Abstract

Confusion surrounds ethical science, just because its object of reflection is an object which reflects. Because we live "consciously", and because of the malleability of imagination, we tend to think that the answer to how ought we to live, lies in our deciding how we think we ought to live, or how we think we ought to think. We then adopt a "Humpty-Dumpty" method of morals, believing that our actions mean just what we want them to mean, "no more nor less". Fortunately, life's disappointments tend to educate us in our ignorance of our own intentions. When we begin to wonder about the things that are "given" in our lives, the "brute facts", we begin to take seriously the notion of "discovery" in ethics. ;What Socrates called this most urgent question, how we are to live, leads us to the tradition of moral philosophy. But, in modern times, the philosophic tradition fumbles the very thing in which we are interested, the very object of our inquiry; it fumbles ourselves. Animated by its own "humpty-dumptyism", modern ethical psychology questions our reasoning and concludes that we have not, our acting and concludes that we do not, our being and concludes that we are not. Fortunately, we may be left with some sense that there is, after all, something mysterious in our actions. ;Our purpose in this discussion is not the advancement of some true theory in place of the false. It is not "theorizing" at all, if by this one means the construction of some edifice. Our purpose here is theorizing in the original sense of the term, contemplating something that is "out there", salient facts, "givens" of existence. Our guide in this is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. We try to focus upon three things: first, the fact of our existence; second, the fact of our activity; third, the fact of our reason. Our goal is entirely introductory, since, "the beginning is more than half the whole."