Is Life Worth Living?Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
Philosophy
Is Life Worth Living?
Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
Ethics; Life
Now by a simple substitution of terms, such language as this will reveal
at once one important fact to us. According to the avowed principles of
positive morality, morality has no other test but happiness. Immorality,
therefore, can have no conceivable meaning but unhappiness, or at least
the means to it, which in this case are hardly distinguishable from the
end; and thus, according to the above rigid reasoners, the human race
will not have reached the lowest depths of misery so long as it rejects
the one thing which _ex hypothesi_ might render it less miserable.
Either then all this talk about truth must really be so much irrelevant
nonsense, or else, if it be not nonsense, the test of conduct is
something distinct from happiness. The question before us is a plain
one, which may be answered in one of two ways, but which positivism
cannot possibly answer in both. Is truth to be sought only because it
conduces to happiness, or is happiness only to be sought for when it is
based on truth? In the latter case truth, not happiness, is the test of
conduct. Are our positive moralists prepared to admit this? If so, let
them explicitly and consistently say so. Let them keep this test and
reject the other, for the two cannot be fused together.
[Greek: oxos t' aleipha t' egcheas tauto kutei
dichostatount an ou philoin prosennepois.]
This inconsistency is here, however, only a side point--a passing
illustration of the slovenliness of the positivist logic. As far as my
present argument goes, we may let this pass altogether, and allow the
joint existence of these mutually exclusive ends. What I am about to do
is to show that on positive grounds the last of these is more hopelessly
inadequate than the first--that truth as a moral end has even more of
religion in its composition than happiness, and that when this religion
goes, its value will even more hopelessly evaporate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account