[THE NATURE OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY]
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.
The name Moral Philosophy naturally suggests that what is meant is a department of philosophy which has something to do with morality. And we all understand roughly what is meant by morality. We are accustomed to the distinction between moral good and evil, on the one hand, and what is sometimes called physical good and evil on the other. We all make the distinction between a man's moral character, on the one hand, and his agreeableness or intellectual endowments, on the other. We feel that to accuse a man of immoral conduct is quite a different thing from accusing him merely of bad taste or bad manners, or from accusing him merely of stupidity or ignorance. And no less clearly we distinguish between the idea of being under a moral obligation to do a thing, and the idea of being merely under a legal obligation to do it. It is a commonplace that the sphere of morality is much wider than the sphere of law: that we are morally bound to do and avoid many things, which are not enjoined or forbidden by the laws of our country; and it is also sometimes held that, if a particular law is unjust or immoral, it may even be a moral duty to disobey it—that is to say that there may be a positive conflict between moral and legal obligation; and the mere fact that this is held, whether truly or falsely, shows, at all events, that the one idea is quite distinct from the other.
The name Moral Philosophy, then, naturally suggests that it is a department of philosophy concerned with morality in this common sense. And it is, in fact, true that one large department of Moral Philosophy is so concerned. But it would be a mistake to think that the whole subject is only concerned with morality. Another important department of it is, as I shall try to show, concerned with ideas which are not moral ideas, in this ordinary sense, though, no doubt, they may have something to do with them. And of the two ideas which I propose to pick out for discussion, while one of them is a moral idea, the other belongs to that department of Moral Philosophy, which is not concerned solely with morality, and is not, I think, properly speaking, a moral idea at all.
Let us begin with the one of the two, which is a moral idea.
The particular moral idea which I propose to pick out for discussion is the one which I have called above the idea of moral obligation—the idea of being morally bound to act in a particular way on a particular occasion. But what is, so far as I can see, precisely the same idea is also called by several other names. To say that I am under a moral obligation to do a certain thing is, I think, clearly to say the same thing as what we commonly express by saying that I ought to do it, or that it is my duty to do it. That is to say, the idea of moral obligation is identical with the idea of the moral "ought" and with the idea of duty. And it also seems at first sight as if we might make yet another identification.
The assertion that I ought to do a certain thing seems as if it meant much the same as the assertion that it would be wrong of me not to do the thing in question: at all events it is quite clear that, whenever it is my duty to do anything, it would be wrong of me not to do it, and that whenever it would be wrong of me to do anything, then it is my duty to refrain from doing it. In the case of these two ideas, the idea of what is wrong, and the idea of what is my duty or what I ought to do, different views may be taken as to whether the one is more fundamental than the other, or whether both are equally so; and on the question: If one of the two is more fundamental than the other, which of the two is so? Thus some people would say, that the idea of "wrong" is the more fundamental, and that the idea of "duty" is to be defined in terms of it: that, in fact, the statement "It is my duty to keep that promise" merely means "It would be wrong of me not to keep it"; and the statement "It is my duty not to tell a lie" merely means "It would be wrong of me to tell one." Others again would apparently say just the opposite: that duty is the more fundamental notion, and "wrong" is to be defined in terms of it. While others perhaps would hold that neither is more fundamental than the other; that both are equally fundamental, and that the statement "it would be wrong to do so and so" is only equivalent to, not identical in meaning with, "I ought not to do it." But whichever of these three views be the true one, there is, I think, no doubt whatever about the equivalence notion of the two ideas; and no doubt, therefore, that whatever answer be given to the question I am going to raise about the one, the same answer must be given to the corresponding question about the other.