Abstract
Morality is practical; it shapes, guides and directs behavior. It is doubtful that any philosopher has ever disagreed with the foregoing claims. Disagreement arises, however, when we press for further specification of just how morality is practical and how it provides this influence. In this chapter I intend to examine and evaluate Hutcheson’s position as regards this question of how morality is practical.
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Notes
W. D. Falk, “ ‘Ought’ and Motivation,” in Readings in Ethical Theory, ed. by Wilfrid Sellars and John Hospers (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1952 ).
William K. Frankena, “Obligation and Motivation in Recent Moral Philosophy,” in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. by A. I. Melden (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958 ).
Charles L. Stevenson, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” in Readings in Ethical Theory, ed. by Wilfrid Sellers and John Hospers (New York: Appleton- Century-Crofts, Inc., 1952 ), p. 417.
Henry Sidgwick, Outline of the History of Ethics ( London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1949 ), p. 182.
Sir Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols.; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), I, 130.
Richard Price, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, ed. by D. Daiches Raphael ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948 ), p. 125.
Sir W. David Ross, Foundations of Ethics ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939 ), p. 205.
H. A. Prichard, Moral Obligation ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949 ), p. 11.
Arthur N. Prior, Logic and the Basis of Ethics ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949 ), p. 32.
John Dewey and James H. Tufts, Ethics (rev. ed.; New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1936 ), p. 270.
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals in Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, trans, and ed. by Lewis White Beck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949 ), p. 72.
Henry D. Aiken, ed., Hume’s Moral and Political Philosophy (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1948), p. xxxv.
Apart from the fact that they have a classic source in the theories of Hutcheson and Hume, some of these puzzles have their counterpart in other contexts. I am indebted, for example, to John Ladd’s penetrating discussion of the paradoxes which arise if one supposes that there is a desire to do one’s duty for its own sake. [John Ladd, “The Desire to Do One’s Duty for Its Own Sake” in Morality and the Language of Conduct, ed. by Hector-Neri Castañeda and George Nakhnikian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963 ).
John Ladd, The Structure of a Moral Code ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957 ), p. 79
Bernard Mayo, Ethics and the Moral Life ( London: Macmillan [and] Co., 1958 ), p. 160.
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© 1971 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Jensen, H. (1971). The Moral Sense and Motivation. In: Motivation and the Moral Sense in Francis Hutcheson’s Ethical Theory. Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des Idees International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 46. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2971-1_4
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