Cheney - Broad’s Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy.

Routledge Revivals

Broads Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy

The ideas of C. D. Broad have affected the work of moral philosophers throughout the twentieth century to the present day. First published in 1971, this edited volume contains Broads best essays on the philosophical problems of Ethics, mostly written and published between 1914 and 1964. Among the essays are Broads important critiques of G. E. Moores ethical theory, his lecture entitled Determinism, Indeterminism and Libertarianism, and other pieces discussing topics as broad as Conscience, Egoism and Free Will. This reissue serves as an important companion to Broads other works, a number of which have also been reissued within the Routledge Library Editions series, and will be invaluable to students interested in Broads theories and twentieth-century philosophical thought.

Broads Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy

Edited by

David Cheney

First published in 1971

by George Allen & Unwin

This edition first published in 2013 by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

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1971 David Cheney

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 72181480

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-71466-2 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-88249-9 (ebk)

BROADS CRITICAL ESSAYS IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY

BY

C. D. BROAD

Trinity College Cambridge

EDITED BY DAVID R. CHENEY

LONDON . GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD

NEW YORK . HUMANITIES PRESS INC.

First published in 1971

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights are reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers.

George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1971

BRITISH ISBN 0 04 190006 5

U.S.A. SBN 391-000178-7

Printed in Great Britain

in 12 point Fournier type

by Unwin Brothers Limited

London & Woking

Certainly, there is no need to preface this collection with an estimation of the importance of Professor Broads philosophical workbesides, it would be presumptuous of me to undertake such. One encounters its influence time and again, and further finds that many contemporary philosophers share an assessment similar to that of G. E. Moore, viz. Of all living philosophers, it is Broads work, next to Russells and Wittgensteins, that I have thought it worthwhile to study most carefully. Though Professor Broad has published numerous books on diverse topics, the greater part of his philosophical papers have made their initial and sometimes sole appearance in journals. To present ones work piece by piece in periodicals has clearly become the fashion of our time, especially for men such as Broad, who declare that they have no philosophical system. However, when a philosophers sustained efforts, proffered in this manner, attain a certain measure of respect among his peers, a consequence requiring remedy manifests itself, viz. the difficulty of having access to and gaining a full view of the whole of a philosophers work on a given topic. The remedy is, of course, to publish an edition of collected essays. And recently, the task of bringing Professor Broads logical papers together was initiated by Professor Hintikka, who edited the volume containing Broads essays on Induction, Probability, and Causation (Synthese Library, 1968). The present collection of papers represents a further endeavour along this line, presenting for the first time in one volume Professor Broads critical essays on certain issues in philosophical ethics.

As a glance at the contents of this book will show, Professor Broad has expended a considerable proportion of his philosophical efforts in considering the problems of moral philosophy. The products of this side of his philosophical career have a twofold significance: first, for the conspicuous quality of the work itself, and secondly, for the particular influence which it has had. Concerning the latter, Professor Frankena noted in his contribution to The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, Few if any worthwhile contributions to ethical theory have appeared since 1930 which have not been significantly affected by Broads writings. His ethical papers are of two general types, either historical, interpretive essays or critical analyses of moral phenomena. Characterization of the latter set of papers as critical analyses rests on the common distinction between speculative and critical philosophy which Professor Broad explicated in his article Philosophy (Inquiry, 1958). In that account he comments that the basic character of philosophy in any of its manifestations is synopsis, i.e. the collation of diverse ingredients of human experience with the intent to discern interrelationships among them. This synoptical enterprise takes either of two forms: speculative or critical. The latter involves one or more of the following tasks, Analysis of Propositions and Concepts, Detection and Formulation of Presuppositions, and Critical Appraisal of Presuppositions. The essays comprising this collection are all of the critical sort, in this sense, and conjointly they represent Professor Broads efforts to analyse and appraise the propositions, concepts, and presuppositions of moral experience. Among these papers, some display a direct endeavour to carry out this project, while the remainder further it through criticism of the attempts of other philosophers to resolve similar concerns with ethics.

This collection presents the whole of Broads expressed thought on these matters, though two of his critical papers are not included as they tend to duplicate the content of other, included essays. They are: Certain Features of Moores Ethical Doctrines (The Philosophy of G. E. Moore), the content of which is discussed and expanded in Essays V and XV; and Imperatives, Categorical and Hypothetical (The Philosopher, 1950), which is an earlier version of Essay XVI. In this regard, it should be noted that the collection contains four papers (IV, VI, VII, and XI) which, subsequent to their original publication, were reprinted along with several other papers on diverse topics in a volume entitled Ethics and the History of Philosophy (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), which is now out-of-print. Further, two additional matters should be noted: first, Essay XII, Self and Others, which was Professor Broads Herbert Spencer Lecture delivered at Oxford in 1953, is published here for the first time; and second, Essay XIV is an excerpt from Professor Broads reply to his critics remarks which appeared in