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The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the great scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition. Ross's book, originally published in 1930, is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The central concern of the book is with rightness and goodness, and their relation. Ross argues against notable rival ethical theories. The right act, he held, cannot be derived from the moral value of the motive from which it is done. Furthermore, rightness is not wholly determined by the value of the consequences of one's action, whether this value is some benefit for the agent, or some agent-neutral good. Rather, the right act is determined by a plurality of self-evident prima facie duties. Ross portrayed rightness and goodness as simple non-natural properties. Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross, provides a substantial new Introduction, in which he discusses the central themes of The Right and the Good and clears up some common misunderstandings. A new bibliography and index are also included, along with editorial notes which aim to clarify certain points and indicate where Ross later changed his mind on particular issues. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and this new edition provides the context for a proper understanding of Ross's great work.
Sir David Ross's _The Right and the Good_, first published in 1930, is a classic statement of modern deontological ethics. The question at issue here is: Which ethical term is primary -- "right" or "good"? And Ross's answer is that "right" is primary.His own statement of his thesis is as follows: "An act is not right because it, being one thing, produces good results different from itself; it is right because it is itself the production of a certain state of affairs. Such production is right in itself, apart from any consequence."Not that we must perform "right" acts even though the heavens fall. What Ross argues is that certain sorts of "right" act are _prima facie_ duties, with morally binding _claims_ on our attention that may nevertheless be overruled by other considerations/duties.In short, this volume is a clear and succinct statement of a twentieth-century development of Kantian deontological ethics, of interest to readers of (say) Thomas Nagel, Christine Korsgaard, and Alan Gewirth -- and also to ethical consequentialists and teleologists who want to understand what the opposition is all about. (Brand Blanshard, himself a teleologist, offers a nice critique of Ross's views in _Reason and Goodness_.)It's also, by the way, a nice cure for the misrepresentations of pseudophilosopher Ayn Rand, who tried her darnedest to give "duty" a bad name in order to make room for a more-or-less-Nietzschean ethical subjectivism she called (chuckle) "Objectivism."(I mention that because somebody is going through all my reviews and clicking "Not helpful" on any in which I say anything negative about Rand. Click away, you rational Objectivist, you!)
