Moral Science by Alexander Bain (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

/> LOCKE. Arguments against Innate Practical Principles. Freedom of the Will. Moral Rules grounded in law.

BUTLER. Characteristics of our Moral Perceptions. Disinterested Benevolence a fact of our constitutions. Our passions and affections do not aim at self as their immediate end. The Supremacy of Conscience established from our moral nature. Meanings of Nature. Benevolence not ultimately at variance with Self-Love.

HUTCHESON.--Primary feelings of the mind. Finer perceptions--Beauty, Sympathy, the Moral Sense, Social feelings; the benevolent order of the world suggesting Natural Religion. Order or subordination of the feelings as Motives; position of Benevolence. The Moral Faculty distinct and independent. Confirmation of the doctrine from the Sense of Honour. Happiness. The tempers and characters bearing on happiness. Duties to God. Circumstances affecting the moral good or evil of actions. Rights and Laws.

MANDEVILLE. Virtue supported solely by self-interest. Compassion resolvable into self. Pride an important source of moral virtue. Private vices, public benefits. Origin of Society.

HUME. Question whether Reason or Sentiment be the foundation of morals. The esteem for Benevolence shows that Utility enters into virtue. Proofs that Justice is founded solely on Utility. Political Society has utility for its end. The Laws. Why Utility pleases. Qualities useful to ourselves. Qualities agreeable (1) to ourselves, and (2) to others. Obligation. The respective share of Reason and of Sentiment in moral approbation. Benevolence not resolvable into Self-Love.

PRICE. The distinctions of Right and Wrong are perceived by the Understanding. The Beauty and Deformity of Actions. The feelings have some part in our moral discrimination. Self-Love and Benevolence. Good and ill Desert. Obligation. Divisions of Virtue. Intention as an element in virtuous action. Estimate of degrees of Virtue and Vice.

ADAM SMITH. Illustration of the workings of Sympathy. Mutual sympathy. The Amiable and the Respectable Virtues. How far the several passions are consistent with Propriety. Influences of prosperity and adversity on moral judgments. The Sense of Merit and Demerit. Self-approbation. Love of Praise and of Praiseworthiness. Influence and authority of Conscience. Self-partiality; corrected by the use of General Rules. Connexion of Utility with Moral Approbation. Influence of Custom on the Moral Sentiments. Character of Virtue. Self-command. Opinion regarding the theory of the Moral Sense.

HARTLEY. Account of Disinterestedness. The Moral Sense a product of Association.

FERGUSON. (Note)

REID. Duty not to be resolved into Interest. Conscience an original power of the mind. Axiomatic first principles of Morals. Objections to the theory of Utility.

STEWART. The Moral Faculty an original power. Criticism of opposing views. Moral Obligation: connexion with Religion. Duties. Happiness: classification of pleasures.

BROWN. Moral approbation a simple emotion of the mind. Universality of moral distinctions. Objections to the theory of Utility. Disinterested sentiment.

PALEY. The Moral Sense not intuitive. Happiness. Virtue: its definition. Moral Obligation resolved into the command of God. Utility a criterion of the Divine Will. Utility requires us to consider _general_ consequences. Rights. Duties.

BENTHAM. Utility the sole foundation of Morals. Principles adverse to Utility. The Four Sanctions of Right. Comparative estimate of Pleasures and Pains. Classification of Pleasures and Pains. Merit and Demerit. Pleasures and pains viewed as Motives: some motives are Social or tutelary, others Dissocial or Self-regarding. Dispositions. The consequences of a mischievous act. Punishment. Private Ethics (Prudence) and Legislation distinguished; their respective spheres.

MACKINTOSH. Universality of Moral Distinctions. Antithesis or Reason and Passion. It is not virtuous _acts_ but virtuous _dispositions_ that outweigh the pains of self-sacrifice. The moral sentiments have for their objects Dispositions. Utility. Development of Conscience through Association; the constituents are Gratitude, Sympathy, Resentment and Shame, together with Education. Religion must presuppose Morality. Objections to Utility criticised. Duties to ourselves, an improper expression. Reference of moral sentiments to the Will.

JAMES MILL. Primary constituents of the Moral Faculty--pleasurable and painful sensations. The Causes of these sensations. The Ideas of them, and of their causes. Hope, Fear; Love, Joy; Hatred, Aversion. Remote causes of pleasures and pains--Wealth, Power, Dignity, and their opposites. Affections towards our fellow-creatures--Friendship, Kindness, &c. Motives. Dispositions. Applications to the virtue of Prudence. Justice--by what motives supported. Beneficence. Importance in moral training, of Praise and Blame, and their associations; the Moral Sanction. Derivation of Disinterested Feelings.

AUSTIN. Laws defined and classified. The Divine Laws; how are we to know the Divine Will? Utility the sole criterion. Objections to Utility. Criticism of the theory of a Moral Sense. Prevailing misconceptions as to Utility. Nature of Law resumed and illustrated. Impropriety of the term 'law' as applied to the operations of Nature.

WHEWELL. Opposing schemes of Morality. Proposal to reconcile them. There are some actions Universally approved. A Supreme Rule of Right to be arrived at by combining partial rules: these are obtained from the nature of our faculties. The rule of Speech is Truth; Property supposes Justice; the Affections indicate Humanity. It is a self-evident maxim that the Lower parts of our nature are governed by the Higher. Classification of Springs of Action. Disinterestedness. Classification of Moral Rules. Division of Rights.

FERRIER. Question of the Moral Sense: errors on both sides. Sympathy passes beyond feeling, and takes in Thought or self-consciousness. Happiness has two ends--the maintenance of man's Rational nature, and Pleasure.

MANSEL. The conceptions of Right and Wrong are _sui generis_. The moral law can have no authority unless emanating from a lawgiver. The Standard is the moral nature, and not the arbitrary will, of God.

JOHN STUART MILL. Explanation of what Utilitarianism consists in. Reply to objections against setting up Happiness as the Ethical end. Ultimate Sanction of the principle of Utility: the External and Internal sanctions; Conscience how made up. The sort of Proof that Utility is susceptible of:--the evidence that happiness is desirable, is that men desire it; it is consistent with Utility that virtue should be desired for itself. Connexion between Justice and Utility:--meanings of Justice; essentially grounded in Law; the sentiments that support Justice, are Self-defence, and Sympathy; Justice owes its paramount character to the essential of Security; there are no immutable maxims of Justice.

BAILEY. Facts of the human constitution that give origin to moral phenomena:--susceptibility to pleasure and pain, and to the causes of them; reciprocation of these; our expecting reciprocation from others; sympathy. Consideration of our feelings in regard to actions done to us by others. Our feelings as spectators of actions done to others by others. Actions done to ourselves by others. The different cases combine to modify each other. Explanation of the discrepancies of the moral sentiment in different communities. The consequences of actions the only criterion for rectifying the diversities. Objections to the happiness-test. The term Utility unsuitable. Disputes as to the origin of moral sentiment in Reason or in a Moral Sense.

SPENCER. Happiness the ultimate, but not the proximate, end. Moral Science a deduction from the laws of life and the conditions of existence. There have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental Moral Intuitions. The Expediency-Morality is transitional. Reference to the general theory of Evolution.

KANT. Distinguishes between the empirical and the rational mode of treating Ethics. Nothing properly good, except _Will_. Subjection of Will to Reason. An action done from natural inclination is worthless morally. Duty is respect for Law; conformity to Law is the one principle of volition. Moral Law not ascertainable empirically, it must originate _a priori_ in pure (practical) Reason. The Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives. Imperative of Prudence. Imperative of Morality. The formula of Morality. The ends of Morality. The Rational nature of man is an end-in-itself. The Will the source of its own laws--the Autonomy of the Will. The Reason of Ends. Morality alone has intrinsic Worth or Dignity. Principles founded on the Heteronomy of the Will--Happiness, Perfection. Duty legitimized by the conception of the Freedom of the Will, properly understood. Postulates of the pure Practical Reason--Freedom, Immortality, God. Summary.

COUSIN. Analysis of the sentiments aroused in us by human actions. The Moral Sentiment made up of a variety of moral judgments--Good and Evil, Obligation, Liberty, Merit and Demerit. Virtue brings Happiness. Moral Satisfaction and Remorse. The Law of Duty is conformity to Reason. The characteristic of Reason is Universality. Classification of Duties:--Duties to Self; to Others--Truth, Justice, Charity. Application to Politics.

JOUFFROY. Each creature has a special nature, and a special end. Man has certain primary passions to be satisfied. Secondary passions--the Useful, the Good, Happiness. All the faculties controlled by the Reason. The End of Interest. End of Universal Order. Morality the expression of divine thought; identified with the beautiful and the true. The moral law and self-interest coincide. Boundaries of the three states--Passion, Egoism, Moral determination.



ETHICS


PART I.

THE THEORY OF ETHICS.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY VIEW OF ETHICAL, QUESTIONS.

As a preface to the account of the Ethical Systems, and a principle of arrangement, for the better comparing of them, we shall review in order the questions that arise in the discussion.

I. First of all is the question as to the ETHICAL STANDARD. What, in the last resort, is the test, criterion, umpire, appeal, or Standard, in determining Right and Wrong? In the concrete language of Paley, "Why am I obliged to keep my word? The answer to this is the Theory of Right and Wrong, the essential part of every Ethical System."

We may quote the leading answers, as both explaining and summarizing the chief question of Ethics, and more especially of Modern Ethics.

1. It is alleged that the arbitrary Will of the Deity, as expressed in the Bible, is the ultimate standard. On this view anything thus commanded is right, whatever be its consequences, or however it may clash with our sentiments and reasonings.

2. It was maintained by Hobbes, that the Sovereign, acting under his responsibility to God, is the sole arbiter of Right and Wrong. As regards Obligatory Morality, this seems at first sight an identical proposition; morality is another name for law and sovereignty. In the view of Hobbes, however, the sovereign should be a single person, of absolute authority, humanly irresponsible, and irremoveable; a type of sovereignty repudiated by civilized nations.

3. It has been held, in various phraseology, that a certain _fitness_, suitability, or propriety in actions, as determined by our Understanding or Reason, is the ultimate test. "When a man keeps his word, there is a certain congruity or consistency between the action and the occasion, between the making of a promise and its fulfilment; and wherever such congruity is discernible, the action is right." This is the view of Cudworth, Clarke, and Price. It may be called the Intellectual or Rational theory.

A special and more abstract form of the same theory is presented in the dictum of Kant--'act in such a way that your conduct might be a law to all beings.'

4. It is contended, that the human mind possesses an intuition or instinct, whereby we feel or discern at once the right from the wrong; a view termed the doctrine of the Moral Sense, or Moral Sentiment. Besides being supported by numerous theorizers in Ethics, this is the prevailing and popular doctrine; it underlies most of the language of moral suasion. The difficulties attending the stricter interpretation of it have led to various modes of qualifying and explaining it, as will afterwards appear. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are more especially identified with the enunciation of this doctrine in its modern aspect.

5. It was put forth by Mandeville that Self-interest is the only test of moral rightness. Self-preservation is the first law of being; and even when we are labouring for the good of others, we are still having regard to our own interest.

6. The theory called, Utility, and Utilitarianism, supposes that the well-being or happiness of mankind is the sole end, and ultimate standard of morality. The agent takes account both of his own