Because It's Right

Morality teaches us that, if we look on her only as good for something else, we never in that case have seen her at all. She says that she is an end to be desired for her own sake, and not as a means to something beyond. Degrade her, and she disappears.

– F. H. Bradley¹

I. Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?

Morality can be painfully demanding, so much so that we sometimes question the wisdom of complying with it. Yet, arguments that we have good reason to be moral are as old as Plato's Republic. Indeed, according to H. A. Prichard, making this argument work is the central preoccupation of moral philosophy. But Prichard also believes that, to the extent this is true, the whole subject of moral philosophy rests on a mistake.²

Prichard is neither the first nor the last person to dismiss an entire discipline as a mistake, but Prichard has an argument that poses a real challenge to moral philosophy, an argument that repays sympathetic analysis. Prichard's article emerges from a particular and peculiar philosophical tradition known as British intuitionism, yet the challenge it poses to moral philosophy is anything but parochial. On the contrary, the article has had and continues to have an influence independent of, even in spite of, the intuitionist tradition from which it emerges. For example, it anticipates and to some extent undoubtedly inspires the current anti-theory movement in ethics.³ Nevertheless, although dozens of articles cite Prichard's famous essay, often with approval, it has seldom met with sustained criticism.⁴ This paper reconstructs and criticizes Prichard's argument, then uses that critique to lay foundations for the larger project of constructing a plausible moral philosophy.

Prichard says we begin to question whether we really ought to do our alleged duty – to keep a promise, for example – when we recognize that doing our duty will not give us what we desire. We then question things we usually accept as duties. We ask if there is any proof that we truly have a duty to act in ways usually called moral.⁵ Prichard sees two ways of interpreting this request. We could be asking whether being moral is prudent. Alternatively, we could be asking whether being moral is good in some nonprudential sense – good for others, for example, or intrinsically good quite apart from its consequences.⁶ Prichard thinks both versions of the question are mistakes, and I will look at each in turn.

How can we determine what is moral in the first place? We cannot simply check what is moral. At least, we cannot do so in the same way we can check who is prime minister. Nevertheless, like the term "prime minister," the word "moral" is a word we inherit from an existing language. It comes to us laden with meaning. We can stipulate what we will be referring to when we say "brillig," for that is not a term of ordinary language, but there are only so many things we could correctly refer to as "eggplant." Like the word "eggplant," the word "moral" is more than a made-up sound. We cannot simply stipulate that it refers to, say, the property of maximizing utility, any more than we could stipulate that the word "eggplant" refers to rutabagas.

A term's extension consists of the set of things to which the term refers. The term "prime minister" may, under certain circumstances, have Jean Chrétien as its extension. Even so, we would not want to say Jean Chrétien is the meaning of the term prime minister. One implication is that we might not know who is prime minister, despite knowing exactly what the term means. Similarly, even if we settle what the word "moral" means, we can still be uncertain about what is in fact moral.

As it actually happens, though, we tend to be surer of the word's extension than of its meaning. We have a shared understanding that being moral involves being honest, kind, peaceful, and so on. (I will refer to this...