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Impartiality and Consistency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

D. H. Monro
Affiliation:
Sydney University.

Extract

It is quite commonly held nowadays that universalizability is a purely formal feature of moral terms, or perhaps of moral rules.To say that something is good, it is asserted, implies (in some sense of “implies”) that anything else with the same (relevant) characteristics is also good; to say that Jones ought to do X is to commit oneself to saying that, in the same circumstances, Smith ought to do X. In pointing this out, it is suggested, one is not oneself taking up a moral position, or laying down a particular moral rule, but simply making it clear what a moral utterance is. The principle ofuniversalizability is thus a principle of meta-ethics, not of morality itself. That moral judgments are universalizable, Hare tells us, is an analytic statement: “analytic by virtue of the meaning of the word moral”.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1961

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References

page 161 note 1 Aristotelian Society. Proceedings, 1954–1955, P. 298.

page 166 note 1 Pp.155–7.

page 168 note 1 Ethics and the Moral Life, pp. 24–6.

page 171 note 1 E.g. by Gellner (Aristotelian Society. Proceedings, 1954–1955, P. 116) and Hare (Ibid., p. 299).

page 172 note 1 Aristotelian Society. Proceedings. 1954–1955, P. 299.

page 175 note 1 Medlin, B. H. in “Ultimate Principles and Ethical Egoism”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 08 1957, p. 113.Google Scholar

page 176 note 2 Kemp, J. in “Foundations of Morality”. Philosophical Quarterly, 10 1957. P. 316.Google Scholar