Morris Ginsberg - Main Ideas

Main Ideas

In his thesis on Malebranche, Ginsberg mainly argued against Mario Novaro's criticisms of Malebranche's theory of occasionalism, claiming that Novaro "entirely ignored the main difference between Hume and Malebranche in regard to causality. Malebranche does not, in truth, deny a necessary connection between cause and effect."

Some of the major themes of his work were concerned with

1. The social responsibility of sociologists, which he saw as part of the more general problem of the ethics of knowledge. He believed that there was an urgent need to undertake fuller investigation of the relations between questions of fact and questions of value - particularly in the face of relativistic views that maintain that social conflicts have their origin in fundamental differences of moral outlook.

2. The second main theme is the question of what he called "Reason and Unreason" in human nature and society. He criticised the traditional view widely propagated from Aristotle through Hume to Bertrand Russell, that the main functions of reason in human affairs lie in the clarification, systematisation and control of impulse and feeling, and the discovery of means to their fulfilment. He contended that reason and feeling should not be held to be in opposition, or reason as the slave of the passions, but that reason could play a significant role in motivating action and directing feeling and conation. He sums up his view as follows:

"We have not to choose between Hume's view of reason as the slave of the passions and Kant's view of it as independent and overriding them. We may conceive of it rather as that in our personality which strives for integration, deeper than conscious thought, but the more effective the more it uses thought, working within and through the basic impulses and interests and deriving its energy from them".

"Is Reason the Slave of the Passions" - in The Plain View" Feb. 1955.

Morris Ginsberg was continually preoccupied with examining the role of reason in ethics. His position on this has sometimes been misunderstood - occasionally strategically misunderstood. He charted and analysed the diversity of morals among societies, and between groups and individuals, but made a clear distinction between that recognition and assumption that ethics must be entirely relative. In consequence he was ready to take issue with those who propounded emotive theories of ethics, and those who were influenced, for example, by the work of cultural anthropologists to adopt the relativistic standpoint. Cultural relativism, however, does not entail moral relativism, as its opponents often claim in a straw-man argument.

Ginsberg manifested an 'objectivist' theory of ethics in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Sidgwick and Hobhouse. This led him to maintain that 'value' and 'obligation', 'good' and 'bad' are terms not further reducible or analysable into each other or into terms not implying them. He also deals positively with the notion of levels of moral development, and suggests criteria for assessing these. Using these criteria it is possible to detect unmistakable differences of level between different societies in the modern world. He saw clearly that there is no finality in these matters, and that conditions, circumstances and societies change, involving advances and regressions.

3. He was inevitably also concerned with the nature of Justice and its relationship to equality, and the associated question of Law as an increasingly important agent of social change and reform. The ethics of punishment and the complex nature of individual moral freedom and its involvement with legal compulsion is examined in "On Justice in Society" (1965), where he concludes as follows:- 'Three questions have to be asked (a) Is the use of force necessary or can the end aimed at be secured by suasion or voluntary agreement? (b) Can the end in question be attained by compulsion or does its value depend on its being freely or spontaneously pursued? These questions have to be faced in any effort to distinguish between the rights and duties which require and permit of legal reinforcement and rights and duties which are best assured by moral means; that is, by inner conviction and free acceptance.'

4. Another pervading theme in his work was the advocacy of the liberal disposition of mind as a desideratum. He opposed this to fanaticism, impulsiveness, 'totalitarianism'. He was for sanity, coolness, reflection and restraint in judgement. His approach to problems was fundamentally Apollonian, and he mistrusted the Dionysian temperament, though understanding its nature and its potency. As he said ("The Idea of Progress" 1953 pp 72–73) 'The liberal mind is characterised by an abhorrence of fanaticism, a greater readiness to count the cost in terms of human happiness and human lives, a profounder awareness of the effects of violence, both on those who employ it and those who suffer it.'