A HOUSE OF THEORY
23
Later they were likened to imperatives (a Kantian position). In
this second and more subtle phase Kant's single belief in Reason
was refashioned into a formula which purported to give the defining
characteristics of any moral judgment as such. A certain rationality,
universality, consistency, was thought of (with minor variations)
as defining the
form
of morality irrespective of its
content.
The
variegated area of moral belief or ideology (the special religious
and social concepts which guide choice, and which are in many
cases a legacy from the metaphysical philosophers) was usually
treated, together with the actual patterns of choice, as part of the
content,
the region of morality which is a matter of personal
decision and not a proper subject for analysis. Such beliefs were
not, of course, demonstrable by philosophical argument (it was the
mistake of the old philosophers to think that they were) and they
came to be seen as the idiosyncratic "color" of a moral attitude,
something nebulous and hazy, which for purposes of exposition and
example was best analyzed away into actual choices at the empirical
level. The moral agent is thus pictured, in a manner which remains
essentially Kantian, as using
his
reason to survey the ordinary factual
world, and making decisions therein which he will defend by re–
ference to facts and to simple principles offered as patently rational.
He is
not
pictured as using his reason to explore the intermediate
area of concepts. Moral
a~tion,
in short, is seen as the making of
sensible choices and the giving of sensible and simple reasons.
It
is not seen as the activity of theorizing, imagining, or seeking for
deeper insight.
1
Such a situation could hardly be promising for the department
of ethics which deals with political concepts; and indeed whereas
moral philosophy survives by the skin of its teeth, political philo–
sophy has almost perished. Whereas some sense (misleading perhaps
but just comprehensible) can be made of the idea of the "funda–
mental logical form of a moral judgment," very little sense can be
made of the idea of the "fundamental logical form of a political
judgment." The "form" of political thinking cannot be thus plausibly
1.
See especially R . M. Hare
The Language of Morals,
and also articles by
Hampshire, Urmson and others. It will be noted that this position is curiously
existentialist in flavor. Popular existentialism is Kantianism with Reason in
the veiled role of Kierkegaard's God. All positive beliefs stand
in
danger
of
mauvaise foi.
