Moral Philosophy

Moral Philosophy [with accents]

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moral Philosophy, by Joseph Rickaby,
S. J. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check
the copyright laws for your country before downloading or
redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Moral Philosophy
Author: Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8103] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 15, 2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORAL
PHILOSOPHY ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David King, Charles
Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
ETHICS, DEONTOLOGY AND NATURAL LAW.
BY JOSEPH RICKABY, S.J.
Nihil Obstat: JOSEPHUS KEATING, S.J. Censor deputatus Imprimi
potest: JOANNES H. WRIGHT, S.J. _Præp. Prov. Angliæ_
Nihil Obstat: C. SCHUT, D.D. Censor deputatus Imprimatur: EDM.
CAN. SURMONT _Vie. Gen._

PREFACE (1905).
For fifteen years this Manual has enjoyed all the popularity that its
author could desire. With that popularity the author is the last person to
wish to interfere. Therefore, not to throw previous copies out of use,
this edition makes no alteration either in the pagination or the text
already printed. At the same time the author might well be argued to
have lapsed into strange supineness and indifference to moral science,
if in fifteen years he had learnt nothing new, and found nothing in his
work which he wished to improve. Whoever will be at the expense of
purchasing my Political and Moral Essays (Benziger, 1902, 6s.) will
find in the first essay on the Origin and Extent of Civil Authority an
advantageous substitute for the chapter on the State in this work. The
essay is a dissertation written for the degree of B. Sc. in the University
of Oxford; and represents, I hope, tolerably well the best contemporary
teaching on the subject.
If the present work had to be rewritten, I should make a triple division
of Moral Philosophy, into Ethics, Deontology (the science of [Greek: to
deon], i.e., of what ought to be done), and Natural Law. For if "the

principal business of Ethics is to determine what moral obligation is" (p.
2), then the classical work on the subject, the Nicomachean Ethics of
Aristotle, is as the play of Hamlet with the character of Hamlet left out:
for in that work there is no analysis of moral obligation, no attempt to
"fix the comprehension of the idea I _ought_" (ib.). The system there
exposed is a system of Eudaemonism, not of Deontology. It is not a
treatise on Duty, but on Happiness: it tells us what Happiness, or
rational well-being, is, and what conduct is conducive to rational
well-being. It may be found convenient to follow Aristotle, and avow
that the business of Ethics is not Duty, not Obligation, not Law, not
Sanction, but Happiness. That fiery little word ought goes unexplained
in Ethics, except in an hypothetical sense, that a man ought to do this,
and avoid that, if he means to be a happy man: cf. p. 115. Any man who
declares that he does not care about ethical or rational happiness, stands
to Ethics as that man stands to Music who "hath no ear for concord of
sweet sounds."
All that Ethics or Music can do for such a Philistine is to "send him
away to another city, pouring ointment on his head, and crowning him
with wool," as Plato would dismiss the tragedian (Republic III. 398).
The author of the Magna Moralia well says (I. i. 13): "No science or
faculty ever argues the goodness of the end which it proposes to itself:
it belongs to some other faculty to consider that. Neither the physician
says that health is a good thing, nor the builder that a house is a good
thing: but the one announces that he produces health and how he
produces it, and the builder in like manner a house." The professor of
Ethics indeed, from the very nature of his subject-matter, says in
pointing out happiness that it