Modern moral philosophy

Abstract

I will begin by stating three theses which I present in this paper. The first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that it should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation, and duty — moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say — and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of ‘ought’, ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it. My third thesis is that the differences between the well- known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance.

This paper was originally read to the Voltaire Society in Oxford.