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4 J. Value Inquiry 1 (1970)

handle is hein.journals/jrnlvi4 and id is 1 raw text is: 1 THE SOCIAL POSTULATE OF THEORETICAL ETHICS 1 ARNOLD BERLEANT I Although the function of philosophy is a disputed matter, its history ex- hibits, in certain respects, a surprising consistency. This lies, I think, in a critical independence of mind, in broad but penetrating vision, and, what may be most important, in the willingness to recognize and meet the basic questions of any inquiry. It is perhaps especially in the domain of ethical thought that we can observe these characteristics. From the time of Socrates down to our own, philosophers have appeared who have questioned the accepted morality, urging that it meet rational demands for internal con- sistency, and even more, that it respond to advances in knowledge by redefining its terms, reformulating its premises, and revising its judgments. In this tradition one thinks especially of men like Spinoza, Mill, Nietzsche, and Dewey, men who as moral critics have urged the dangerous path of question and change. Yet even those who, like Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, may be interpreted as attempting to preserve established values, even they practice the philosophic virtues of independence, vision, and probity. Whether serving the cause of tradition or reconstruction, then, these men retained a commitment to standards of candor and rationality. All tried to avoid the maelstrom of circularity by securing their views in the steadying grip of some outside force or stable condition, be it the hand of God, of reality, of the cosmic order, of the evolutionary process, of progress toward the Absolute, of human nature, or of experience. Yet as we have come to realize that these conditions are themselves not fixed but are caught up in the eddies of change, we are faced with a new and more difficult situation, we are burdened with a problem of a different sort. On what can morality be anchored when there is no firm bottom on which to secure it? With this new and difficult problem has come a new and different re- sponse, one that is shared by the poles of philosophical geography. Whether we writhe in the throes of existential anguish or deliberate with the cool precision of positivistic analysis, we appear to have signalled defeat on the field of ethical controversy. Whereas in the past the moral philosopher, whatever his position, held high the standard of rationality, that banner has, in our time, been turned inside out, and moral reason has itself come under systematic attack. Indeed, the powerful thrust of ethical emotivism has ' This is a revised version of a paper read at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, December 13, 1967.

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