metaphysics? and we are, therefore, more likely to find the correct

answer. It is now plain that a metaphysical principle of Ethics

which says ‘This eternal reality is the Supreme Good’ can only mean

‘Something like this eternal reality would be the Supreme Good.’ We

are now to understand such principles as having the only meaning which

they can consistently have, namely, as describing the kind of thing

which ought to exist in the future, and which we ought to try to bring

about. And, when this is clearly recognised, it seems more evident

that the knowledge that such a kind of thing is also eternally real,

cannot help us at all towards deciding the properly ethical question:

Is the existence of that kind of good thing? If we can see that an

eternal reality is good, we can see, equally easily, once the idea

of such a thing has been suggested to us, that it _would_ be good.

The metaphysical construction of Reality would therefore be quite as

useful, for the purposes of Ethics, if it were a mere construction

of an imaginary Utopia: provided the kind of thing suggested is the

same, fiction is as useful as truth, for giving us matter, upon

which to exercise the judgment of value. Though, therefore, we admit

that Metaphysics may serve an ethical purpose, in suggesting things,

which would not otherwise have occurred to us, but which, when they

are suggested, we see to be good; yet, it is not as Metaphysics--as

professing to tell us what is real--that it has this use. And, in

fact, the pursuit of truth must limit the usefulness of Metaphysics

in this respect. Wild and extravagant as are the assertions which

metaphysicians have made about reality, it is not to be supposed but

that they have been partially deterred from making them wilder still,

by the idea that it was their business to tell nothing but the truth.

But the wilder they are, and the less useful for Metaphysics, the

more useful will they be for Ethics; since, in order to be sure that

we have neglected nothing in the description of our ideal, we should

have had before us as wide a field as possible of suggested goods. It

is probable that this utility of Metaphysics, in suggesting possible

ideals, may sometimes be what is meant by the assertion that Ethics

should be based on Metaphysics. It is not uncommon to find that which

suggests a truth confused with that on which it logically depends; and

I have already pointed out that Metaphysical have, in general, this

superiority over Naturalistic systems, that they conceive the Supreme

Good as something differing more widely from what exists here and now.

But, if it be recognised that, in this sense, Ethics should, far more

emphatically, be _based on_ fiction, metaphysicians will, I think,

admit that a connection of this kind between Metaphysics and Ethics

would by no means justify the importance which they attribute to the

bearing of the one study on the other.

 

 

=72.= We may, then, attribute the obstinate prejudice that a knowledge

of supersensible reality is a necessary step to a knowledge of what

is good in itself, partly to a failure to perceive that the subject

of the latter judgment is not anything _real_ as such, and partly to

a failure to distinguish the cause of our perception of a truth from

the reason why it is true. But these two causes will carry us only a

very little way in our explanation of why Metaphysics should have been

supposed to have a bearing upon Ethics. The first explanation which

I have given would only account for the supposition that a thing’s

reality is a _necessary condition_ for its goodness. This supposition

is, indeed, commonly made; we find it commonly presupposed that unless

a thing can be shewn to be involved in the constitution of reality, it

cannot be good. And it is, therefore, worth while to insist that this

is not the case; that Metaphysics is not even necessary to furnish

_part_ of the basis of Ethics. But when metaphysicians talk of basing

Ethics on Metaphysics they commonly mean much more than this. They

commonly mean that Metaphysics is the _sole_ basis of Ethics--that it

furnishes not only one necessary condition but _all_ the conditions

necessary to prove that certain things are good. And this view may,

at first sight, appear to be held in two different forms. It may be

asserted that merely to prove a thing supersensibly real is sufficient

to prove it good: that the truly real must, for that reason alone,

be truly good. But more commonly it appears to be held that the real

must be good because it possesses certain characters. And we may, I

think, reduce the first kind of assertion to no more than this. When

it is asserted that the real must be good, because it is real, it is

commonly also held that this is only because, in order to be real, it

must be of a certain kind. The reasoning by which it is thought that a

metaphysical enquiry can give an ethical conclusion is of the following

form. From a consideration of what it is to be real, we can infer that

what is real must have certain supersensible properties: but to have

these properties is identical with being good--it is the very meaning

of the word: it follows therefore that what has these properties is

good: and from a consideration of what it is to be real, we can again

infer what it is that has these properties. It is plain that, if such

reasoning were correct, any answer which could be given to the question

‘What is good in itself?’ could be arrived at by a purely metaphysical

discussion and by that alone. Just as, when Mill supposed that ‘to

be good’ _meant_ ‘to be desired,’ the question ‘What is good?’ could

be and must be answered solely by an empirical investigation of the

question what was desired; so here, if to be good means to have some

supersensible property, the ethical question can and must be answered

by a metaphysical enquiry into the question, What has this property?

What, then, remains to be done in order to destroy the plausibility of

Metaphysical Ethics, is to expose the chief errors which seem to have

led metaphysicians to suppose that to be good _means_ to possess some

supersensible property.

 

 

=73.= What, then, are the chief reasons which have made it seem

plausible to maintain that to be good must _mean_ to possess some

supersensible property or to be related to some supersensible reality?

 

We may, first of all, notice one, which seems to have had some

influence in causing the view that good must be defined by _some_

such property, although it does not suggest any _particular_ property

as the one required. This reason lies in the supposition that the

proposition ‘This is good’ or ‘This would be good, if it existed’ must,

in a certain respect, be of the same type as other propositions.

The fact is that there is one type of proposition so familiar to

everyone, and therefore having such a strong hold upon the imagination,

that philosophers have always supposed that all other types must be

reducible to it. This type is that of the objects of experience--of all

those truths which occupy our minds for the immensely greater part of

our waking lives: truths such as that somebody is in the room, that I

am writing or eating or talking. All these truths, however much they

may differ, have this in common that in them both the grammatical

subject and the grammatical predicate stand for something which exists.

Immensely the commonest type of truth, then, is one which asserts a

relation between two existing things. Ethical truths are immediately

felt not to conform to this type, and the naturalistic fallacy arises

from the attempt to make out that, in some roundabout way, they do

conform to it. It is immediately obvious that when we see a thing

to be good, its goodness is not a property which we can take up in

our hands, or separate from it even by the most delicate scientific

instruments, and transfer to something else. It is not, in fact, like

most of the predicates which we ascribe to things, a _part_ of the

thing to which we ascribe it. But philosophers suppose that the reason

why we cannot take goodness up and move it about, is not that it is

a different _kind_ of object from any which can be moved about, but

only that it _necessarily_ exists together with anything with which

it does exist. They explain the type of ethical truths by supposing

it identical with the type of scientific laws. And it is only when

they have done this that the naturalistic philosophers proper--those

who are empiricists--and those whom I have called ‘metaphysical’ part

company. These two classes of philosophers do, indeed, differ with

regard to the nature of scientific laws. The former class tend to

suppose that when they say ‘This always accompanies that’ they mean

only ‘This has accompanied, does now, and will accompany that in these

particular instances’: they reduce the scientific law quite simply

and directly to the familiar type of proposition which I have pointed

out. But this does not satisfy the metaphysicians. They see that when

you say ‘This would accompany that, _if_ that existed,’ you don’t mean

only that this and that have existed and will exist together so many

times. But it is beyond even their powers to believe that what you do

mean is merely what you say. They still think you must mean, somehow

or other, that something does exist, since that is what you generally

mean when you say anything. They are as unable as the empiricists to

imagine that you can ever mean that 2 + 2 = 4. The empiricists say this

means that so many couples of couples of things have in each case been

four things; and hence that 2 and 2 would not make 4, unless precisely

those things had existed. The metaphysicians feel that this is wrong;

but they themselves have no better account of its meaning to give

than either, with Leibniz, that God’s mind is in a certain state, or,

with Kant, that your mind is in a certain state, or finally, with Mr

Bradley, that something is in a certain state. Here, then, we have the

root of the naturalistic fallacy. The metaphysicians have the merit

of seeing that when you say ‘This would be good, if it existed,’ you

can’t mean merely ‘This has existed and was desired,’ however many

times that may have been the case. They will admit that some good

things have not existed in this world, and even that some may not have

been desired. But what you can mean, except that _something_ exists,

they really cannot see. Precisely the same error which leads them to

suppose that there must _exist_ a supersensible Reality, leads them to

commit the naturalistic fallacy with regard to the meaning of ‘good.’

Every truth, they think, must mean somehow that something exists; and

since, unlike the empiricists, they recognise some truths which do not

mean that anything exists here and now, these they think must mean

that something exists _not_ here and now. On the same principle, since

‘good’ is a predicate which neither does nor can exist, they are bound

to suppose either that ‘to be good’ means to be related to some other

particular thing which can exist and does exist ‘in reality’; or else

that it means merely ‘to belong to the real world’--that goodness is

transcended or absorbed in reality.

 

 

=74.= That such a reduction of _all_ propositions to the type of those

which assert either that something exists or that something which

exists has a certain attribute (which means, that both exist in a

certain relation to one another), is erroneous, may easily be seen by

reference to the particular class of ethical propositions. For whatever

we may have proved to exist, and whatever two existents we may have

proved to be necessarily connected with one another, it still remains

a distinct and different question whether what thus exists is good;

whether ei