A Handbook of Ethical TheoryFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
A Handbook of Ethical Theory
Fullerton, George Stuart
Ethics
That those who study man as a moral being, like those who study man in
any of his other aspects, will be more or less influenced in their
outlook by the broadening of the horizon which results from a study of
what the students of the evolutionary process have to tell us, may be
conceded. But when we admit this, we do not necessarily have to look for
a new norm by which to judge conduct. We seem, rather, forced to ask
ourselves how this broadening of the horizon affects the norms which have
heretofore appealed to men as reasonable. To be sure, any evolutionist
has, in the capacity of a moralist, the right to suggest a new norm. But,
in that case, he must, like any other moralist, convince us that it is a
reasonable one.
132. EVOLUTION AND THE SCHOOLS OF THE MORALISTS.--Those who have
suggested the norms discussed above, no one would think of as greatly
influenced in their ethical teaching by the doctrine of evolution. Locke,
Price, Butler and Sidgwick; Aristippus and Epicurus; Paley and Hobbes;
Bentham and Mill; Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius; Janet, Green, and the
rest, no one would be inclined to class simply as evolutionary moralists.
Some of them never thought of evolution at all. How would it affect their
standards of right and wrong were evolution expressly taken into account?
Would the standards have to be abandoned? Or would the men, as broader
men, merely have to revise some of their moral judgments?
(1) It might be supposed that the acceptance of evolutionary doctrine
would bring into being a grave problem for the intuitionist, at least. If
the body and mind of man are products of evolution, must we not admit as
much of man's moral intuitions? Then why not admit that these may be
replaced some day by other moral intuitions to be evolved in an unknown
future?
He who reasons thus should bear in mind that Sidgwick, who by no means
repudiated the doctrine of evolution, was an intuitionist, and placed his
ultimate moral intuitions on a par with such mathematical intuitions as
that two and two make four. If all intuitions are a product of evolution,
Sidgwick might claim that the moral intuitions he accepts fare no worse
than those elementary mathematical truths which we accept without
question and without reflection. And he might maintain that an appeal to
evolution need cast no greater doubt upon ultimate moral truth than upon
mathematical. If intuitionism in all its forms is to be rejected, it
seems as though it must be done upon some other ground than an appeal to
evolution.
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