 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
E.g. we might say: Acts inspired by hate are wrong and acts inspired by love are right. We are supposing this view to be held, not because of the consequences of such acts, but because of their intrinsic quality; and we are supposing it to be held in virtue of an ethical intuition.
My objection to this view would be that, in fact, we prefer love to hate because it leads to a greater total satisfaction of desire, and that, when tabu and superstition are discarded, what remains in the way of rules apparently derived from ethical intuition is completely deducible from the one principle that it is objectively right to pursue the general good, and that this one principle may, therefore, be accepted as a substitute for many subordinate intuitions.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, (1954), chapter 5
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