The Methods of Ethics - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter ix. self-regarding virtues. § 1. In chap. 3 we noticed the difficulty of defining Wisdom from the point of view adopted in the present treatise: because Wisdom is the faculty and habit of choosing the best means to the best ends, and in different methods of Ethics different ends are regarded as absolutely best. As (e.g.) in Egoistic Hedonism (cf. Book iii.) the end of Self-love is so regarded: whereas according to the present method Self-interest (or what may appear such) must always give way to Duty. Still, within the limits fixed by other duties, Common Sense considers that Self-love is naturally authoritative over other impulses: and that it is a duty to seek our own happiness, except in so far as we are prohibited by strict rules of morality, or can promote the welfare of others by sacrificing it. There are no doubt some Intuitive Moralists (such as Kant) who deny that this can properly be a duty: but their argument seems to proceed on the fallacious assumption that our own greatest1 happiness is what we always naturally seek and indeed cannot help seeking. There is then a Duty of seeking one's own happiness; commonly known as the Duty of Prudence. We may observe a certain divergence in the accounts commonly given of this notion, which is not, however, difficult to explain. The Duty of Prudence is, as we have said, the Duty of aiming at one's own greatest happiness. But, since it is commonly thought that most persons equally desire their own good, though their efforts are not equally well directed to its attainment; in conceiving Prudence as a Virtue or Excellence, attention is often fixed almost exclusively on its intellectual side. Thus regarded, Prudence may be said to be merely Wisdom made more definite by the...