Abstract

IN his Reason and Goodness Blanshard has posed the following question for moral philosophers: ‘When we decide that a certain action is right or our duty, what is it that does the deciding? Our reason? Our feeling? or both’. On a superficial or slight acquaintance with either Hume or the emotivists, we are likely to respond: ‘Why, feeling only! Emotion is central in morality. Reason is but a slave or a servant of the passions; the final reasons we can give for any moral claim are “exciting reasons”—our dispositions to be for or against something.’