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How to Preach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael McDermott
Michael McDermott*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

That's what I reckon morality is all about — how to preach, not how to act. My aim is not to answer this question of how to preach (except in the broadest outlines). I want to defend the claim that it is the, or at least a, central problem of ethics: that it is in fact the problem of what moral principles to accept.

My argument consists of an account of what is involved in accepting a moral principle. By a moral principle I mean a kind of principle about how people should act. Moral principles are not the only principles you can have about how people should act. There are principles of prudence, or rational self-interest. There are aesthetic principles, such as might be expressed in a remark like “you shouldn't put a magenta cushion on a scarlet sofa”. There are principles of etiquette. And no doubt there are others. I develop my account of morality by asking what distinguishes moral principles from the rest.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 1978 , pp. 633 - 652
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1978

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References

1 The relevant views of Hare, R. M. are summarised in Part I of Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 84.

3 Hart, H. L. A. The Concept of Law (Oxford, 1961), p. 175.Google Scholar

4 Ibid.

5 Hart, H. L. A. Law, Liberty and Morality (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar

6 Ibid, pp. 22-24.

7 Brown, D. G. “Mill on liberty and Morality”, Philosophical Review 81 (1972), pp. 133–58;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brown, D. G. “What is Mill's Principle of Utility?”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (1973-4), pp. 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Brown, “Mill on liberty and Morality” and “What is Mill's Principle of Utility?” Lyons, David “Mill's Theory of Morality”, Nous 10 (1976), pp. 101–20;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Harrison, Jonathan “The Expedient, the Right and the Just in Mill's Utilitarianism”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy,supp. vol. 1 (1974), pp. 93–107.Google Scholar

9 E. g. Utilitarianism, chap. 2. paragraph 2.

10 Here (and earlier) I treat excuses in the same way as justifications — as considerations outweighing the prima facie wrongness of the act, so that it is not morally wrong (on balance). Hence I equate “morally wrong” with “deserving of punishment”.

11 Nevertheless, there does seem to be a high degree of uniformity in people's standards of prudence. This, I presume, accounts for any feelings we might have that they are “objective”. I suggested that the felt objectivity of moral judgements might be explained in terms of the desire for uniformity: it seems obvious that there is less uniformity there.

12 Hare, R. M. The Language of Morals (Oxford, 1952).Google Scholar