Abstract

When we do this--when we postpone judgment on the meaningfulness and validity of moral experience until this has had the opportunity to speak its piece--at what sort of conception of man's moral condition do we arrive? This is the sole question that the present study will seek to clarify. I shall not be concerned to scrutinize the credentials of the moral conscience: to judge, as among the phenomena of pleasure-seeking, expediency, preference, obligation, devotion to duty, responsibility, self-sacrifice, freedom and love, that some are legitimate reports of actual motives and sentiments while others are pretentions and rationalizations. To the contrary, I should maintain that this separation of the sheep from the goats is precisely what needs to be reconsidered. Nor shall I be concerned to suggest, except perhaps by indirection, even the general form of ethical theory that is required if these various aspects of morality are to be synthesized and explained. My interest lies exclusively with the phenomena--the facts apparent and the facts presumptive--that moral consciousness exhibits and that moral theory must take account of. Hence, my primary intention is to elicit the full range of the moral life as this reveals itself to a purposeful and theoretically uncommitted examination of the common moral conscience. Secondarily, I shall consider the implications of these moral facts as they bear on the nature of man and man's place in the universe, as well as the difficulties that these facts raise for theory.