Principia Ethica 28

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