repugnance against violating the rule of truthspeaking: but it will be
a feeling quite different in kind and degree from that which prompted
him to veracity as a department of virtuous action. We might perhaps
call the one a ‘moral’ and the other a ‘quasi-moral’ sentiment.
The argument just given holds equally against the view that approbation
or disapprobation is not the mere liking or aversion of an individual
for certain kinds of conduct, but this complicated by a sympathetic
representation of similar likings or aversions felt by other human
beings. No doubt such sympathy is a normal concomitant of moral
emotion, and when the former is absent there is much greater difficulty
in maintaining the latter: this, however, is partly because our moral
beliefs commonly agree with those of other members of our society, and
on this agreement depends to an important extent our confidence in the
truth of these beliefs.[30] But if, as in the case just supposed, we
are really led by argument to a new moral belief, opposed not only to
our own habitual sentiment but also to that of the society in which
we live, we have a crucial experiment proving the existence in us of
moral sentiments as I have defined them, colliding with the represented
sympathies of our fellow-men no less than with our own mere likings
and aversions. And even if we imagine the sympathies opposed to our
convictions extended until they include those of the whole human race,
against whom we imagine ourselves to stand as _Athanasius contra
mundum_; still, so long as our conviction of duty is firm, the emotion
which we call moral stands out in imagination quite distinct from the
complex sympathy opposed to it, however much we extend, complicate and
intensify the latter.
§ 2. So far, then, from being prepared to admit that the proposition
‘X ought to be done’ _merely_ expresses the existence of a certain
sentiment in myself or others, I find it strictly impossible so to
regard my own moral judgments without eliminating from the concomitant
sentiment the peculiar quality signified by the term ‘moral.’ There is,
however, another interpretation of ‘ought,’ in which the likings and
aversions that men in general feel for certain kinds of conduct are
considered not as sympathetically represented in the emotion of the
person judging, and thus constituting the moral element in it, but as
causes of pain to the person of whom ‘ought’ or ‘duty’ is predicated.
On this view, when we say that a man ‘ought’ to do anything, or that it
is his ‘duty’ to do it, we mean that he is bound under penalties to do
it; the particular penalty considered being the pain that will accrue
to him directly or indirectly from the dislike of his fellow-creatures.
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