Abstract

The three works to be examined here are concerned in their various ways with the rationality of ethics. Baier is concerned almost exclusively with bringing out the rationality of ethics, and in the process develops a new/old ethical theory. Ginsberg's concern with "the rational ethic" is rather subsidiary to his main themes, namely the unsoundness of cultural relativism and the truth concerning the relevance of the findings of sociology and other social sciences to ethics. Mackinnon is largely concerned with the meta-ethical problem of the "different styles of reasoning" in ethics, and hence with the problem of the inter-relation of ethics and metaphysics on various levels, logical, historical and psychological.