Types of ethical theory. Vol. 2 / by James Martineau.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Martineau, James, 1805-1900, author.

Series:

Clarendon Press series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics--History.

Ethics.

History.

Ethics--history.

Medical Subjects:

Ethics--history.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Other Title:

APA PsycBOOKS.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1885.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

"Ethical theory on all sides involves psychological discrimination. Entering on this process, we might follow either of two methods. We might first review the several attempts to evolve the moral from the unmoral phenomena of our nature; prepared either to rest in any one of them that may really fulfil its promise; or, in case they should all fail, to invite the conscience itself to declare its own psychology. Or, we might invert this order: having first defined the inner facts of conscience itself, with the best precision we can attain, we might then compare with the Idiopsychological Ethics, so obtained, the several attempts to find the phenomena under other categories, by advocates of this or that scheme of Heteropsychological Ethics. The latter arrangement has the decisive advantage of compelling us, at the outset, to visit the moral consciousness in its own home, to look it full in the face, and take distinct notes of the story it tells of itself. And not till we have thus gained a definite intimacy with its real contents, can we have any just measure of aberration by which to try the claims of professed equivalents. I propose, therefore, to hear, in the first instance, what the Moral Sentiment has to say of its own experience; and then, to let other faculties advance each its special pretensions to be the original patentee and source of supply. Thus will the Idiopsychological Ethics immediately follow the Unpsychological which we have left behind, and precede the Heteropsychological which remain for notice; with the effect of placing the positive construction of doctrine at the centre, midway between two wings of critical analysis. The theories inviting examination under the final head are fairly reducible to three. The scheme of Epicurus and Bentham, which elicits the moral nature from the sentient; that of Cudworth, Clarke, and Price, which makes it a dependency on the rational; that of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, which identifies it with the aesthetic, practically exhaust the varieties of doctrine; all others being mixtures or modifications of these leading types. For, besides the sensitive, the cognitive, and the admiring capacities of the mind, there exists no other into which the ethical can be resolved"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Washington, D.C. : American Psychological Association, 2011. Available via World Wide Web. Access limited by licensing agreement. s2011 dcunns

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