Abstract

Mr Kerner believes that there has been a revolution in ethical theory during the present century and here discusses the views of some of the leading figures in the movement—Moore, Stevenson, Toulmin and Hare. Kerner is not very explicit on the precise nature of the revolution and, looking at the work of the members of this quartet, it is difficult to accept that any extraordinary change has occurred. Moore and Toulmin are Utilitarians, Stevenson a Subjectivist, Hare a Kantian. Each of these has presented his views in a highly original and personal manner, but to have provided new bottles for old wine is hardly sufficient reason for being called revolutionaries. Moore has probably the best claim to originality—he could, with some justice, be said to have given a new thrust to moral philosophy and even to philosophy as a whole—but the defender of common sense would hardly recognize himself in the guise of a revolutionary. Perhaps it is time that those who speak of the revolution in philosophy and the revolution in ethics began to take seriously the quotation from Nestroy which Wittgenstein chose as the motto of his Philosophical Investigations: ‘It is in the nature of every advance that it appears much greater than it actually is’.