Page:Philosophical Review Volume 23.djvu/600

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. XXIII.

concept of freedom in any practically significant sense. The 'willed' course of action is to be sure that prompted by the 'strongest' motive, because that is the way we define 'strongest'; but it is the motive of the whole person, not an individual impulse. Nor is this procedure at all peculiar to psychology; in no other field have we any means of measuring forces except by their effects.

F. H. Knight.

The Need for a Modern Casuistry. H. L. Stewart. Inter. J. of Ethics, XXIV, No. 4, pp. 379-401.

This article is a refutation of Mr. F. H. Bradley 's attack upon Casuistry in his Principles of Logic, pp. 2476. The author shows the unreliableness of Mr. Bradley's assumptions upon which his attack was based in that there are cases of genuine moral perplexity, and the intuitions of conscience are not always clear and adequate. As examples of these 'questionable* cases we may take the feminist movement, the question of suffrage, the reciprocal relations of employers and employees, the limits of state interference with the freedom of action of the individual, sexual and family relationships, etc. These questions can not be solved apart from moral considerations. They are all moral questions, but who can lay down general rules for their solution? The verdict of conscience seems self-contradictory, for both sides of these questions are upheld conscientiously. The study of ethical principles does not make a person moral, but if any conflict arises in his moral intuitions, a study of such principles may be of great benefit to him. Moral philosophy ought to help one to settle disputed moral questions. We need an expert who gives his life to just such a field. His decisions would not be merely authoritative; they would suggest solutions to the individual in trouble. For over two thousand years moral philosophers have busied themselves with such questions of morality as have very seldom, if ever, been disputed by the common man. Now let them turn their attention to the unravelling of real moral difficulties, for which assistance the unlearned man will be exceedingly grateful.

Henry Bentson.

Casuistry and Ethics. G. A. Johnston. Inter. J. of Ethics, XXIV, No. 4, pp. 401-418.

The prejudice against casuistry is well nigh universal. The popular prejudice is one of those unexamined presuppositions which infect all our thought with error. It is due partly to the aversion of the popular mind to everything exact, codified and systematized, partly to the mistaken belief that casuistry means Romanist casuistry, and partly to the moral laxity which has often accompanied it, but which is not an essential element in it. Philosophers have opposed casuistry because they believe that in moral questions, "reflection is a symptom of disease"; but this would condemn all ethics. Again, it is objected that a system of casuistry is impossible because no two cases are exactly alike; but this may be said of all science. There is enough similarity between