The group of distinguished moralists who flourished in Great Britain
during the eighteenth century may be said to represent the ethical
phase of the empirical movement of that age. In
determining moral values, mediaeval ethics had subordinated worldly
interests to the interests of the future life. Hobbes, by his doctrine
of state absolutism, had subjugated the moral to the political aspect
of human conduct. Locke, however, admitted self-interest and the good
of the many as moral determinants, and thus enabled his contemporaries
and successors to develop a system of morality which should be
independent of religion as well as of state authority, and
should rest ultimately on the ego.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Ralph Cudworth
(1617-1688), in his Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable
Morality, expounded a system of morals which, although rational
rather than empirical, prepared the way for the advocates of
independent morality who appeared in the following century. He taught
that moral principles and ethical ideals come neither from the will of
God, nor from political authority, nor from experience, but from the
ideas which necessarily exist in the mind of God and are universally
and immutably present in the human mind. He agreed with the schoolmen
in maintaining the universality and immutability of the natural law,
but differed from them in teaching that it is absolutely a
priori.
Shaftesbury (1671-1713). Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury, the
grandson of Locke's patron, and the author of Characteristicks of
Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times, points out the consequences that
follow from Locke's rejection of innate principles of morality, but
instead of basing the morality of actions on innate principles he bases
it on innate sentiment. For an innate logic of conduct he substitutes
an innate aesthetic. His concept of the universe as a whole is
aesthetic rather than logical: he conceives the
all-pervading law of creation to be unity in variety. The parts of the
bodily organism are governed and held together by the soul, and thus
arises the unity in diversity which is the ego. But the ego is not
complete in itself, for individuals are joined together into species
and genera by unities higher than the individual soul, and above all
species and all genera is the mind of the Deity, which, by uniting the
diversities of genera and species makes the world a cosmos, a beautiful
thing.
The individual is, therefore, swayed in one direction by the impulse of
self-preservation, and in another direction by the impulse to preserve
the higher unity (species) to which it belongs; that individual is good
in which the latter impulse is strong and the former not too
strong. [2]
[2] Cf.Characteristicks (ed. 1727), II, 14ff.
Applying these principles to man, Shaftesbury defines the essence of
morality as consisting in the proper balancing of the social and
selfish impulses. There is no morality in "sensible creatures,"
because, although they may balance the impulse for the preservation of
self with the interests of the species, they are incapable of
reflecting on the nature of their impulses, or of perceiving the
harmony which results when the social and the selfish impulses are
properly balanced. Man, on the contrary, is endowed with the power of
reflection and of perceiving and approving the harmony which results
from the proper balancing of his propensities. The faculty of moral
distinction is not, therefore, a rational faculty but an aesthetic
sense, -- the power of perceiving harmony and beauty.
As the harmony of impulses constitutes virtue, so also it
constitutes happiness. Virtue is its own reward. Religion is an
aid to virtue inasmuch as it teaches that the world is ruled by an
all-loving and all-protecting God, thus confirming the aesthetic
concept of the universe as a harmony. Positive religion, however, is a
hindrance to virtue in so far as it promises heavenly rewards, thus
making men mercenary and selfish. [3]
[3] Cf.op. cit., II, 58.
Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) revealed, by his advocacy of a
startling paradox, the weakness of Shaftesbury's system of morals, the
danger namely of attaching to noble impulses so much importance as to
neglect the cultivation of useful though commonplace virtues. In The
Fable of the Bees he advocates the novel
doctrine that private vices are public benefits. He attempts to
show that just as in the hive contentment and honesty cannot go hand in
hand with splendor and prosperity, so in the community of social life
it is the selfish impulses -- the desire of food and drink, ambition,
envy, and impatience (which Shaftesbury would have us balance against
the social instincts) -- that lead to labor, civilization, and the
social life. We must choose between moral progress and
material progress, for we cannot have both. [4]
[4] Cf. Höffding, op. cit., I, 400ff.
In spite of the opposition which it provoked at the time, Shaftesbury's
doctrine of moral aestheticism continued to win adherents, and the
remaining moral systems of the period, those of Hutcheson,
Butler, and Adam Smith, are simply the logical development
of Shaftesbury's teachings.
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was born in Ireland and, after
teaching in a private academy in Dublin, was appointed professor of
moral philosophy at Glasgow. He wrote an Inquiry into the Original
of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue and a System of Moral
Philosophy.
By endeavoring to found a system of ethics on the observation of human
nature as it actually is, Hutcheson imparted to the British philosophy
of morals a distinctively empirical spirit. He taught that the faculty
of moral discrimination and moral approval is not rational, nor yet
aesthetic, in the sense of perceiving and approving merely the aspect of
harmony or beauty, but a distinct power of the soul called moral sense.
He maintained that there is in human nature, besides the egoistic
instincts, a natural and instinctive desire to help and please others,
and an equally instinctive feeling of approval of actions which aim at
helping and pleasing others. The moral sense, which determines what
actions are calculated to please and what actions are calculated to
displease others, is distinct from reason; for reason merely aids us to
find the means to given ends. The faculty of moral discrimination is
not acquired by experience, having been originally planted in the soul by the Creator
to enable the rational creature to know what actions promote the
welfare of others and also his own welfare in conformity with the
welfare of others.
Joseph Butler (1692 -- 1752), the author of the Analogy,
developed in his Sermons on Human Nature a system of morals
which is practically a theological application of Shaftesbury's ethical
theory. Butler agrees with Shaftesbury and Hutcheson in maintaining the
immediateness of the criterion of morality, which, however, he
identifies, not with a sense of harmony, nor with a sense of the
pleasure and usefulness which others experience from our actions, but
with conscience. This guide of conduct is not a deduction from
practical reason, as the schoolmen taught, but a faculty which directly
and immediately approves or disapproves, and which must be obeyed
without regard to the effect of our action on ourselves or others. It
is not a distinctively religious sentiment; still, religion is its
greatest aid, for in the "cool hour," when fervor and enthusiasm have
deserted him, man finds in the thought of a future life a source of
moral inspiration.
Adam Smith (1723-1790), author of The Wealth of Nations,
-- a work justly regarded as the first modern treatise on political
economy, -- is the last, and if we except Hume the most important,
representative of the empirical school of morals in the eighteenth
century. His chief merit lies in the completeness and thoroughness of
his psychological analysis of the criterion of morality. In his
Theory of Moral Sentiments he develops a system of morals based
on the principles that all moral judgment depends on participation in
the feelings of the agent, and that an action is good if the spectator
can sympathize with the end or effect of the action. He traces sympathy
from its first manifestation (the power of imitating to a certain
degree and participating to a certain extent in the feelings of others)
to its culmination in moral appreciation and moral imperative.
Historical Position. The change brought about in the science of
ethics by the British moralists of the eighteenth century was
practically a revolution in the theory of morals. Shaftesbury,
Hutcheson, and Smith, by reducing the subjective criterion of morality
to feeling or sympathy, subverted the established idea of conscience as
a dianoetic, or inferential, subjective norm, and substituted for it
something which may be called an aesthetic or intuitional criterion.
When, in studying the philosophy of the nineteenth century, we shall
take up the course of the development of British systems of morals, we
shall find the influence of French materialism in the hedonism of
Bentham, and the influence of Kant in the importance which the
successors of Bentham attach to the problem of the origin of moral
obligation. The moralists of the eighteenth century were, apart from
"Hutcheson's unconscious lapse into hedonism," altruistic, at least in
tendency, and instead of concerning themselves with the analysis of the
sense of obligation, devoted their attention exclusively to the
analysis of the faculty of moral discrimination and moral approval.
Consult Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (London, 1882);
Leslie Stephen, op. cit.; Albee, History of English
Utilitarianism (London and New York, 1902).