The Possibility of a Universal Normative Ethic

Abstract

TN THE July, 1953, issue of Ethics Asher Moore states and defends the thesis that universal normative ethic is an impossibility because the concept itself involves contradiction in terms.' The extreme difficulty and even the practical impossibility of the task have often been acknowledged, but the thesis of its priori impossibility throws different light upon the matter. If it is correct, this article should constitute turning point in the history of ethical thought. This applies to religious thought as well as to secular thought, for Moore properly points out that the question is not one of naturalistic ethic only but of absolutely any ethic whatsoever. Surely his argument, therefore, is deserving of the most critical analytical consideration. Moore states that universal normative principle is contradiction in terms because it involves two mutually contradictory ideas. These are: I. The normative character of normative principle is dependent on the facts of human psychology.2 II. The normative character of normative principle is independent of the facts of human psychology.3 If both these statements are accepted without qualification, then the effort to achieve such an ethic must unquestionably be abandoned. In regard to the first of these statements there seems to be little possibility of dispute. Unless something is felt to be good or obligatory by someone or something (and the present interest is in people), whatever quality of goodness it may have in itself is necessarily irrelevant to an ethic which seeks norms for human conduct. But the truth of the second statement is not so manifest. It rests first upon the assumption that to be normative in the sense required, principle must be universally normative, and that this universality must be not only factual but also necessary. This in itself seems to Moore to render the search virtually useless, but he does not regard this as conclusive proof of absolute impossibility. The impossibility follows from his further analysis of what those philosophers who desire normative principle really want. Such philosophy seeks, he argues, a moral principle which will not be based on any human motivation at all, but which will be normative over all human motivations. He wants principle which will prescribe what sort of motivations men ought to have-a principle which would make it at least possible for us to say that even the deepest and strongest human motivations are evil and ought not to exist.4 If what is here described is acknowledged as at least very close to correct, the weakest point in Moore's argument remains that at which he translates these requirements into the flat assertion that normative principle must be independent of the facts of human psychology and independent in sense necessarily contradictory to the requirement of dependence on these facts. Perhaps principle may be dependent in some sense and independent in some other sense and thereby satisfy the legitimate content of both demands. Following, then, not Moore's final statements, but the arguments leading to them and supplementing and modifying slightly where this seems proper, the following analysis of what is legitimately involved in Moore's statement is proposed. 1. A normative principle must be felt to