THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL How do we know what is good or evil, right or wrong? The principal answers to this question are rather mixed, combining more or less different epistemological points of view. But if their predominant element be considered, then three main answers may be distinguished, namely, the empirical, the rational and the intuitionist.
Empiricism.—This stresses chiefly the actual experience of mankind. Ancient and modern appeals to the consensus gentium (the general agreement of mankind) are a case in point. Another case is that of the modern biological answer as formulated, say, by Spencer, according to whom our moral judgments, however self-evident they may appear to us, are really the result of certain habits which have been acquired by mankind in the course of evolution as they learned by experience to adapt themselves to their environment. In so far as moral habits and moral ideas are different among different peoples, the empiricist would en deavour to obtain a general standard of right conduct by a careful comparison and sifting of the relevant facts. As this task is full of difficulties, empiricist ethics rather tends towards relativism or the denial of a really universal objective moral standard.
Rationalism or a stresses the sufficiency of reason to determine what is good or evil, right or wrong, more or less independently of actual experience (i.e., a priori). To some extent Kant may be regarded as an ethical rationalist, though it is perhaps better to class him as an intuitionist. A much older example of ethical rationalism of a rather different type is the theory of Socrates that all virtue is knowledge. Plato and Aris totle, Spinoza and Hegel may also be classed among ethical rationalists. Even Kant, however, found it impossible to put any content into the categorical imperative, or to formulate any thing very definite as the discovery of reason. To judge from what mostly happens in the practical affairs of daily life it would appear that our everyday moral judgments are prompted by something too vague to be dignified by the names of empirical method or of method of reason. Owing to its vagueness it is usually described (as such vague experiences commonly are de scribed) as a feeling, or some kind of feeling. This description is probably intended to stress the character of immediacy (as distinguished from discursiveness) rather than its affective char acter. The theory of intuitionism tries to do justice to the ap parent immediacy of moral judgment without deriving it from feeling as such. It must be remembered, however, that some moral philosophers have held that moral judgment is essentially a matter of feeling, like the aesthetic appreciation of beauty.
Intuitionism in ethics, then, is the theory that man has an immediate apprehension of moral value as such. Some intuition ists maintain that what is intuited is the ultimate moral law (say, Kant's categorical imperative). Others hold that we intuit the moral character of certain general types of conduct or of motives. Yet others are of the opinion that what is intuited is the moral value of each separate act or feeling either absolutely or at least relatively to some other act or feeling. But intuitionists differ among themselves not only with regard to the object of intuition but also with regard to the intrinsic psychological character of the intuitive process itself. Some describe it as a kind of per ception, and speak of a "moral sense" analogous to other kinds of sense-perception. Others regard it as a function of reason. (Such intuitionism is hardly distinguishable from rationalism; hence the above remark about Kant.) Others again, as already noted, con ceive it to be a kind of feeling, similar to that of aesthetic ap preciation.
In some ways intuitionist ethics, like empirical ethics, rather tends towards ethical relativism. If his intuition is the final tribunal of moral judgment for each individual, it is clearly pos sible for different individuals to judge differently. Kant, it is true, held that "an erring conscience is a chimera." But in order to make this view plausible he had to invent an elaborate meta physical substructure. Pope was probably nearer the truth when he suggested that "our consciences are like our watches. None go just alike, yet each believes his own."