"A morality in the broad sense would be a general, all-inclusive theory of conduct: the morality to which someone subscribed would be whatever body of principles he allowed ultimately to guide or determine his choices of action. In the narrow sense, a morality is a system of a particular sort of constraints on conduct — ones whose central task is to protect the interests of persons other than the agent and which present themselves to an agent as checks on his natural inclinations or spontaneous tendencies to act. In this narrow sense, moral considerations would be considerations from some limited range, and would not necessarily include everything that a man allowed to determine what he did. In the second sense, someone could say quite deliberately, 'I admit that morality requires that I should do such-and-such, but I don't intend to: for me other considerations here overrule the moral ones.'"
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University of Oxford facultyEssayists from AustraliaNon-fiction authors from AustraliaPhilosophers from AustraliaAtheists from Australia
Original Language: English
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Ch. 5, sec. 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._L._Mackie
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J. L. Mackie
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