The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Introduction
• British Moralists
• Shaftesbury an Inquiry Concerning Uirtue Or Merit
• Book I. Part II.
• Book I. Part III.
• Book II. Part I.
• Part II.
• Part III.
• Hutcheson an Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue Or Moral Good
• Introduction
• Sect. I.: Of the Moral Sense By Which We Perceive Virtue and Vice , and Approve Or Disapprove Them In Others .
• Sect. II.: Concerning the Immediate Motive to Virtuous Actions.
• Sect. III.: The Sense of Virtue , and the Various Opinions About It, Reducible to One General Foundation. the Manner of Computing the Morality of Actions .
• Sect. IV.: All Mankind Agree In This General Foundation of Their Approbation of Moral Actions. the Grounds of the Different Opinions About Morals.
• Butler
• Sermons
• Preface.
• Sermon I.: Upon the Social Nature of Man.
• Sermon Ii, III: Upon the Natural Supremacy of Conscience .
• Sermon III.
• Sermons Xi, XII.: Upon the Love of Our Neighbour .
• Sermon XII.
• Dissertation II.
• Adam Smith the Theory of Moral Sentiments
• Part I.: Of the Propriety of Action
• Part II.: Of Merit and Demerit Or, of the Objects of Reward and Punishment.
• Part III.: Of the Foundation of Our Judgments Concerning Our Own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty.
• Part IV.: Of the Effect of Utility Upon the Sentiment of Approbation.
• Part VII.: Of Systems of Moral Philosophy.
• Bentham
• An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislatian
• Appendix
• Hutcheson: On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections
• Illustrations Upon the Moral Sense
• A System of Moral Philosohy
• Book I.
• Book II.

Book II.

* * * * * * * *

480 II. The righteousness or goodness of actions is not indeed the same notion with their tendency to universal happiness, or flowing from the desire of it. This latter is the highest species of the former. Our moral sense has also other immediate objects of approbation, many narrower affections, which we must immediately approve without thinking of their tendency to the interest of a system.

481 VI. To each right there corresponds an obligation, perfect or imperfect, as the right is. The term obligation is both complex and ambiguous. We primarily say one is obliged to an action 'when he must find from the constitution of human nature that he and every attentive observer must disapprove the omission of it as morally evil.' The word is sometimes taken for 'a strong motive of interest constituted by the will of some potent superior to engage us to act as he requires.' In the former meaning, obligation is founded on our moral faculty; in the latter, it seems to abstract from it. But in describing the superior who can constitute obligation, we not only include sufficient force or power, but also a just right to govern; and this justice or right will lead us again to our moral faculty. Through this ambiguity1 ingenious men have contradicted each other with keenness; some asserting an obligation antecedent to all views of interest, or laws; others deriving the original source of all obligation from the law or will of an omnipotent Being.

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[1] See Leibmtz's censure on Puffendorf, and Barbeyaque's defence of him.