I should like, if I can, to interest you to-night in one particular
question about Moral Philosophy. It is a question which resembles most
philosophical questions, in respect of the fact that philosophers are
by no means agreed as to what is the right answer to it: some seem to
be very strongly convinced that one answer is correct, while others are
equally strongly convinced of the opposite. For my own part I do feel
some doubt as to which answer is the right one, although, as you will
see, I incline rather strongly to one of the two alternatives. I should
like very much, if I could, to find some considerations which seemed to
me absolutely convincing on the one side or the other; for the question
seems to me in itself to be an exceedingly interesting one.
I have said that the question is a question _about_ Moral Philosophy;
and it seems to me in fact to be a very large and general question
which affects the whole of Moral Philosophy. In asking it, we are doing
no less than asking what it is that people are doing when they study
Moral Philosophy at all: we are asking what sort of questions it is
which it is the business of Moral Philosophy to discuss and try to
find the right answer to. But I intend, for the sake of simplicity,
to confine myself to asking it in two particular instances. Moral
Philosophy has, in fact, to discuss a good many different ideas;
and though I think this same question may be raised with regard to
them all, I intend to pick out two, which seem to me particularly
fundamental, and to ask it with regard to them only.
My first business must be to explain what these two ideas are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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