This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...in the second place, makes it to depend wholly upon the taste of an individual, which presupposes therefore the existence, without any common factor, of manifold moral standards; that is, each individual can claim an exclusive right to regard his own particular moral taste as a criterion of what is virtuous. ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...in the second place, makes it to depend wholly upon the taste of an individual, which presupposes therefore the existence, without any common factor, of manifold moral standards; that is, each individual can claim an exclusive right to regard his own particular moral taste as a criterion of what is virtuous. Virtue, therefore, instead of having that universal application and absolute existence which it really has, is erroneously made to have but a particular and a relative significance. Had Hutcheson, says Balguy, properly investigated the nature of morality, and also the qualification of reason as compared with that of sense, for moral purposes, he would probably have become convinced of the fallacy of his fundamental conception and of the use-lessness of what he calls "moral Sense." We call upon Balguy to speak for himself against Hutcheson. Thus, he says, "Reason, or Intelligence, is a Faculty enabling us to perceive, either immediately or mediately, the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas, whether natural or moral. This last Clause, otherwise superfluous, is inser-1 The Foundation of Moral Goodness (First Part). 4h Edition, p. 62. See also pp. 72, 121--22. ted upon our Author's1 Account; who seems to exclude moral Ideas, and to consider them as Objects of another Faculty. And, indeed, if he had thought our Understandings capable of moral Perceptions, he would have had no Occasion for introducing his 'moral Sense', except in Relation to "To Kalon," concerning which I have already acknowledged myself undetermined. But it is visible, that he ascribes our Perceptions of the Rectitude of virtuous Action to this 'moral Sense', or rather makes that Rectitude entirely consist in their Correspondence with it. Whereas if there be a real rectitude in...
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