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This thesis represents an attempt to dissolve the problem of the relationship between happiness and morality. Morality is often seen as a barrier to the achievement of happiness, and many theories have been created to show that this is not so. Unfortunately most of these theories assume that man acts only in his own interest and therefore attempt to treat morality as a means to happiness. This is held to be a misunderstanding of the nature of morality. The concept of self-interest is examined briefly here and found not to be so self-explanatory as is sometimes thought. For this and other reasons, these theories are rejected. An attempt is then made to generate a different way of viewing human action. To this end, the nature of emotional behaviour is discussed at length, both because it is related to the concept of happiness and because its investigation permits the generation of a methodologically useful concept - the concept of 'importance'. This concept is explained only by a description of its behaviour, for it is to some extent an artificial one, generated to serve a function, although it is held that it is implicit in ordinary language. The concept is used as a bridge between morality and happiness, both of which are discussed in terms of it. It is argued that reasons for human action do not often spring from internal 'forces' or 'states', but from a man's appreciation of what matters in the world. The conclusion of the thesis is difficult to summarise, but depends upon the fact that what matters, may often be what matters morally. Thus, it is held that, for the good man, happiness is inseparable from right action, and that when morality is seen as a barrier to happiness, it is possible that it is either being mis- understood or that the particular form of it is fossilised.

The question central to this research is how people maintain equilibrium between their moral ideals and recollected discrepant behaviour. This common phenomenon is considered from the perspective of moral psychology. It is carried out in the context of a faith community, and at points draws on concepts and findings from the field of psychology of religion. It forms part of a longer standing practical theology project on the part of the author, and takes place in the context of wider research into moral dissonance. This is real world research. The principal data come from the transcriptions of semi-structured interviews with 56 people of good standing in Anglican churches in South West England. The central research question was approached obliquely, in the context of the articulation of each participant's own moral ideals. The data-set was analysed using Thematic Analysis. The work is informed by a preparatory exercise in self reflection undertaken through a seminar with colleagues. It draws upon the author's earlier research with chaotic heroin addicts in Pakistan. Recently moral psychology has explored actual choices as well as hypothetical dilemmas, and common behaviour such as lying and cheating as well as serious events such as violent crime. The thesis adds to knowledge by focusing on the issue of recollection of behaviour of light moral gravity, and the construction of a framework for moral psychology which has received some preliminary road testing by application to the analysis of moral choices as remembered by real people. This is particularly relevant to faith communities, where the morality of behaviour is an aspect of shared identity. The study suggests three ways in which people maintain moral equilibrium, which are labelled, Change & Commitment, Engagement & Environment, and Self-Identity & Emotional Disposition, linked to the moral perspectives of Deontology, Utilitarianism, and Character-Ethics, and highlighting internal divisions within the person. These divisions were, respectively, past/present/future, internality/externality, and actual/ideal.

No description available.

Justificatory neutrality, as held by Nagel, holds that the state is only legitimate if it can be justified on the basis of the value-beliefs that we all share. I argue that this theory has faults that are avoided by Rawls's alternative of stability for the right reasons as achieved by a reasonable overlapping consensus on the political norms for regulating the basic structure of society. However, neither approach explains why we should be concerned with people's value-beliefs, a gap which I begin to fill. I argue that justificatory neutrality is inadequate in two ways. Firstly, neutrality cannot serve as a guiding ideal, in that we must appeal to other values in order to determine when and how we should be neutral. Secondly, in excluding all controversial ideals, it has no guarantee that a) those values shared will be adequate for settling political questions, and/or b) that some of those values excluded aren't significant to the people who believe in them in ways that prevent their accepting justifications that appeal solely to the shared values. I argue that Rawls's theory avoids these problems but that his idea of public reason is both unnecessary and in tension with the aspiration to achieve an actual reasonable overlapping consensus. Drawing on Raz I argue that neither Nagel nor Rawls offer adequate explanations of why we should be concerned with justifiability to people on the basis of their value-beliefs. I provide such an explanation in terms of the value of being able to endorse the course of our own lives. This value grounds reasons to be responsive to people's (possibly mistaken) value-beliefs in political justifications---though, since this is not the only value to be considered, sometimes other reasons may settle the matter.

No description available.

No description available.

Any enquiry into Ethics must presuppose at least three very important and possibly awkward assumptions, awkward from the point of view of the methodological and even metaphysical problems raised. It must presuppose that it enquires into something, that what it enquires into has a certain definite and circumscribed meaning of its own and that this meaning though not necessarily definable in exact terms is describable and communicable. The first assumption expanded postulates that in the course of our general experience we come upon certain particulars which may be termed moral experience. That is, some judgments (which at least at first blush and prior to any further analysis which might reduce them to other categories) appear to be specifically moral are in fact and habitually pronounced by men. The prototype of these judgments are propositions of the type: "this is good", "this is right", "this is bad", "this is wrong". The second assumption demands that these propositions are not meaningless, that in pronouncing "this is right", "this is good" men do refer to and try to imply something. The exact nature of this something and its degree of reality and objectivity are not defined by the assumption. The third assumption demands that such judgments besides referring to something be communicable. That is, that one man may understand in the most general way what another man wishes to signify when pronouncing "this is good", "this is right", whether he agree to it or not, whether he take this judgment to imply the same principles, and whatever his justification of or opposition to such judgments may be. In spite of these qualifications it might appear that too much has been assumed to begin with, since, when more fully expounded, the three presuppositions may be seen to comprise the whole of Ethics: determine its subject matter, define its laws and provide the grounds of its validity. On the other hand it seems to me that no Ethical enquiry would be possible at all unless these three assumptions were made. For if there were nothing for us to examine, we would not come up against moral judgments at all; if they defined nothing, we should not know that they were moral judgments; and if their reference were not understood at least in a general way and in principle by other men, how could we talk about them at all, let alone enquire into their nature? So that these three suppositions appear to form a sort of irreducible minimum of hypothesis which any enquiry into ethics has to assume in order to be possible at all. Again, though these three suppositions are made and used without proof, some subsequent discussion on their meaning and implication may possibly be of help in clarifying their nature, the extent of their import and the manner of their validity. It may also furnish us with some reasons and grounds for their vindication in retrospect. I shall try not to make use of any other unproved assumption beyond these three and what may be directly inferred from them as a basis for the argument in this paper. Should any other fundamental and additional assumption have been employed, it was used unconsciously and the validity of the argument will be affected accordingly.

Moral judgments, unlike judgments that are purely descriptive accounts of facts, are characterised by a certain approach to the objects concerned. This approach is from a value point of view, and to look at facts from this point of view is ultimately to assess them in the light of certain standards which embody conceptions of what are intrinsically valuable in human character, conduct and relations. The concepts that are used in moral discourse have to be understood in relation to this point of view. The business of moral philosophy is then to analyse the meaning of such concepts when they are used consistently within this point of view. To say this is to imply that moral discourse ought to be considered objective in some sense - in the sense that is implied in saying that moral concepts are related to a characteristic point of view which any rational being may find to be worthy of acceptance. It is in this sense that moral concepts may be considered to be concerned with facts as opposed to what are not facts either in the sense that they are not acceptable or in the sense that they are pure figments of the imagination. To say this however is not to say that particular moral judgments can be proved to be true or false in the same way in which judgments that are technically scientific can be. For questionable moral judgments are passed on issues that are complex, and a complex situation confers on the agent the responsibility of assessing its value-relevance - anactivity which cannot be bound by rules. But moral judgments, some at any rate, can be considered to be more or less tenable in the light of standards that one may reasonably accept as relevant under the circumstances.

Words like 'rules', 'principles' and 'laws' show in ordinary usage a considerable degree of fluidity which makes it impossible to draw more than certain broad distinctions between them, and moral philosophers have generally shown a tendency to use these words in rather blanket ways which ignore even these broad distinctions. It is necessary therefore to explain at the outset the sense in which 'principles' is used in this enquiry. As used here, this term means certain requirements of a general nature belonging to a given subject-matter which conflict with one another in a systematic way and without indicating a defect in their formulation. This definition is not arbitrarily chosen but is claimed to apply to the main kind of general utterance in the field of morals. At a further stage a moral principle' is defined stipulatively as a principle which contains a distinctive moral concept in its statement as constitutive of its scope, and it is maintained that all moral principles in this sense adduce considerations. The chief antithesis of my position in this enquiry is constituted by what I call formalism, namely the view that moral principles are principles of a universal nature which are treated as the overriding principles of our lives. In rejecting this view I do not opt for what might easily be taken to be the natural alternative to it, i.e. the view that moral principles are the principles of human excellence. The alternative adopted by me is based on the notion of competing fields. By a field I mean a set of standards which apply to our conduct irrespective of our own choices; thus morality, self-interest and religion are fields in my sense. These fields compete with each other both by having border-disputes as well as by threatening one another with complete subjugation. This enquiry is thus in part a plea that a major function of ethics is the study of the various moral concepts and of concepts belonging to other fields which are of importance in understanding the relation between morality and its rivals.