Moralists, British.
- Introduction.
- Development of the Autonomy of Ethics.
- The Roman Catholic Theory (§ 1).
- The Protestant Position (§ 2).
- The State and the Law of Nature (§ 3).
- Influence of the Renaissance (§ 4).
- Importance of Reformed Protestant Ethics (§ 5).
- English Ethics under Puritanism (§ 6).
- The New Psychological Basin (§ 7).
- Problems Presented (§ 8).
- Specific Contributions.
- Hobbes and Mandeville (§ 1).
- Cambridge School, Cudworth, More, and Cumberland (§ 2).
- Clarke, Hartley, and Price (§ 3).
- John Locke (§ 4).
- Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson (§ 5).
- Hume and Adam Smith (§ 6).
- Results (§ 7).
I. Introduction
The British moralists of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accomplished
for ethics what the English deists of the same period
accomplished for the science of
religion. The deists
cut loose
from the ideal conception of religion
founded on psychology and metaphysics, and established
an analysis of religion founded on the
psychological study of its phenomena. The British
moralists cut loose from a dogmatically founded
system of ethics, controlling the State, the Church,
and private life, and founded an autonomous system
of modern scientific ethics. In neither case
were these movements isolated, they were a part
of the social phenomena of an age which, among
other things, tended to build up independent treatment
of the various sciences. Specifically the work
of the British moralists may be distinguished as
follows. First they gave a scientific form to the
practical material furnished them by Christian
ethics, to which they stood sometimes in a hostile
relation, sometimes enlarging its conceptions, sometimes
incorporating with it purely secular interests
and aims. Second, in place of deriving morality
from dogmatic authoritative teaching and from
the supernatural dualistic system of salvation and
grace, they introduced the method of psychological
analysis.
