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Is ‘Moral’ A Dirty Word?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Mary Midgley
Mary Midgley
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
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The word moral and its derivatives are showing signs of strain. Like a small carpet, designed to fit a room which has been enlarged, they are wrenched this way and that to cover the bare spaces. Perhaps in the end we shall be forced to abandon them altogether, as Nietzsche suggested. But this would be wasteful, and it seems a good idea to examine first the various spaces they can cover, and try to fix them to the one where they are needed most. I shall approach this problem by making very full quotations. It is not an isolated verbal puzzle which can be settled by showing that a particular usage exists; we need to know as well just what it is doing. There are real muddles here, within common-sense, about the relation of thought to life. There is no simple plain-man's usage prepared for us to follow. Anyone who uses moral in anything beyond the Daily Mirror sense is no longer a quite plain man anyway, and we had better follow careful writers than casual ones, real ones than imaginary ones. Philosophers, unlike the Erewhonians, do not have to study a hypothetical language. I am sure both that quotations are necessary and that mine are inadequate; I hope other people will supplement them. As for my choice, I can only say that I have tried very hard not to be tendentious. Certainly I have quoted authors who are capable of being silly and perverse, but as far as I can see the remarks I have taken from them are sober and normal. Anyone may disagree with them, but not, I hope, think them oddly worded. My point affects all the derivatives of moral and to some extent those of ethical too, so I have drawn my illustrations from all of them.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 47 , Issue 181 , July 1972 , pp. 206 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1972

References

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5 Shelley in his Defence of Poetry made such a defence, using the word ‘Moral’ in an entirely natural sense.

6 Boswell, , Life of Johnson, Vol. II p. 37.Google Scholar

7 Ibid, Vol. II p. 526.

8 Ibid, Vol. I p. 477.

9 Ibid, Vol. I p. 246.

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