Work · Analytic Philosophy
On the Truth of Moral Ideas
Inaugural lecture as professor of practical philosophy in Uppsala: moral judgements cannot be true or false, since “ought” names no property of things but a feeling joined to the idea of an action.
Introduction
Hägerström gave this lecture in 1911 when he took up the chair of practical philosophy at Uppsala. In a few pages it states the thesis that made him famous: moral ideas cannot be true or false, because the “ought” that they contain is not a property of actions or things but a feeling, joined with the idea of an action, that presents itself as if it were objective. Moral science is therefore possible only as a science about moral ideas – their psychology and history – not as a science of what one ought to do. The lecture is regarded as one of the first statements of a non-cognitivist ethics, 25 years before Ayer’s “Language, Truth and Logic” (1936), and as the programme of the Uppsala school.
Connections
Taken up in
- Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals1953 · Axel Hägerström
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