Modern moral philosophy: should the concepts of moral obligation and the 'moral ought' be jettisoned because they survive from a divine law theory of ethics?

Elizabeth Anscombe, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Three theses: (i) it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we conspicuously lack a working account of action, intention, pleasure, wanting; (ii) the concepts of moral obligation, moral duty, moral right and wrong, and the moral ought, ought to be jettisoned, because they are survivals from a divine law conception of ethics that no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it; (iii) the differences between the well-known English moral philosophers from Sidgwick onwards are of little importance, since they are all consequentialists in the sense of denying any moral distinction between intended and foreseen consequences.¹²³

The legalistic conception — that "ought," "must," "duty" have a special "moral" sense binding more strongly than any promulgated law — makes sense only against a background of divine legislation. Without the legislator, the special sense collapses; what remains is ethics as the study of human flourishing in the Aristotelian sense. Until the philosophy of psychology is sorted out, ethical concepts (action, voluntary, intentional, the desirable) cannot be securely deployed.

Sources

1. Is not this the general, as well as the university, opinion? I hope that I have said enough to show that the famous imputation of 'corrupting the youth' is undeserved. This philosophy is conceived perfectly in the spirit of the time and might be called the philosophy of the flattery of that spirit. Modern Moral Philosophy I will begin by stating three theses which I present in this paper.

   Human Life, Action and Ethics, p. 158

2. It would be most reasonable to drop it. It has no reasonable sense outside a law conception of ethics; they are not going to maintain such a conception; and you can do ethics without it, as is shown by the As it is absurdly called. Since major premise = premise containing the term which is predicate in the conclusion, it is a solecism to speak of it in the connection with practical reasoning. example of Aristotle.

   Human Life, Action and Ethics, [3]–[4]

3. But actually this notion of obligation is a notion which only operates in the context of law. And I should be inclined to congratulate the present-day moral philosophers on depriving "morally ought" of its now delusive appearance of content, if only they did not manifest a detestable desire to retain the atmosphere of the term.

   Part One: Ethics, p. 52

Where the argument is made

• 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (Philosophy 1958, in Ethics Religion and Politics §4 and Human Life Action and Ethics §13)
• 'Does Oxford Moral Philosophy Corrupt Youth?' (1957, in Human Life Action and Ethics §12)
• 'On Brute Facts' (Analysis 1958, in Ethics Religion and Politics §3)
• 'Rules, Rights and Promises' (1978, in Ethics Religion and Politics §10)
• 'On the Source of the Authority of the State' (1978, in Ethics Religion and Politics §14)

How the argument was received

MMP launched the late-twentieth-century virtue ethics revival. Foot's Virtues and Vices (1978) and Natural Goodness (2001) are the most substantial constructive development; MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981) the polemical-historical narrative; McDowell's writings and Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics extend the project. Diamond's "Consequentialism in Modern Moral Philosophy" defends the classification I introduced. The successors carried the project forward but smoothed many of the sharper edges — none was as polemical against the modern moral philosophy enterprise, and most reabsorbed back into it some version of the moral-vocabulary I argued should be jettisoned.