ETHICS G. E. MOORE Lrrr. D., LL. D., F. B. A. HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO First published in
1912 and reprinted in 1925 twice, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1936, 1939,
1944 and 1945 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN CONTENTS OTAf. FA6P I
UTILITARIANISM 7 U UTILITARIANISM concluded .... 40 ill THE
OBJECTIVITY OF MORAL JUDGMENTS . 79 IV THH OBJECTIVITY oir MORAL
JUDGMENTS concluded 138 V RESULTS THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG . 170
VI FREE WILL 196 VII INTRINSIC VALUB .... 228 NOTE ON BOOKS 258
INDEX 266 ETHICS CHAPTER I UTILITARIANISM ETHICS is a subject about
which there has been and still is an immense amount of difference
of opinion, in spite of all the time and labour which have been
devoted to the study of it. There are indeed certain matters about
which there is not much disagree ment. Almost everybody is agreed
that certain kinds of actions ought, as a general rule, to be
avoided and that under certain circumstances, which constantly
recur, it is, as a general rule, better to act in certain specified
ways rather than in others. There is, moreover, a pretty general
agreement, with regard to certain things which happen in the world,
that it would be better if they never happened, or, at least, did
not happen 8 ETHICS so often as they do and with regard to others,
that it would be better if they hap pened more often than they do.
But on many questions, even of this kind, there is great diversity
of opinion. Actions which some philosophers hold to be generally
wrong, others hold to be generally right, and occurrences which
some hold to be evils, others hold to be goods. And when we come to
more fundamental questions the difference of opinion is even more
marked. Ethicalphilosophers have, in fact, been largely concerned,
not with laying down rules to the effect that certain ways of
acting are generally or always right, and others generally or
always wrong, nor yet with giving lists of things which are good
and others which are evil, but with trying to answer more general
and fundamental questions such as the following. What, after all,
is it that we mean to say of an action when we say that it is right
or ought to be done And what is it that we mean to say of a state
of things when we say that it is good or bad Can we discover any
general characteristic, which belongs in UTILITARIANISM common to
absolutely all right actions, no matter how different they may be
in other respects and which does not belong to any actions except
those which are right And can we similarly discover any char
acteristic which belongs in common to absolutely all good things,
and which does not belong to any thing except what is a good Or
again, can we discover any single reason, applicable to all right
actions equally, which is, in every case, the reason why an action
is right, when it is right And can we, similarly, discover any
reason which is the reason why a thing is good, when it is good,
and which also gives us the reason why any one thing is better than
another, when it is better Or is there, perhaps, no such single
reason in either case On questions of this sort different philo
sophers still hold the most diverse opinions. I think it is true
that absolutely every answer which has ever been given to them by
any one philosopher would be denied to be true by many others.
There is, at any rate, no such consensus of opinion among experts
about these fundamental ethical 10ETHICS questions, as there is
about many funda mental propositions in Mathematics and the Natural
Sciences. Now, it is precisely questions of this sort, about every
one of which there are serious differences of opinion, that I wish
to dis cuss in this book. And from the fact that so much difference
of opinion exists about them it is natural to infer that they are
questions about which it is extremely difficult to discover the
truth. This is, I think, really the case...
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