Recent Tendencies in Ethics: Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge — John Shaqi
Recent Tendencies in Ethics: Three Lectures to Clergy Given at CambridgeSorley, W. R. (William Ritchie)
Philosophy
Recent Tendencies in Ethics: Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge
Sorley, W. R. (William Ritchie)
Ethics
There is also another way of putting the matter: "the good is
coextensive with approbation."[1] If by 'approbation' we mean simply
'holding for good,' then the sentence will mean that the good is what
we hold for good--that is to say, that our judgments about good
are always true judgments,--a proposition which either ignores the
divergence between different individual judgments about good, or else
implies a complete relativity such that that is good to each man at
any time which he at that time approves or holds to be good; and this
latter view would make all discussion impossible. But this is not what
Mr Bradley means. "Approbation is to be taken in its widest sense";
in which sense "to approve is to have an idea in which we feel
satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in
existence."[2] And here the criterion is the same as before, and
equally subjective. In desire idea and existence are separated; they
are united in the satisfaction of desire; and approbation is said to
be just the feeling of satisfaction in an idea which is also present
(or imagined as present) in existence. Not only actual satisfaction of
the desire but also imagined satisfaction is covered by "approbation";
but this approval is still simply a feeling of some individual person.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 407]
[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 418.]
We need not concern ourselves at present with the adequacy of this
statement as an account of the way in which we come to 'approve' or
hold something as good. The point is, that it does not advance us at
all towards determining the validity of this approval, or towards an
objective criterion for distinguishing 'good' from evil.
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