Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:46:07.224Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Ought’ and Rules

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

T. Beardsworth
T. Beardsworth
Affiliation:
Farmington Trust, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Discussions
Information
Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 173 , July 1970 , pp. 240 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Contrast the purely descriptive ‘In Erewhon, if a man …, he has to do it.’

2 Such rules are normally couched in the ‘timeless’ present tense.

3 I do not wish to imply that the word ‘rule’ may not originally have been used only of prescriptions, when all regularities were perhaps regarded as the fiats of a Creator— cf. ‘law’ in ‘Laws of Nature’. My concern is with the current functions of the word, not its past history. The same applies to ‘ought’.

4 ‘If reason infallibly determines the will, then in a being of this kind the actions which are recognised to be objectively necessary are also subjectively necessary.’—p. 36.

‘Only “law” carries with it the concept of an unconditioned, and yet objective and so universally valid, necessity.’—p. 44.

Kant, , The Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Beck, . (Liberal Arts, 1959)Google Scholar