Note 248 — Chapter V · CRITICAL

Professor Moore has a chapter in his book (Pragmatism and its Critics) devoted to the purpose of showing the necessary failure of Absolutism (or of an Intellectualism of the absolutist order) in the realm of ethics, finding in the experimentalism and the quasi-Darwinism of Pragmatism an atmosphere that is, to say the least, more favourable to the realities of our moral experience. While I cannot find so much as he does in the hit-and-miss ethical philosophy of Pragmatism, I quite sympathize with him in his rejection of Absolutism or Rationalism as a basis for ethics. The following are some of his reasons for this rejection: (1) The “purpose” that is involved in the ethical life must, according to Absolutism, be an all-inclusive and a fixed purpose, allowing of no “advance” and no “retreat”—-things that are imperative to the idea of the reality of our efforts. (2) Absolutism does not provide for human responsibility; to it all actions and purposes are those of the Absolute. (3) The ethical ideal of Absolutism is too “static.” (4) Absolutism does not provide any material for “new goals and new ideals.” See pp. 218–225 in my eighth chapter, where I censure, in the interest of Pragmatism and Humanism, the ethical philosophy of Professor Bosanquet.