Principia Ethica 28
75.= The fallacy of supposing moral law to be analogous to natural
law in respect of asserting that some action is one which is always
necessarily done is contained in one of the most famous doctrines of
Kant. Kant identifies what ought to be with the law according to which
a Free or Pure Will _must_ act--with the only kind of action which is
possible for it. And by this identification he does not mean merely to
assert that the Free Will is _also_ under the necessity of doing what
it ought; he means that what it ought to do _means_ nothing but its own
law--the law according to which it must act. It differs from the human
will just in that, what _we_ ought to do, is what _it_ necessarily
does. It is ‘autonomous’; and by this is meant (among other things)
that there is no separate standard by which it can be judged: that the
question ‘Is the law by which this Will acts a good one?’ is, in its
case, meaningless. It follows that what is necessarily willed by this
Pure Will is good, not _because_ that Will is good, nor for any other
reason; but merely because it is what is necessarily willed by a Pure
Will.
Kant’s assertion of the ‘Autonomy of the Practical Reason’ thus has
the very opposite effect to that which he desired; it makes his
Ethics ultimately and hopelessly ‘heteronomous.’ His Moral Law is
‘independent’ of Metaphysics only in the sense that according to him
we can _know_ it independently; he holds that we can only infer that
there is Freedom, from the fact that the Moral Law is true. And so far
as he keeps strictly to this view, he does avoid the error, into which
most metaphysical writers fall, of allowing his opinions as to what is
real to influence his judgments of what is good. But he fails to see
that on his view the Moral Law is dependent upon Freedom in a far more
important sense than that in which Freedom depends on the Moral Law. He
admits that Freedom is the _ratio essendi_ of the Moral Law, whereas
the latter is only _ratio cognoscendi_ of Freedom. And this means that,
unless Reality be such as he says, no assertion that ‘This is good’ can
possibly be true: it can indeed have no meaning. He has, therefore,
furnished his opponents with a conclusive method of attacking the
validity of the Moral Law. If they can only shew by some other means
(which he denies to be possible but leaves theoretically open) that the
nature of Reality is not such as he says, he cannot deny that they will
have proved his ethical principle to be false. If that ‘This ought to
be done’ _means_ ‘This is willed by a Free Will,’ then, if it can be
shewn that there is no Free Will which wills anything, it will follow
that nothing ought to be done.
=76.= And Kant also commits the fallacy of supposing that ‘This ought
to be’ means ‘This is commanded.’ He conceives the Moral Law to be an
Imperative. And this is a very common mistake. ‘This ought to be,’ it
is assumed, must mean ‘This is commanded’; nothing, therefore, would
be good unless it were commanded; and since commands in this world
are liable to be erroneous, what ought to be in its ultimate sense
means ‘what is commanded by some real supersensible authority.’ With
regard to this authority it is, then, no longer possible to ask ‘Is it
righteous?’ Its commands cannot fail to be right, because to be right
means to be what it commands. Here, therefore, law, in the moral sense,
is supposed analogous to law, in the legal sense, rather than, as in
the last instance, to law in the natural sense. It is supposed that
moral obligation is analogous to legal obligation, with this difference
only that whereas the source of legal obligation is earthly, that of
moral obligation is heavenly. Yet it is obvious that if by a source of
obligation is meant only a power which binds you or compels you to do
a thing, it is not because it does do this that you ought to obey it.
It is only if it be itself so good, that it commands and enforces only
what is good, that it can be a source of moral obligation. And in that
case what it commands and enforces would be good, whether commanded and
enforced or not. Just that which makes an obligation legal, namely the
fact that it is commanded by a certain kind of authority, is entirely
irrelevant to a moral obligation. However an authority be defined, its
commands will be _morally_ binding only if they are--morally binding;
only if they tell us what ought to be or what is a means to that which
ought to be.
=77.= In this last error, in the supposition that when I say ‘You
ought to do this’ I must mean ‘You are commanded to do this,’ we
have one of the reasons which has led to the supposition that the
particular supersensible property by reference to which good must
be defined is Will. And that ethical conclusions may be obtained by
enquiring into the nature of a fundamentally real Will seems to be by
far the commonest assumption of Metaphysical Ethics at the present
day. But this assumption seems to owe its plausibility, not so much
to the supposition that ‘ought’ expresses a ‘command,’ as to a far
more fundamental error. This error consists in supposing that to
ascribe certain predicates to a thing is the same thing as to say
that that thing is the object of a certain kind of psychical state.
It is supposed that to say that a thing is real or true is the same
thing as to say that it is known in a certain way; and that the
difference between the assertion that it is good and the assertion
that it is real--between an ethical, therefore, and a metaphysical
proposition--_consists_ in the fact that whereas the latter asserts its
relation to Cognition the former asserts its relation to Will.
Now that this is an error has been already shewn in Chapter I. That
the assertion ‘This is good’ is _not_ identical with the assertion
‘This is willed,’ either by a supersensible will, or otherwise, nor
with any other proposition, has been proved; nor can I add anything
to that proof. But in face of this proof it may be anticipated that
two lines of defence may be taken up. (1) It may be maintained that,
nevertheless, they really are identical, and facts may be pointed out
which seem to prove that identity. Or else (2) it may be said that an
_absolute_ identity is not maintained: that it is only meant to assert
that there is some special connection between will and goodness, such
as makes an enquiry into the real nature of the former an essential
step in the proof of ethical conclusions. In order to meet these two
possible objections, I propose first to shew what possible connections
there are or may be between goodness and will; and that none of these
can justify us in asserting that ‘This is good’ is identical with ‘This
is willed.’ On the other hand it will appear that some of them may be
easily confused with this assertion of identity; and that therefore the
confusion is likely to have been made. This part of my argument will,
therefore, already go some way towards meeting the second objection.
But what must be conclusive against this is to shew that any possible
connection between will and goodness _except_ the _absolute_ identity
in question, would not be sufficient to give an enquiry into Will the
smallest relevance to the proof of any ethical conclusion.
=78.= It has been customary, since Kant’s time, to assert that
Cognition, Volition, and Feeling are three fundamentally distinct
attitudes of the mind towards reality. They are three distinct ways
of experiencing, and each of them informs us of a distinct aspect
under which reality may be considered. The ‘Epistemological’ method of
approaching Metaphysics rests on the assumption that by considering
what is ‘implied in’ Cognition--what is its ‘ideal’--we may discover
what properties the world must have, if it is to be _true_. And
similarly it is held that by considering what is ‘implied in’ the fact
of Willing or Feeling--what is the ‘ideal’ which they presuppose--we
may discover what properties the world must have, if it is to be good
or beautiful. The orthodox Idealistic Epistemologist differs from the
Sensationalist or Empiricist in holding that what we directly cognise
is neither all true nor yet the whole truth: in order to reject the
false and to discover further truths we must, he says, not take
cognition merely as it presents itself, but discover what is _implied_
in it. And similarly the orthodox Metaphysical Ethicist differs from
the mere Naturalist, in holding that not everything which we actually
will is good, nor, if good, completely good: what is really good is
that which is implied in the essential nature of will. Others again
think that Feeling, and not Will, is the fundamental _datum_ for
Ethics. But, in either case, it is agreed that Ethics has some relation
to Will or Feeling which it has not to Cognition, and which other
objects of study have to Cognition. Will or Feeling, on the one hand,
and Cognition, on the other, are regarded as in some sense coordinate
sources of philosophical knowledge--the one of Practical, the other of
Theoretical philosophy.
What, that is true, can possibly be meant by this view?
=79.= First of all, it may be meant that, just as, by reflection on our
perceptual and sensory experience, we become aware of the distinction
between truth and falsehood, so it is by reflection on our experiences
of feeling and willing that we become aware of ethical distinctions.
We should not know what was meant by thinking one thing better than
another unless the attitude of our will or feeling towards one thing
was different from its attitude towards another. All this may be
admitted. But so far we have only the psychological fact that it is
only _because_ we will or feel things in a certain way, that we ever
come to think them good; just as it is only because we have certain
perceptual experiences, that we ever come to think things true. Here,
then, is a special connection between willing and goodness; but it is
only a _causal_ connection--that willing is a necessary condition for
the cognition of goodness.
But it may be said further that willing and feeling are not only the
origin of cognitions of goodness; but that to will a thing, or to have
a certain feeling towards a thing, is the _same thing_ as to think it
good. And it may be admitted that even this is _generally_ true in a
sense. It does seem to be true that we hardly ever think a thing good,
and never very decidedly, without at the same time having a special
attitude of feeling or will towards it; though it is certainly not the
case that this is true universally. And the converse may possibly be
true universally: it may be the case that a perception of goodness is
included in the complex facts which we mean by willing and by having
certain kinds of feeling. Let us admit then, that to think a thing good
and to will it are _the same thing_ in this sense, that, wherever the
latter occurs, the former also occurs as a _part_ of it; and even that
they are _generally the same thing_ in the converse sense, that when
the former occurs it is generally a part of the latter.
=80.= These facts may seem to give countenance to the general assertion
that to think a thing good is to prefer it or approve it, in the
sense in which preference and approval denote certain kinds of will
or feeling. It seems to be always true that when we thus prefer or
approve, there is included in that fact the fact that we think good;
and it is certainly true, in an immense majority of instances, that
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