WHAT IS MORALITY?
A Study in Moral Problems. By B. M. Laing. George Allen and Unwin. London. 10/6.
THE impression made by this book is that Professor Laing must have had originally a very definitely academic outlook upon human problems, but that contact with real life—in the war and in Yorkshire industrialism—has been gradually directing his attention towards new sets of facts which university tradition ignores. There is room for the process to go further, and to lead to a less traditional statement of the problems confronting modern moralists than that with which Professor Laing begins:
"Throughout the following chapters there runs one central problem, and upon it all the arguments converge. It is the problem of the relation between human action and natural law. It is an old one, and one that has been dealt with by eminent thinkers: Kant and Lotze are but two. On account of the development of science with its insistence upon the reign of universal law, it has become in modern times a very important problem, because of its bearing upon moral and social effort. The freedom that is somehow implied in morality has to be reconciled with the rigidity and uniformity that characterize natural law. That problem must be and is here regarded as a fundamental one, because it lies at the basis of all the more specific moral problems like evil, social conflicts, conflicts of values, the instability and uncertainty of moral progress and moral achievement."
There is, however, a question prior to those raised in this passage, and it is one which Professor Laing recognizes, but does not sufficiently discuss. It is the question: Is there, in any objective sense, such a thing as morality or immorality? Or is the conception of morality merely part of the police force by which dominant groups seek to enforce their authority? The combination of psychoanalysis with Marxian political theory has forced this question insistently upon many people. Psychoanalysis shows that the basis of a passion is by no means always, or even usually, what the patient thinks it is;
