If what is profitable is also just...

If what is profitable is also just, this, so far as ethics is concerned, is merely coincidental, a happy accident. Doing what we want and getting what we want is one thing; doing what we ought is another. But Prichard here misses the point not only of Plato but of the implications of the Greek moral vocabulary which Plato uses. The Greek moral vocabulary is not so framed that the objects of our desires and our moral aims are necessarily independent.

To do well and to fare well are found together in a word like εὐδαίμων. From such purely linguistic considerations, of course, little of substance follows. It still remains to ask whether it is modern ethics which is clarifying a valid distinction that the Greek moral vocabulary fails to observe or Greek ethics which is refusing to make a false and confusing distinction. One way of answering this question would be as follows. Ethics is concerned with human actions.

Human actions are not simply bodily movements. We can identify as instances of the same human action deeds which are executed by means of quite different bodily movements-as the movements involved in shaking a hand and those involved in putting out a flag may both be examples of welcoming somebody. And we can identify as the same bodily movements those which exemplify very different actions-as a movement of the legs may be part of running a race or of fleeing in battle.

How, then, do I exhibit a piece of behavior as an action or part of a sequence of actions rather than as mere bodily movement? The answer can only be that it is by showing that it serves a purpose which constitutes part or the whole of the agent’s intention in doing what he does. What is more, the agent’s purpose is only to be made intelligible as the expression of his desires and aims. Consider now how modern post-Kantian ethics emphasizes the contrast between duty and inclination.

If what I do is made intelligible in terms of the pursuit of my desires, if my desires are cited as affording me reasons for doing what I do, it cannot be that in doing what I do I am doing my duty. Hence when I am doing my duty what I do cannot be exhibited as a human action, intelligible in the way that ordinary human actions are. So the pursuit of duty becomes a realm of its own, unconnected with anything else in human life.

To this the reply of a writer like Prichard would be that indeed this is so, and that to suppose it could be otherwise would be an error.