PLATO'S METAPHYSICAL GROUNDING OF MORALITY

There is a traditional and popular ‘objective’ understanding of ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ which has immense emotional appeal. It is acceptable both to the ‘man in the street’ when he says something like ‘That's just wrong’ or ‘Hitler was an evil man’ and to the philosopher in his unguarded moments when he indulges in similar sentiments, not glossing them with anything like ‘We all agree that we do not like what Hitler did, and therefore we call him evil’, or ‘Since what Hitler did contributes to the maximization of harms rather than of benefits in the world, we count him as evil’, or ‘What was “wrong” with Hitler's genocidal schemes was that they were irrational and inconsistent.’ But this ordinary understanding of ‘common morality’ is changed, wittingly or unwittingly, in philosophical talk; for reasons of ‘public relations’, or a residual sense of shame which the example of Hitler makes apparent, many philosophers who would wish to gloss their comments on Hitlerian behaviour in the ways just indicated decline to state that ‘Morality should be superseded’, preferring to use the word ‘morality’ (or ‘ethics’) as if it referred to something esoteric.

From time to time there are protests against this sleight of hand: Finnis entitled a chapter in an introductory book on moral philosophy, ‘Utilitarianism, Consequentialism, Proportionalism … or Ethics?’.