“It is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking.”

What does it mean?

The usual reading is a moratorium: doing moral philosophy is not profitable now, and should be laid aside at least until there is an adequate philosophy of psychology, which she says we conspicuously lack. A competing reading hears a ban on ethical thought as such, or a whim against contemporaries. She gives three theses. This is the first. The second, already quoted here, says the moral ought ought to be jettisoned if that is psychologically possible, because it is a survival of a divine law conception we no longer share. The third says the differences among English moralists from Sidgwick on are of little importance. The sentence opens the 1958 article. Psychology, for her, means an account of action, intention, wanting, and flourishing, not a questionnaire. Without it, she thinks, moral philosophy circles terms it cannot cash.

Did G. E. M. Anscombe really say this?

The library’s label is Well attested. Anscombe's own English, the first of the three theses she states at the opening of the article. The second thesis, on jettisoning the moral sense of ought, is already in this library. This sentence is the priority claim, not a repeat of that one.

Where it comes from

'Modern Moral Philosophy', Philosophy, vol. 33 (1958)

Approximate date: 1958.

How to use it

An ethics committee in a hospital in Leeds that argues for months about what is morally obligatory, and cannot say what an intention or a want is in the case in front of it, is the unprofitability she names. The sentence does not say stop noticing harm. It says a theory of the moral ought, cut off from a philosophy of human action, will not repay the work. A training day that prints values on the wall and never asks what it is to act for a reason has skipped the subject she thought had to come first. Intention, her book, is the sort of work the moratorium was for.

A mindset reading

Before a grand moral verdict, ask whether you have an account of what an action, a motive, or a virtue is. The habit is slow, and it is her point. People who quote only the attack on ought, and not this sentence, miss why she thought the attack mattered. She thought we lacked the psychology in which a reformed ethics could be stated. The laying aside is for the sake of that work, not for the sake of silence.

Understand the philosophy

Modern Moral Philosophy was published in Philosophy in 1958 and is one source of the revival of virtue ethics, though she does not offer a completed replacement. The key first thesis is the need for a philosophy of psychology. Divine law, she argues, once gave ought its sense, and a culture that keeps the word without the law is using a term that has lost its root. The sentence already in this library is that second claim. This one is the instruction about what to do instead of producing more of the moral philosophy she thinks is stuck.

Related

• “The concepts of obligation and duty — moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say — and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of 'ought', ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible.”

  Well attested

• “My third thesis is that the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance.”

  Well attested

Related fallacy. Ad hominem. An ad hominem answers a claim by attacking the person who made it, instead of the reasons. A fact about the speaker is relevant only when it actually bears on the evidence, such as a shown conflict of interest or a record of false reports on this subject.

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