1. Introduction
1. Religion and Moral Decline
Like many another writer, Herbert Spencer wrote his own first book on morals, The Data of Ethics, under a sense of urgency.
2. The Mystery of Morals
Each of us has grown up in a world in which moral judgments already exist. These judgments are passed every day by everyone on the conduct of everyone else. Each of us not only finds himself approving or disapproving how other people act, but approving or disapproving certain actions, and even certain rules or principles of action, wholly apart from his feelings about those who perform or follow them.
3. The Moral Criterion
Speculative thought comes late in the history of mankind. Men act before they philosophize about their actions. They learned to talk, and developed language, ages before they developed any interest in grammar or linguistics. They worked and saved, planted crops, fashioned tools, built homes, owned, bartered, bought and sold, and developed money, long before they formulated any explicit theories of economics. They developed forms of government and law, and even judges and courts, before they formulated theories of politics or jurisprudence.
4. Pleasure as the End
1. Jeremy Bentham
If we may judge by the number of references to him and his doctrines in the literature of the subject, even though most of them are critical, angry, or derisive, Bentham has been the most discussed and influential moralist of modern times. It seems profitable, therefore, to begin with an analysis of the hedonistic doctrine as he states it.
5. Satisfaction and Happiness
1. The Role of Desire
I shall argue in this chapter, therefore, in defense of at least one form of the doctrine of “psychological eudaemonism.” Superficially similar doctrines, under the name “psychological hedonism” or “psychological egoism,” are actively opposed by many modern moral philosophers. We shall consider here the criticism offered by an older moral philosopher, Hastings Rashdall.
6. Social Cooperation
1. Each and All
The ultimate goal of the conduct of each of us, as an individual, is to maximize his own happiness and well-being. Therefore the effort of each of us, as a member of society, is to persuade and induce everybody else to act so as to maximize the long-run happiness and well-being of society as a whole and even, if necessary, forcibly to prevent anybody from acting to reduce or destroy the happiness or well-being of society as a whole.
7. Long Run vs. Short Run
1. The Voluptuary’s Fallacy
There is no irreconcilable conflict between the interests of the individual and those of society. If there were, society could not exist. Society is the great means through which individuals pursue and fulfill their ends. For society is but another name for the combination of individuals for cooperation. It is the means through which each of us furthers the purposes of others as an indirect means of furthering his own. And this cooperation is in the overwhelming main voluntary.
8. The Need for General Rules
1. The Contribution of Hume
Let us begin with Hume’s own exposition of the principle, and of the reasons for it, in the Treatise:
Hume then speaks of “the general, inflexible rules necessary to support general peace and order in society,” and continues:
9. Ethics and Law
1. Natural Law
10. Traffic Rules and Moral Rules
We may illustrate and reinforce the comparison in the last chapter between ethics and law by taking what may seem at first glance a trivial example—the necessity of framing, enforcing, and adhering to traffic rules.
