Moral Skepticism and the Way of Escape

Abstract

S KEPTICISM is the characteristic mark of the thinking of the present age on moral questions. Whatever pretensions are made to the validity of the criticism of human conduct, it still remains that these are pretensions. In practice we find fault with one another, accuse our fellows of living on a low level of existence, and berate the social standards of the day. Yet when we undertake deliberately and seriously to point out the objective principles of conduct which we are presupposing in our judgments, and to demonstrate why they are objective and applicable to the person criticized, we begin to hedge and to compromise, making fatal concession to the skeptic and admitting that after all it is a matter of custom, of personal conviction, or of some other merely individual standard. On the part of the common man there is no more expressive representation of this skepticism than the challenge so often heard in the face of criticism: "That's what you think." If we turn to literary authority, we find the word of Shakespeare: "There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Or, if we seek more orthodox authority, we may quote even Paul's liberal advice to the Corinthians: "If one of them that believe not biddeth you to a feast, and ye are disposed to go; whatever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience' sake" (I Cor. IO: 27). In the detailed study of the history of morals we have Westermarck's well-known account. And nearer home, from the collaboration of a group of philosophers a few years ago, this statement: To the arguments of the complete moral skeptic, it must be admitted, there can be made no conclusive and irrefutable reply. But neither can