Sources and References

• Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Ed. Andrew Bailey. Broadview Press, 2016.
• Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Ed. Lara Denis. Broadview Press, 2005.
• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. various.
• Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
• Baron, Marcia. “Kantian Ethics and Claims of Detachment.” In Feminists Rethink the Self, ed. Diana Meyers, 1997.
• Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Mills, Charles. The Racial Contract. Cornell University Press, 1997.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: entries on Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Hume’s Moral Philosophy, Feminist Ethics.

Chapter 1: What Is Ethics? Methods and Moral Reasoning

1.1 The Central Question of Ethics

Moral philosophy (道德哲学), also called ethics (伦理学), is the systematic attempt to answer one of the most enduring questions of human life: How should we live? This question has occupied thinkers across cultures and centuries. It is not merely an academic puzzle but a question that confronts every person in the ordinary course of daily existence. When we deliberate about what to do, when we praise or blame others, when we feel the pull of conscience or the sting of regret, we are already engaged in the territory of moral philosophy.

Ethics differs from mere description of human behaviour. The social sciences — psychology, sociology, anthropology — may tell us how people do behave, but ethics asks how they ought to behave. This distinction between the descriptive (描述性的) and the normative (规范性的) is foundational. A descriptive claim reports facts: “Most people in this culture value honesty.” A normative claim evaluates or prescribes: “People should be honest.” Moral philosophy lives on the normative side of this divide.

1.2 Branches of Ethics

The philosophical study of morality is conventionally divided into three branches:

This course focuses primarily on normative ethics, examining the major theoretical traditions, while also touching on metaethical and applied questions as they arise.

1.3 Moral Theories and Their Criteria

A moral theory (道德理论) is a systematic account of what makes actions right or wrong, or what makes a person good or bad. But not any systematic account will do. We evaluate moral theories by at least the following criteria:

1. Internal consistency: The theory should not contradict itself.
2. Explanatory power: It should illuminate why certain actions are wrong and others right, rather than merely listing rules.
3. Accordance with considered moral judgments: While a theory may sometimes revise our intuitions, it should not systematically conflict with deeply held moral convictions without strong reason.
4. Action-guidance: A good theory should help us decide what to do in new and difficult cases.
5. Parsimony: The theory should not multiply principles beyond necessity.

1.4 Moral Reasoning and Argument

Philosophical ethics proceeds by argument. A moral argument typically has both empirical premises (claims about facts) and normative premises (claims about values). Careful ethical reasoning requires identifying and scrutinising both types of premise, as well as the logical connections between them.

One important methodological tool is the reflective equilibrium (反思平衡), a process described by John Rawls in which we move back and forth between our particular moral judgments and our general principles, adjusting each in light of the other until we reach a coherent whole. No moral theory should be accepted uncritically; the philosophical enterprise demands persistent questioning and revision.

Chapter 2: Utilitarianism: Mill’s Theory of the Greatest Happiness

2.1 Historical Background

Utilitarianism (功利主义) is perhaps the most influential consequentialist moral theory. Its intellectual roots stretch back to ancient Epicureanism (伊壁鸠鲁主义), but its modern formulation is owed primarily to Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Bentham, in his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), proposed that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined entirely by its tendency to promote or diminish pleasure (快乐) and pain (痛苦). Mill, Bentham’s intellectual heir and godchild of the utilitarian tradition, refined and defended the theory in his landmark essay Utilitarianism (1861).

Mill was a prodigious thinker who wrote on logic, political economy, liberty, and the subjection of women. His Utilitarianism remains one of the most widely read texts in moral philosophy and serves as a primary text for this course.

2.2 The Principle of Utility

The foundational principle of utilitarianism is the Greatest Happiness Principle (最大幸福原则), sometimes called the Principle of Utility (功利原则):

Several features of this principle deserve emphasis:

1. Consequentialism: The moral status of an action depends entirely on its consequences — specifically, on how much happiness or unhappiness it produces.
2. Hedonism: The only thing intrinsically good is happiness (幸福), understood as pleasure and the absence of pain. The only thing intrinsically bad is unhappiness.
3. Aggregation: We must consider the happiness of all affected parties, not just our own. The right action maximises the total sum of happiness.
4. Impartiality: Each person’s happiness counts equally. As Mill writes, utilitarianism requires the agent to be “as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.”

2.3 Higher and Lower Pleasures

One of Mill’s most famous and controversial innovations is his distinction between higher pleasures (高级快乐) and lower pleasures (低级快乐). Bentham had treated all pleasures as commensurable — a game of pushpin was as good as poetry, provided the quantity of pleasure was equal. Mill disagrees:

Mill’s famous dictum captures the point: “It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” This introduces a qualitative dimension into the assessment of pleasure that goes beyond Bentham’s purely quantitative calculus (which measured pleasure along dimensions of intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent).

2.4 Act and Rule Utilitarianism

Mill’s text has been interpreted as supporting two distinct versions of the theory:

Act utilitarianism (行为功利主义) holds that we should evaluate each individual action by its consequences. The right action in any given situation is the one that produces the greatest net happiness.

Rule utilitarianism (规则功利主义) holds that we should follow rules whose general adoption would produce the greatest happiness. An individual act is right if it conforms to a justified moral rule, even if in a particular case breaking the rule would produce more happiness.

Mill’s own position is debated. In Chapter 2, he seems to endorse act utilitarianism, but in Chapter 5 his discussion of justice and rights appears more congenial to rule utilitarianism. The distinction matters because the two versions yield different verdicts in important cases — for instance, whether it is permissible to punish an innocent person if doing so would prevent a riot and save many lives.

2.5 Mill’s Proof of the Principle of Utility

In Chapter 4 of Utilitarianism, Mill offers a controversial “proof” of the Greatest Happiness Principle. His argument proceeds roughly as follows:

1. The only evidence that something is visible is that people actually see it; the only evidence that something is audible is that people hear it.
2. Similarly, the only evidence that something is desirable is that people actually desire it.
3. Each person desires their own happiness.
4. Therefore, each person’s happiness is a good to that person.
5. Therefore, the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of all persons.

2.6 Happiness and the Role of Virtue

Mill is careful to emphasise that utilitarianism does not counsel a life of crude self-indulgence. He argues that virtue, self-sacrifice, and noble character are all valued by the utilitarian — not as ends in themselves, but as powerful means to the general happiness. A person of virtuous character reliably produces good consequences; self-sacrifice is admirable when it serves the greater good.

Moreover, Mill argues that utilitarianism captures the real basis of many conventional moral rules. Rules against lying, stealing, and killing exist because adherence to them generally promotes happiness. This provides a unifying explanation of the moral code.

Chapter 3: Utilitarianism and Justice: Objections and Refinements

3.1 The Problem of Justice

Chapter 5 of Mill’s Utilitarianism is among the most philosophically rich, addressing the apparent tension between utility and justice (正义). Many critics have argued that utilitarianism cannot account for justice, because it seems willing to sacrifice the rights of individuals whenever doing so would maximise aggregate happiness.

Mill responds by arguing that justice is not opposed to utility but is, in fact, the most important part of it. The sentiment of justice (正义感) is a powerful natural feeling rooted in the desire for security. Justice concerns those moral rules that are so vital to human well-being that they deserve especially strong protection — indeed, they constitute rights (权利).

3.2 The Demandingness Objection

A persistent criticism of utilitarianism is that it is excessively demanding (过度要求). If we are morally required to maximise total happiness, then any time we spend on personal projects, relationships, or leisure — when we could instead be relieving the suffering of others — is morally impermissible. Peter Singer’s famous argument about famine relief illustrates this: if you can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, you ought to do it. Applied consistently, this principle would require radical redistribution of wealth and an almost total sacrifice of personal pursuits.

3.3 The Integrity Objection

Bernard Williams, in his critique of utilitarianism, introduces the concept of integrity (人格完整性). Utilitarianism, he argues, is corrosive of personal integrity because it demands that the agent treat their own deepest commitments, relationships, and projects as merely one factor in an impersonal calculus. In a famous thought experiment, Williams imagines Jim, a botanist in a South American village, who is told by a captain that if Jim shoots one prisoner, the captain will release the other nineteen; otherwise, all twenty will be killed. Utilitarianism says Jim should shoot, but Williams argues that this fails to respect the importance of Jim’s own moral agency and the distinction between what he does and what happens as a result of others’ actions.

3.4 Objections from Distribution

Utilitarianism is indifferent to the distribution of happiness. A world in which one billion people are ecstatically happy and one billion are in abject misery, with total happiness of X, is no worse than a world in which two billion people are moderately content, also with total happiness of X. Critics argue that this is deeply counterintuitive and that distributive justice (分配正义) requires some sensitivity to how goods are spread across persons.

3.5 Responses and Refinements

Utilitarian thinkers have developed several responses:

• Rule utilitarianism (discussed above) can block many counterexamples by insisting that we follow rules whose general observance maximises utility, rather than calculating consequences case by case.
• Preference utilitarianism (偏好功利主义), associated with R.M. Hare and Peter Singer, replaces happiness with the satisfaction of preferences, thereby avoiding some difficulties with hedonism.
• Two-level utilitarianism (二层功利主义), proposed by Hare, distinguishes between everyday moral thinking (which follows established rules) and critical thinking (which applies the utilitarian calculus directly in unusual or conflicting cases).
• Indirect utilitarianism holds that we should evaluate not actions but decision procedures, character traits, or institutions by their utility.

Despite these refinements, critics maintain that utilitarianism’s commitment to aggregation and impartiality creates irresolvable tensions with our deepest convictions about justice, rights, and personal integrity.

Chapter 4: Kantian Ethics: The Good Will and Duty

4.1 Kant’s Revolution in Ethics

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is one of the most important philosophers in the Western tradition. His moral philosophy, developed primarily in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), represents a radical departure from consequentialist thinking. For Kant, the morality of an action has nothing to do with its consequences and everything to do with the principle on which the agent acts.

Kant’s ethics is a form of deontology (义务论) — the view that morality is fundamentally about duties and obligations, not about outcomes.

4.2 The Good Will

The Groundwork opens with one of the most famous sentences in moral philosophy: “There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, excepting only a good will” (Kant, Groundwork, 4:393).

This is a dramatic claim. It means that moral worth attaches not to what we achieve but to the quality of our willing. A person who tries to help others and fails has the same moral worth as one who tries and succeeds, provided both act from a good will.

4.3 Duty and Inclination

Kant draws a sharp distinction between acting from duty (出于义务) and acting merely in accordance with duty (合乎义务). A shopkeeper who charges fair prices because it is good for business acts in accordance with duty but not from duty; their action has no moral worth, since it is motivated by self-interest. Only actions done because they are right — from respect for the moral law — have genuine moral worth.

Kant identifies three propositions about duty:

1. An action has moral worth only if it is done from duty.
2. The moral worth of an action done from duty lies not in the purpose to be achieved by it but in the maxim (准则) according to which it is decided upon.
3. Duty is the necessity of an action from respect for the law.

4.4 The Concept of a Maxim

A maxim (准则) is a subjective principle of action — the rule or policy that an agent adopts when they act. For Kant, the morality of an action depends on its maxim, not its outcome. When I decide to lie to get out of trouble, my maxim might be: “Whenever telling the truth is inconvenient, I will lie.” Kant’s moral test asks whether this maxim can serve as a universal law.

4.5 The Moral Law and Autonomy

For Kant, the moral law is not imposed from outside — not by God, not by society, not by nature. It arises from reason (理性) itself. This is Kant’s doctrine of autonomy (自律): the moral agent is self-legislating, giving the law to themselves through the exercise of practical reason. The opposite of autonomy is heteronomy (他律) — being governed by desires, inclinations, or external authorities.

Chapter 5: The Categorical Imperative: Formulations and Applications

5.1 Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives

Kant distinguishes between two types of practical commands:

The moral law, Kant argues, must take the form of a categorical imperative, because morality is universal and unconditional. Kant offers several formulations of the Categorical Imperative, which he claims are equivalent.

5.2 The First Formulation: Universal Law

This formulation provides a test for the moral permissibility of actions. To determine whether an action is morally permissible:

1. Formulate the maxim of your action.
2. Universalise the maxim: imagine a world in which everyone acts on this maxim.
3. Ask whether the universalised maxim involves a contradiction in conception (概念矛盾) — i.e., whether the universalised maxim is logically self-defeating — or a contradiction in will (意志矛盾) — i.e., whether you could rationally will that everyone act on this maxim.

A maxim that produces a contradiction in conception yields a perfect duty (完全义务) — an exceptionless prohibition. A maxim that produces a contradiction in will yields an imperfect duty (不完全义务) — a duty that allows some latitude in how and when it is fulfilled.

5.3 The Second Formulation: Humanity as an End

This formulation emphasises the intrinsic dignity (尊严) of rational beings. To treat someone merely as a means is to use them as a tool for your own purposes without regard for their own rational agency. Coercion, deception, and exploitation are paradigm cases of treating people merely as means.

5.4 The Third Formulation: The Kingdom of Ends

The Kingdom of Ends (目的王国) is an ideal community of rational beings, each of whom treats every other as an end in themselves and legislates universal moral laws. This formulation unifies the previous two: the agent both universalises their maxims (first formulation) and respects the dignity of all rational beings (second formulation).

5.5 Applying the Categorical Imperative

Applying the Categorical Imperative to real cases requires careful formulation of maxims. Critics have noted that the results of the universalisability test can vary depending on how the maxim is described. A maxim described too narrowly (“Lie to Nazi officers about the Jews in your attic on Tuesday”) may pass the test trivially; a maxim described too broadly (“Always lie”) will obviously fail. Kant’s theory requires a principled account of the appropriate level of generality for maxim formulation, and this remains an active area of philosophical debate.

Chapter 6: Challenges to Kantian Ethics

6.1 The Rigorism Objection

Perhaps the most common criticism of Kant’s ethics is its rigorism (严格主义) — its insistence on exceptionless moral rules. Kant infamously argued, in his essay “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy,” that it is wrong to lie even to a murderer who asks where your friend is hiding. Many philosophers find this conclusion absurd and take it as evidence that Kant’s theory is too rigid to serve as a practical guide to moral life.

6.2 The Empty Formalism Objection

Hegel famously charged that the Categorical Imperative is an “empty formalism” — a purely formal test that can generate no substantive moral content. The universalisability test, on this view, merely checks for consistency but cannot tell us which maxims to adopt in the first place. Any sufficiently specific maxim can be universalised (“Everyone born on January 5, 1990 shall steal”), and the test provides no independent basis for ruling it out.

Kant’s defenders respond that the test is not purely formal: it relies on substantive facts about human nature, social institutions (like promising), and rational agency. The contradictions revealed by the test are not mere logical contradictions but practical contradictions — conflicts between what the agent wills in adopting a maxim and what would result from its universal adoption.

6.3 The Neglect of Consequences

A frequent objection holds that any adequate moral theory must give some weight to consequences. Kant’s insistence that consequences are morally irrelevant seems to ignore an obvious fact: the results of our actions matter. If following a moral rule leads to catastrophic outcomes, surely that is a reason to question the rule.

Kantians typically respond that their theory does not ignore consequences entirely. The universalisability test itself involves considering the consequences of universal adoption of a maxim. What Kant denies is that the actual consequences of a particular action determine its moral status; what matters is the principle on which the agent acts.

6.4 The Problem of Moral Motivation

Kant’s claim that only actions done from duty have moral worth has struck many as psychologically unrealistic and even morally unattractive. Do we really want to say that a person who rescues a drowning child out of spontaneous compassion acts with less moral worth than one who rescues the child grudgingly, out of a cold sense of duty?

Barbara Herman has offered an influential response. She distinguishes between primary motives and secondary motives (or “limiting conditions”). Duty need not be the agent’s conscious, occurrent motive; rather, duty functions as a background condition that would override inclination if inclination pointed in the wrong direction. A person who acts from love and would have acted from duty if love were absent is acting in a morally worthy way.

6.5 Conflicts of Duty

If morality consists of categorical duties, what happens when duties conflict? The duty not to lie may conflict with the duty to protect innocent people. Kant’s theory appears to lack a systematic way of resolving such conflicts, since all categorical duties are, by definition, exceptionless.

Kant himself distinguishes between perfect duties (which admit no exceptions) and imperfect duties (which allow latitude in how they are fulfilled). This provides some resources for resolving conflicts: an imperfect duty may yield to a perfect duty. But conflicts between two perfect duties remain deeply problematic for the Kantian framework.

Chapter 7: Aristotle and Virtue Ethics: Character and Flourishing

7.1 From Actions to Character

Both utilitarianism and Kantianism focus primarily on the question What should I do? — on the evaluation of actions. Virtue ethics (美德伦理学), by contrast, shifts the focus to the question What kind of person should I be? The central concepts of virtue ethics are not “duty” or “utility” but character (品格), virtue (美德), and flourishing (幸福/繁荣).

The revival of virtue ethics in contemporary philosophy is often traced to G.E.M. Anscombe’s 1958 paper “Modern Moral Philosophy,” which argued that modern ethical theories were fundamentally flawed and that philosophers should return to an Aristotelian framework centred on the virtues. Since then, virtue ethics has become one of the three major approaches in normative ethics.

7.2 Aristotle’s Ethics: An Overview

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) is the foundational figure in the virtue ethics tradition. His Nicomachean Ethics (尼各马可伦理学) is one of the most important works in the history of moral philosophy. Unlike Kant or Mill, Aristotle does not begin with abstract principles but with a question about the human good (善): What is the ultimate aim of human life?

7.3 Eudaimonia: The Highest Good

Aristotle argues that all human activity aims at some good, and that there is a highest good — an end pursued for its own sake and never for the sake of anything else. This highest good is eudaimonia (幸福/繁荣), often translated as “happiness” but better rendered as “flourishing” or “living well and doing well.”

Aristotle’s conception of happiness differs profoundly from the utilitarian understanding. For Mill, happiness is pleasure and the absence of pain — a subjective state. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is an activity — specifically, the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. A person can be mistaken about whether they are truly flourishing; eudaimonia requires actually living well, not merely feeling good.

7.4 The Function Argument

Aristotle’s argument for eudaimonia rests on the function argument (功能论证). Just as a good knife is one that performs the function of cutting well, and a good flute player is one who performs the function of playing the flute well, a good human being is one who performs the characteristically human function well.

What is the characteristic function of a human being? Not mere life (which we share with plants) or perception (which we share with animals), but the active exercise of reason (理性的活动). The human good, therefore, is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue (or excellence), and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete.

7.5 Virtue as a Mean

Aristotle defines moral virtue (道德美德) as a settled disposition to feel and act in the right way, at the right time, toward the right people, for the right reasons, and to the right extent. His celebrated doctrine of the mean (中道学说) holds that each virtue is a mean between two extremes — one of excess and one of deficiency.

The mean is not an arithmetic midpoint but a point determined by practical wisdom relative to the individual and the circumstances. What counts as courageous behaviour for a soldier in battle may differ from what counts as courageous for a civilian in ordinary life.

7.6 Habituation and Moral Development

Virtues, for Aristotle, are not innate; they are acquired through habituation (习惯化). We become courageous by performing courageous acts, just as we become skilled musicians by practising music. This means that moral education is crucial: children must be raised in good habits before they can understand the reasons behind those habits.

Chapter 8: The Virtues: Courage, Justice, Temperance, Practical Wisdom

8.1 The Cardinal Virtues

The Western philosophical tradition, drawing on both Aristotle and Plato, has identified four cardinal virtues (基本美德): courage (勇气), justice (正义), temperance (节制), and practical wisdom (实践智慧). Aristotle treats all four extensively in the Nicomachean Ethics, along with many other virtues.

8.2 Courage (Andreia)

Aristotle distinguishes genuine courage from its semblances. Soldiers who fight well out of fear of punishment, or out of anger, or out of ignorance of the danger, are not truly courageous. Genuine courage requires acting with knowledge of the danger, for the right reasons (typically, because it is noble or honourable), and with the right emotional responses.

8.3 Temperance (Sophrosyne)

8.4 Justice (Dikaiosyne)

Aristotle devotes the whole of Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics to justice (正义, Greek: δικαιοσύνη). He distinguishes between:

• General justice (总体正义): Lawfulness or obedience to law, encompassing all virtue insofar as it concerns others.
• Particular justice (特殊正义): Fairness in the distribution of goods (distributive justice, 分配正义) and fairness in rectifying wrongs (corrective justice, 矫正正义).

Distributive justice requires distributing goods in proportion to merit. Corrective justice requires restoring the balance upset by wrongdoing. Aristotle’s discussion of justice is foundational for later political philosophy and remains influential today.

8.5 Practical Wisdom (Phronesis)

Practical wisdom occupies a special place in Aristotle’s ethics because it is required for the exercise of all other virtues. Without practical wisdom, one cannot determine the mean in particular circumstances. Courage without practical wisdom degenerates into rashness; generosity without practical wisdom becomes wastefulness. Practical wisdom is what unifies the virtues and makes genuinely virtuous action possible.

8.6 The Unity of the Virtues

Aristotle appears to endorse a strong thesis about the interconnection of the virtues: the unity of the virtues (美德统一论) holds that one cannot truly possess any one virtue without possessing all of them. This is because genuine virtue requires practical wisdom, and practical wisdom involves a comprehensive grasp of the good that encompasses all the virtues.

This thesis is controversial. It seems to conflict with ordinary experience, where we encounter people who are courageous but unjust, or generous but intemperate. Aristotle might respond that such people possess only a semblance of virtue, not genuine virtue — but this response sets a very high bar for moral excellence.

8.7 Friendship and the Good Life

Aristotle devotes two books of the Nicomachean Ethics (Books VIII and IX) to friendship (友谊, Greek: φιλία). He identifies three kinds of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue (or character). Only the last is genuine and complete, because in friendships of virtue, each friend loves the other for who they truly are and wishes them well for their own sake. Aristotle argues that friendship is essential to the good life: “No one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all other goods.”

Chapter 9: Hume’s Moral Skepticism: Reason and Passion

9.1 David Hume and the Limits of Reason

David Hume (1711–1776), the great Scottish empiricist, poses a profound challenge to the rationalist moral philosophies of Kant and Aristotle. Hume’s moral philosophy, developed in Book III of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), argues that reason (理性) alone cannot motivate moral action and that morality is ultimately grounded in sentiment (情感) rather than reason.

9.2 The Is-Ought Gap

One of Hume’s most influential contributions is the observation that there is a logical gap between is-statements (事实陈述) and ought-statements (应然陈述). In a famous passage from the Treatise, Hume notes that moral philosophers often move imperceptibly from descriptive claims about the way things are to normative claims about the way they ought to be, without justifying the transition:

This principle has had enormous influence on subsequent metaethics. It challenges both natural law theory (which derives moral rules from facts about human nature) and any version of utilitarianism or Kantianism that claims to derive moral conclusions from purely non-moral premises.

9.3 Reason as the Slave of the Passions

Hume’s most provocative claim is that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (Treatise, 2.3.3). By this, Hume means:

1. Reason alone cannot motivate action. Reason discovers facts and relations among ideas, but it cannot generate desires or aversions. To move us to act, we need a desire, feeling, or passion.
2. Moral judgments are practical — they motivate action. Since reason alone cannot motivate, morality must have its source in sentiment.

9.4 Moral Sentimentalism

Hume’s positive moral theory is a form of sentimentalism (情感主义): moral judgments are expressions of our sentiments of approval and disapproval. When we call an action “virtuous,” we are reporting (or expressing) a feeling of approval that arises in us when we contemplate the action from a suitably general point of view.

Hume identifies two classes of virtues:

• Natural virtues (自然美德): Traits like benevolence, compassion, and parental love that arise directly from natural human sentiments.
• Artificial virtues (人为美德): Traits like justice, fidelity, and allegiance that depend on social conventions and institutions. These are “artificial” not in the sense of being fake but in the sense of being products of human contrivance, adopted because they serve the common good.

9.5 Skepticism about Moral Theory

Hume’s philosophy can be read as expressing a deep skepticism about the entire project of systematic moral theory. If morality rests on sentiment rather than reason, then the grand theoretical edifices of utilitarianism and Kantianism may be fundamentally misguided. Moral philosophy, on this view, should be more modest — describing and organising our moral sentiments rather than attempting to derive exceptionless moral principles from abstract rational foundations.

9.6 Hume on Virtue

Despite his skepticism about moral rationalism, Hume offers a rich and sophisticated account of virtue. For Hume, a virtue is any quality of mind that is useful or agreeable to the person who possesses it or to others. This fourfold classification — useful to self, useful to others, agreeable to self, agreeable to others — provides an elegant framework for cataloguing the virtues.

Chapter 10: Gender, Race, and Moral Philosophy

10.1 Introduction: The Challenge of Social Identity

The dominant moral theories surveyed in this course — utilitarianism, Kantianism, and virtue ethics — have traditionally presented themselves as universal: they claim to apply to all rational beings, regardless of gender, race, class, or culture. In recent decades, however, philosophers have raised searching questions about whether these theories are as universal as they claim. Do they reflect the perspectives and experiences of all human beings, or do they embed the assumptions and biases of the historically privileged groups — primarily white European men — who created them?

10.2 Feminist Challenges to Kantian Ethics

Feminist philosophers have engaged deeply with Kantian ethics, both critically and constructively. Critics have argued that Kant’s emphasis on autonomy (自律), impartiality (公正), and abstract rational principles reflects a characteristically male mode of moral thinking that devalues the emotional, relational, and contextual dimensions of morality typically associated with women’s moral experience.

Carol Gilligan’s influential work In a Different Voice (1982) distinguished between an ethic of justice (正义伦理) — focused on rights, rules, and impartiality — and an ethic of care (关怀伦理) — focused on relationships, responsiveness, and particular attachments. Gilligan argued that the ethic of care, though typically devalued in philosophical ethics, represents a legitimate and important moral perspective.

However, not all feminist engagements with Kant are critical. Marcia Baron and Barbara Herman have offered important defences and reinterpretations of Kantian ethics from a feminist perspective. Baron argues that Kant’s ethics, properly understood, is not hostile to emotion or care but merely insists that duty provide the ultimate ground of moral action. Herman has developed a nuanced account of Kantian moral psychology that finds room for emotions as morally relevant — indeed, as essential — while maintaining the primacy of practical reason.

10.3 Charles Mills and The Racial Contract

Charles Mills (1951–2021), in his landmark work The Racial Contract (1997), offers a profound critique of the social contract tradition and, more broadly, of mainstream Western moral and political philosophy. Mills argues that the social contract, as theorised by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, is not the universal agreement among equals that it purports to be. Rather, it is a racial contract (种族契约) — an agreement among white people to establish and maintain a system of racial domination.

Mills’s critique has several important implications for moral philosophy:

1. The myth of the ideal social contract: Traditional contract theory imagines a contract among free and equal individuals. But historically, the “individuals” in question were exclusively white men. Women, people of colour, and colonised peoples were explicitly excluded from the moral community.

2. Non-ideal theory: Mills argues that moral and political philosophy has been excessively focused on ideal theory (理想理论) — the construction of principles for a perfectly just society. What is needed instead is non-ideal theory (非理想理论) that takes seriously the actual history of injustice, racism, and domination, and asks how to move from our unjust present toward a more just future.

3. Epistemology of ignorance: The racial contract produces not only political domination but also a systematic distortion of knowledge. White people are socialised into ignorance about the reality of racial injustice, and this ignorance is not accidental but functional — it serves to maintain the existing power structure.

10.4 Intersections of Gender and Race

The insights of feminist ethics and critical race theory converge in intersectional analysis (交叉性分析), a framework developed by Kimberle Crenshaw and others that examines how multiple axes of identity — gender, race, class, sexuality, disability — interact to produce distinctive forms of oppression and experience.

For moral philosophy, intersectionality raises the question of whether abstract moral principles can adequately capture the moral situation of people whose identities are shaped by overlapping forms of disadvantage. An ethic that treats all moral agents as interchangeable rational beings may systematically overlook the morally relevant differences in their situations.

10.5 Implications for the Three Major Theories

Each of the three major theories discussed in this course is affected by these critiques:

• Utilitarianism: Its impartial aggregation of happiness may obscure systematic inequalities. If a social arrangement maximises total happiness but does so by making a racial minority miserable, utilitarianism must either endorse this arrangement or develop resources for giving extra weight to the interests of the disadvantaged.
• Kantianism: Its emphasis on universality and autonomy may presuppose a model of the self that is gendered and racialised. But Kantian resources — especially the imperative to treat all persons as ends in themselves — can also ground powerful arguments against racism and sexism.
• Virtue ethics: Its account of the good life may reflect culturally specific ideals. Aristotle’s own views on the moral status of women and enslaved people were deeply problematic. But the virtue ethics framework is also flexible enough to incorporate a wider range of virtues and models of flourishing.

Chapter 11: Is Moral Philosophy Worth Doing?

11.1 Skepticism about the Value of Moral Philosophy

The final module of this course takes up a radical question: Is the entire enterprise of moral philosophy worthwhile? This question has been raised from several different directions, and engaging with it seriously can deepen our understanding of what moral philosophy is and what it can (and cannot) achieve.

11.2 The Practical Irrelevance Objection

One skeptical challenge holds that moral philosophy is practically irrelevant — that philosophical theorising has little or no bearing on how people actually live. People make moral decisions based on upbringing, emotion, social pressure, and habit, not by consulting the Categorical Imperative or the Greatest Happiness Principle. Moral theories, on this view, are elaborate intellectual exercises that have no effect on real moral conduct.

11.3 The Moral Expertise Problem

A related challenge questions whether there is such a thing as moral expertise (道德专长). In other domains — medicine, engineering, law — we recognise the authority of experts. But can philosophers claim to be moral experts? Do they make better moral decisions than non-philosophers? Empirical evidence suggests that professional ethicists do not behave more ethically than their non-philosopher peers, which may undermine the claim that moral philosophy produces moral improvement.

However, defenders of moral philosophy argue that the value of philosophical ethics is not primarily in producing better behaviour but in producing better understanding — a deeper and more reflective grasp of the moral landscape. Just as studying music theory may not make one a better performer but deepens one’s appreciation and understanding of music, studying moral philosophy may not make one a saint but can illuminate the structure and complexity of moral life.

11.4 The Overdemandingness of Theory

Susan Wolf, in her influential essay “Moral Saints” (1982), argues that a person who devotes themselves entirely to moral perfection — a moral saint (道德圣人) — would live an impoverished life, lacking in the non-moral goods (aesthetic appreciation, humour, personal projects, deep friendships) that make human life rich and interesting. If the ideal moral agent, as envisioned by utilitarianism or Kantianism, is a moral saint, then perhaps these theories set the wrong ideal.

Wolf’s argument does not show that morality is unimportant, but it suggests that morality may not be the most important thing — that a good human life requires a balance of moral and non-moral values, and that moral theory should accommodate this plurality.

11.5 Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

Bernard Williams, in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), offers one of the most searching critiques of systematic moral theory. Williams argues that the attempt to ground morality in a single principle — whether utility, the Categorical Imperative, or virtue — is doomed to fail. Morality is too complex, too embedded in particular social and historical circumstances, and too entangled with human psychology to be captured by any grand theory.

Williams does not reject morality itself but rejects the pretensions of moral theory. He favours a more modest, historically informed, and psychologically realistic approach to ethics — one that draws on literature, psychology, and ordinary moral experience rather than abstract philosophical systems.

11.6 Defending Moral Philosophy

Against these skeptical challenges, defenders of moral philosophy argue:

1. Clarity and rigour: Even if moral philosophy does not produce definitive answers, it forces us to think more carefully and consistently about moral questions. This is itself a valuable achievement.
2. Exposure of hidden assumptions: Moral theories can reveal assumptions and biases that would otherwise remain invisible — as the critiques from feminist and critical race theory demonstrate.
3. Framework for dialogue: In a diverse society, moral philosophy provides a common vocabulary and set of argumentative tools for discussing and resolving moral disagreements.
4. Progress: While moral philosophy may not solve all moral problems, the history of ethics shows genuine progress — in the expansion of moral concern to previously excluded groups, in the refinement of moral concepts, and in the development of more sophisticated moral frameworks.

11.7 Conclusion: The Value of the Question

Perhaps the most important lesson of this course is that moral questions are more common, and more difficult to answer, than we might initially suppose. The theories we have studied — utilitarianism, Kantianism, virtue ethics — do not provide easy answers, and they face serious objections. But engaging with these theories, grappling with their strengths and weaknesses, and confronting the skeptical challenges to the very enterprise of moral philosophy is itself a form of moral seriousness. The examined life, Socrates famously said, is the only life worth living. Whether or not one agrees with Socrates, the practice of moral philosophy — the sustained, rigorous, self-critical attempt to understand how we should live — is among the most important and rewarding of human intellectual activities.