Moral Science | Page 4

Moral Obligation resolved into the command of God. Utility

a criterion of the Divine Will. Utility requires us to consider general
consequences. Rights. Duties.
BENTHAM. Utility the sole foundation of Morals. Principles adverse
to Utility. The Four Sanctions of Right. Comparative estimate of
Pleasures and Pains. Classification of Pleasures and Pains. Merit and
Demerit. Pleasures and pains viewed as Motives: some motives are
Social or tutelary, others Dissocial or Self-regarding. Dispositions. The
consequences of a mischievous act. Punishment. Private Ethics
(Prudence) and Legislation distinguished; their respective spheres.
MACKINTOSH. Universality of Moral Distinctions. Antithesis or
Reason and Passion. It is not virtuous acts but virtuous dispositions that
outweigh the pains of self-sacrifice. The moral sentiments have for
their objects Dispositions. Utility. Development of Conscience through
Association; the constituents are Gratitude, Sympathy, Resentment and
Shame, together with Education. Religion must presuppose Morality.
Objections to Utility criticised. Duties to ourselves, an improper
expression. Reference of moral sentiments to the Will.
JAMES MILL. Primary constituents of the Moral Faculty--pleasurable
and painful sensations. The Causes of these sensations. The Ideas of
them, and of their causes. Hope, Fear; Love, Joy; Hatred, Aversion.
Remote causes of pleasures and pains--Wealth, Power, Dignity, and
their opposites. Affections towards our fellow-creatures--Friendship,
Kindness, &c. Motives. Dispositions. Applications to the virtue of
Prudence. Justice--by what motives supported. Beneficence.
Importance in moral training, of Praise and Blame, and their
associations; the Moral Sanction. Derivation of Disinterested Feelings.
AUSTIN. Laws defined and classified. The Divine Laws; how are we
to know the Divine Will? Utility the sole criterion. Objections to Utility.
Criticism of the theory of a Moral Sense. Prevailing misconceptions as
to Utility. Nature of Law resumed and illustrated. Impropriety of the
term 'law' as applied to the operations of Nature.
WHEWELL. Opposing schemes of Morality. Proposal to reconcile
them. There are some actions Universally approved. A Supreme Rule

of Right to be arrived at by combining partial rules: these are obtained
from the nature of our faculties. The rule of Speech is Truth; Property
supposes Justice; the Affections indicate Humanity. It is a self-evident
maxim that the Lower parts of our nature are governed by the Higher.
Classification of Springs of Action. Disinterestedness. Classification of
Moral Rules. Division of Rights.
FERRIER. Question of the Moral Sense: errors on both sides.
Sympathy passes beyond feeling, and takes in Thought or
self-consciousness. Happiness has two ends--the maintenance of man's
Rational nature, and Pleasure.
MANSEL. The conceptions of Right and Wrong are sui generis. The
moral law can have no authority unless emanating from a lawgiver. The
Standard is the moral nature, and not the arbitrary will, of God.
JOHN STUART MILL. Explanation of what Utilitarianism consists in.
Reply to objections against setting up Happiness as the Ethical end.
Ultimate Sanction of the principle of Utility: the External and Internal
sanctions; Conscience how made up. The sort of Proof that Utility is
susceptible of:--the evidence that happiness is desirable, is that men
desire it; it is consistent with Utility that virtue should be desired for
itself. Connexion between Justice and Utility:--meanings of Justice;
essentially grounded in Law; the sentiments that support Justice, are
Self-defence, and Sympathy; Justice owes its paramount character to
the essential of Security; there are no immutable maxims of Justice.
BAILEY. Facts of the human constitution that give origin to moral
phenomena:--susceptibility to pleasure and pain, and to the causes of
them; reciprocation of these; our expecting reciprocation from others;
sympathy. Consideration of our feelings in regard to actions done to us
by others. Our feelings as spectators of actions done to others by others.
Actions done to ourselves by others. The different cases combine to
modify each other. Explanation of the discrepancies of the moral
sentiment in different communities. The consequences of actions the
only criterion for rectifying the diversities. Objections to the
happiness-test. The term Utility unsuitable. Disputes as to the origin of
moral sentiment in Reason or in a Moral Sense.

SPENCER. Happiness the ultimate, but not the proximate, end. Moral
Science a deduction from the laws of life and the conditions of
existence. There have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain
fundamental Moral Intuitions. The Expediency-Morality is transitional.
Reference to the general theory of Evolution.
KANT. Distinguishes between the empirical and the rational mode of
treating Ethics. Nothing properly good, except Will. Subjection of Will
to Reason. An action done from natural inclination is worthless morally.
Duty is respect for Law; conformity to Law is the one principle of
volition. Moral Law not ascertainable empirically, it must originate a
priori in pure (practical) Reason. The Hypothetical and Categorical
Imperatives. Imperative of Prudence. Imperative of Morality. The
formula of Morality. The ends of Morality. The Rational nature of man
is an end-in-itself. The Will the source of its own laws--the Autonomy
of the Will. The Reason of Ends.