Finally, by way of clearing the gro

Finally, by way of clearing the ground and laying foundations, something needs to be said about the nature of moral language, and two currently fashionable ways of approaching morality must be outlined and rejected.
One of the achievements of the intuitionists was to remind us that moral judgements are distinctive or sui generis. Just as not all values are moral values, so not all judgements are moral judgements. But, more than this, moral judgements such as ‘That is wrong’ do not work in exactly the same way as, for example, aesthetic judgements (‘That is beautiful’), commands (‘Go away’), judgements of taste (‘I adore your hat’), or, of course, assertions of empirical fact (‘That car was going at 75 m.p.h.’). Philosophers of the twentieth century made a particular contribution to our understanding of the nature of moral discourse – how moral utterances function or work – which tells us something about the nature of moral judgements.
First (in historical terms), it was suggested that moral utterances, though seeming by their form to make statements on a par with descriptive statements, in fact were literally meaningless in that they were no more than emotive outpourings, sometimes seen as designed to influence others, but sometimes seen merely as the verbal equivalent of emitting a sigh or a whoop of joy. Thus, ‘Stealing is wrong’ is not seen as making a remark about stealing, comparable to saying ‘The car is brown’; it is seen as no more and no less than another way of going ‘stealing – ugh!’, with or without the hope of leading others to share or evince the same distaste.
This theory, as baldly stated, did not survive for long and did not deserve to do so. In the first place, it is not always the case that I am trying to influence others and it is arguable that it is not always even a form of self-expression. When I lie awake musing on the wrongdoing in the world, saying to myself, ‘All this stealing is wrong, but I’m not sure whether speaking bluntly is wrong’, I am certainly not seeking to influence anybody and I am not obviously giving vent to my disgust or enthusiasm. In the second place, this desire to influence or express oneself does not distinguish a moral utterance from many other kinds of utterance or activity such as advertising, political speeches, threats, and propaganda. But if one thing is clear it is that a moral utterance such as ‘Kindness is good’ cannot be equated with remarks of the type ‘Do this or else’, or with a shriek of joy celebrating Coca-Cola. It is true that it is part of the nature of (much?) moral discourse to evince our own attitudes and to attempt to influence those of others, and that is an important insight, but it is not by any means all that moral discourse does. If it were, then the criteria for a successful moral argument would be purely and simply the ability to get others to accept one’s view or relative success in expressing one’s passion. But this is not what constitutes a good moral argument. A moral debate is not to be compared with an Oscar night; it is not a popularity contest.
But there are other truths about moral utterances that derive not from contemplation of what we are trying to achieve by making them, but rather from what is involved in making them. Two of these truths are that moral language is prescriptive and universalizable. It is prescriptive inasmuch as moral utterances, whatever their grammatical form, may be seen as disguised imperatives. To understand and accept that ‘I ought to pay back the money I borrowed’ is to see the force of the command, ‘Repay what you borrow’. One is logically committed not just to saying that one agrees that one should, but to the act of repayment. By your deeds shall ye be known. If you don’t repay your debts, then (other things being equal, e.g. if you don’t have a gun held to your head) you don’t sincerely have that moral viewpoint; you don’t truly recognize that you should repay debts, whatever you may say. But not only is moral language prescriptive, its implicit imperatives, unlike everyday imperatives such as ‘Shut the door’, carry with them implications for other similar occasions and for other people. The fact that I command you to shut the door implies nothing about whether I shall command or expect you to close it tomorrow or about whether I shall expect others to close it. There is nothing illogical about saying ‘Shut the door’ to one friend and not to another. But that is not true of a moral command, however it is phrased. Whether explicit (‘You ought to be kind’) or implicit (‘Kindness is good’), it is logically implied both that we should all be kind and that we should always be kind (other things being equal). One way of summarizing this point is to say that moral utterances are, by their nature, universalizable. If I say or believe that my neighbour should not play his trumpet after midnight, then I should not play my trombone after midnight either; and if I say that consideration is a moral good, then I should be expected both to show consideration and to demand it from others.