John Balguy on rightness and moral goodness

Abstract

The distinction between rightness and moral goodness has been of concern to moral philosophers for centuries. That there is such a distinction is implicit in Richard Price's account of the differences between abstract and practical virtue. Many have read Kant as holding that while rightness and obligation depend upon universalizability, moral goodness depends upon acting wholly from a sense of duty. Mill noted that it is essential to distinguish the tightness of an action, which depends upon its consequences, from the moral character of the agent, which depends to a great extent upon the motive from which he acts. And W. D. Ross argued that strictly speaking it is only an act, something done, that can be right, while it is an action, which includes the motive from which the agent acted, that can be morally good. In this essay I shall discuss the distinction between right acts and morally good acts as drawn by John Balguy (1686-1748). Balguy is a much neglected figure in the history of moral philosophy. A rationalist contemporary of Francis Hutcheson, he devoted his major work, The Foundation of Moral Goodness, 1 to a critical examination of the sentimentalist doctrines put forth by Hutcheson in the latter's Inquiry Concerning the Original oJ Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good. ~ His own position, in turn, very greatly influenced Richard Price, who until recently has also been neglected by contemporary scholars. The essay consists of four sections. In the first I examine Balguy's notions of rightness and moral fitness and sketch a preliminary account of his notion of moral goodness. In the second section I present and analyze three accounts of obligation suggested by various things Balguy has to say. In the third section I argue that a consistent account of obligation requires a combination of the second and third views discussed in the second section. Finally, in the fourth section I present Balguy's account of moral goodness and state in detail his way of drawing the distinction between right acts and morally good acts.