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Articles

The anachronism of morality

Innes Crellin attacks the cold logic of English moral philosophy.

Fifty years ago the concentration camp at Auschwitz was revealed in all its horror. The questions which were raised then were, in all innocence, simple ones. “What sort of people could commit such outrages?” “What conditions produced men and women who were capable of such evil and immoral behaviour?” Such questions were, of course, based on assumptions about concepts such as ‘outrage’, ‘morality’, ‘evil’ and the like. While psychologists have been able to investigate, to some degree at least, the causes of the behaviour exhibited in the camps, the meanings which lie behind such concepts and which are properly the concern of philosophers have been shrouded and distorted by parochial philosophical interests. Ninian Smart (a leading philosopher of religion) may deplore the fact that “Western philosophy remains particularly tribal in its interests”, but the reality is even more stark than his comment suggests.

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