Abstract
The central concern of this book is the problem of whether conservation may be regarded as a practical moral activity, but like morality and education (as well as many other activities in which we engage in relation with others, such as politics, business administration, law and so forth) there is always a body of theory to enlarge our understanding of practice and in some ways to guide it. We therefore begin by asking in the widest sense what morality means, and what its purpose is. In this undertaking we shall be setting certain boundaries of moral activity. The need to do this may not be immediately obvious, but will be made so as soon as the understanding of morality is applied to a specific problem such as conservation where vaguenesses and misunderstandings are not uncommon. To use the customary language of moral philosophy, our approach will be both normative and meta-ethical: that is, we shall propose a coherent moral outlook as a system of ideas, beliefs or judgements to use as a standard in subsequent discussions; and we shall enquire into the nature of our thinking as we make our moral judgements, decisions or conclusions prior to moral action. The meta-ethical explanation we make is independent of the normative position we take on morality, but by throwing light on mental states and processes during and preceding our practical judgements on what we ought (morally) to do, we have an opportunity to increase self-understanding and thereby facilitate moral relationships with others.
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Notes
UN, Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice, Article i, 1 (1978).
For these see Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, trans. T. K. Abbott, 6th edn (London: Longmans, Green, 1909) pp. 38–9; 47. The references are to ‘Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals’, second section.
H. Sidgwick, The Elements of Politics (London and New York: Macmillan, 1891) ch. XIII, p. 191. In contrast with true morality, positive morality was relatively indefinite and inconsistent (contrasting with the law too in these respects), p. 195.
The Republic, various editions. Page references are to the Everyman edition, trans. A. D. Lindsay (London: Dent, 1935; New York: Dutton, 1935).
L. S. Hsii, The Political Philosophy of Confucianism (London: Routledge, 1932) pp. 105, 127. Although when Confucius wrote in approx. 500 B.C. China’s feudal system was disintegrating, there were still widespread tyranny and exploitation of peasants.
From ‘The First Philippic Against Marcus Antonius’, in Selected Political Speeches of Cicero, trans. M. Grant (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969) p. 298.
For a comprehensive survey of seventeenth-century writers on this and related matters concerning individual property rights, see J. A. W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) pp. 324ff.
T. Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968). Page references are to this edition (first published in 1651).
J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. M. Cranston (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968). Page references are to this edition. Originally published in 1762.
For a selection of these, see L. A. Selby-Bigge, British Moralists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897). For criticism of Hobbes in this work see Samuel Clarke, ‘Discourse Upon Natural Religion’, pp. 38–9. Page references to Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are to this edn.
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press, 1972). ‘Justice as Fairness’ is published in P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics and Society, pp. 132–57. Second series.
Public interest groups, or lobby groups, have been prominent in most industrialized societies in the last two decades or so. For an account of their structure and objectives see J. M. Berry, Lobbying for the People. The Political Behavior of Public Interest Groups (Princeton University Press, 1977). (The perspective is sociological rather than philosophical.)
Mill’s Utilitarianism is in various editions. Page references are to Mill’s Ethical Writings, ed. J. B. Schneewind (New York: Collier Books; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1965).
The demands on the individual in perceiving the common interest have been stated in ideal theory in this way: ‘the public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently’. W. Lippmann, The Public Philosophy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955) p. 44. Here the ‘public interest’ is identified with the common good.
K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976) pp. 246–7 (Progress Publishers, Moscow, pp. 263–4) vol. i,fit (written 1845–6).
The authors are replying to the views of Stirner. The former view is illustrated in T. Nagel’s, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). In this the challenge to altruism is largely from ‘the manner in which human beings have conducted themselves’ (p. 146), rather than from any serious consideration of what man might become by education.
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press, 1962). For Sidgwick’s views on utilitarianism see his The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn (London: Macmillan, 1907).
For various views on this question see A. Quinton, Utilitarian Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1973), especially p. 43 for the adequacy of a general impression of pleasure and pain; and
J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against (Cambridge University Press, 1973), where Smart (pp. 44–5) commends spontaneity as opposed to the utilitarian calculation.
Hare, Moral Thinking. Its Levels, Method, and Point (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).
R. M. Hare, ‘Reply to J. M. Mackie’ in Utility and Rights, ed. R. G. Frey (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985) p. 111.
C. Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978) p. 85.
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© 1987 Leslie Melville Brown
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Brown, L. (1987). Morality, the Common Interest and the Common Good. In: Conservation and Practical Morality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08527-9_1
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