The Data of Ethics
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 546 passages
Cite this work
- APAHerbert Spencer. (n.d.). The Data of Ethics. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-data-of-ethics
- MLAHerbert Spencer. The Data of Ethics. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-data-of-ethics.
- ChicagoHerbert Spencer. The Data of Ethics. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-data-of-ethics.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The 1879 book in which Spencer tried to found morals on biology: good conduct is conduct that favours life, and evolution is carrying us towards it.
Context and history
It is the first part of his system of ethics, published ahead of the rest because he feared dying before writing it. The argument links three steps: conduct is an adjustment of means to ends; conduct is the more evolved the better it maintains the life of the doer, of his offspring and of his fellows; and moral development therefore consists in bringing it about that these three cease to conflict. Spencer believed evolution leads there of itself, and that a state would come in which duty would no longer be needed because doing good would be pleasant. It is among the most serious attempts to derive 'ought' from 'is', and G. E. Moore took it precisely as his example of what he named the naturalistic fallacy.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
and supernatural morality, it has become the policy to exaggerate into fundamental antagonisms. In pursuance of this policy, there will probably be singled out for reprobation from this volume, doctrines which, taken by themselves, may readily be made to seem utterly wrong. With a view to clearness, I have treated separately some correlative aspects of conduct, drawing conclusions either of which becomes untrue if divorced from the other; and have thus given abundant opportunity for misrepresentation. The relations of this work to works preceding it in the series are such as to involve frequent reference. Containing, as it does, the outcome of principles set forth in each of them, I have found it impracticable to dispense with re-statements of those principles. Further, the presentation of them in their relations to different ethical theories, has made it needful, in every case, briefly to remind the reader what they are, and how they are derived. Hence an amount of repetition which to some will probably appear tedious. I do not, however, much regret this almost unavoidable result; for only by varied iteration can alien conceptions be forced on reluctant minds. _June_, 1879. THE DATA OF ETHICS. CHAPTER I. CONDUCT IN GENERAL. § 1. The doctrine that correlatives imply one another--that a father cannot be thought of without thinking of a child, and that there can be no consciousness of superior without a consciousness of inferior--has for one of its common examples the necessary connection between the conceptions of whole and part. Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a whole can be framed without a nascent idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part can be framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of the correlative whole.…