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ROSSIAN ETHICS
✦
ROSSIAN ETHICS
W.D. Ross and Contemporary
Moral Theory
DAV I D P H I L L I P S
1
1
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You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Phillips, David (David K.), author.
Title: Rossian ethics : W.D. Ross and contemporary
moral theory / David Phillips.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018051609 (print) | LCCN 2019015034 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190602192 (updf) | ISBN 9780190602208 (online content) |
ISBN 9780190054656 (epub) | ISBN 9780190602185 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Ross, W. D. (William David), 1877–1971.
Classification: LCC BJ654. R673 (ebook) |
LCC BJ654. R673 P45 2019 (print) | DDC 171/.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051609
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

To Susan
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 1
2. What Are Prima Facie Duties? 13
3. What Prima Facie Duties Are There?
Ross, Agent-Relativity, and the Rejection
of Consequentialism 57
4. What Things Are Good? 115
5. The Metaethical and Epistemological
Framework 155
Bibliography 197
Index 205
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have been extremely fortunate in the help I have received

with this project. Peter Ohlin and his colleagues at Oxford
University Press have been characteristically encouraging
and professional throughout; and I am particularly grateful
for their flexibility as work on the final draft was rescheduled
by Hurricane Harvey. The two referees, David McNaughton
and Anthony Skelton, provided invaluable feedback which
shaped the book in fundamental ways. Two of my colleagues,
Justin Coates and Luis Oliveira, read the entire manuscript
at different stages and helped me tremendously with many
suggestions for improvements and much guidance on con-
temporary literature. Jonathan Dancy, Jamie Dreier, and
George Sher gave acute and helpful comments on drafts of
individual chapters and sections. And Ed Sherline and an au-
dience at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress in 2015 pro-
vided very enlightening feedback on a version of chapter 3.
None of them, of course, is responsible for the book’s no
doubt numerous remaining flaws.
1
✦
INTRODUCTION
I HAVE TWO CONNECTED AIMS in this book. The first is

to interpret and critically evaluate W. D. Ross’s moral philos-
ophy. The second is to develop a distinctive normative view.
The two aims are connected because the normative view can
be developed, as I will develop it, as an interpretation of Ross.
But they are also separable: it would be perfectly possible to
find the normative view attractive in itself but misconceived
as a reading of Ross.
Let me say a little more about each aim. As to the
first: Ross’s most important works in moral philosophy, The
Right and the Good and Foundations of Ethics, contain signifi-
cant discussions both of metaethics and of moral theory.1 My
main focus will be Ross’s moral theory, which I think more
important and more distinctive than his metaethics. His
metaethics is largely a sophisticated development of views
articulated before him by Sidgwick, Moore, and others;2
and insofar as his views in moral epistemology are distinc-
tive, I shall argue that they are mistaken. His moral theory
is something new, different both from Sidgwick’s hedonistic
utilitarianism and from Moore’s ideal utilitarianism; and
I shall argue that what is new in it is importantly right.
As to the second aim: many opponents of consequen-
tialism, from Kant to Anscombe to the present, regard it with
2 | R ossian  E thics
hostility and contempt. But a quite different attitude is pos-

sible: the attitude that consequentialism is partly true but not
the whole truth; that the reason to promote the good is very
important but not our only reason. I think Ross is the best
source in the historical tradition for this kind of respectful
rejection of consequentialism. And I think a distinctive alter-
native to traditional consequentialism can be found in and
developed from his work, a view that is worth serious con-
sideration in contemporary moral theory.3
It will be helpful to have a name for the distinctive
normative view I will find in Ross. The name I will use
is “classical deontology.”4 Classical deontology is a view
about the nature of the most fundamental normative
truths. According to classical deontology the most funda-
mental normative principles are principles of prima facie
duty,5 principles which specify general kinds of reasons.
Utilitarians are right to think that reasons always derive
from goods; and ideal utilitarians are right, contra hedon-
istic utilitarians, to think that there are a small number of
distinct kinds of intrinsic goods. But consequentialists are
wrong to think that all reasons have the same weight for all
agents. Instead, there are a small number of distinct kinds of
agent-relative intensifiers: features that increase the weight
of certain reasons for certain agents. The key problem with
consequentialism is that it misses “the highly personal char-
acter of duty,” the special agent-relative weight of promises,
gratitude, and reparation.
I don’t think the kind of project I am undertaking here
is especially novel, either in the history of philosophy in ge-
neral or in the history of ethics in particular. At the start of
The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson writes,6
I ntroduction | 3
I have tried to present a clear, uncluttered and unified inter-

pretation, at least strongly supported by the text as it stands,
of the system of thought which the Critique contains; I have
tried to show how certain great parts of the structure can be
held apart from each other, while showing also how, within the
system itself, they are conceived of as related; I have tried to
give decisive reasons for rejecting some parts altogether; and
I have tried to indicate, though no more than indicate, how the
arguments and conclusions of other parts might be so modi-
fied or reconstructed as to be made more acceptable.
In a similar vein, at the start of Hobbesian Moral and Political

Theory, Gregory Kavka writes,7
Though he has been more than three hundred years in the

grave, Thomas Hobbes still has much to teach us. His works
identify enduring problems of social and political life and
suggest some promising solutions for them. Yet, at the same
time, they contain important errors. . . . To learn the most
from Hobbes, we must correct or avoid these errors, while
preserving and building upon the fundamentally sound philo-
sophical structure they infest.
With that aim in mind, this book offers an explicitly re-
visionist interpretation of Hobbes’s moral and political
philosophy. . . . The ultimate goal of this process is to ex-
plicate and defend a plausible system of moral and political
hypotheses suggested and inspired by Hobbes. Throughout,
an attempt is made to indicate clearly which of the views
discussed are Hobbes’s and which are proposed alterations
or improvements of his position. Because the modifications
offered are not trivial, it would be misleading to describe the
theory propounded here as that of Hobbes. Even where it
departs from his position, however, the theory resembles his
in critical respects.
Strawson’s and Kavka’s projects have the same char-

acter as mine. But, focused as they are on Kant and Hobbes
respectively, they are models, not competitors. One philo-
sophical project, however, is, I take it, both a model for and
a competitor with mine: Robert Audi’s defense of “value-
based intuitionism.”8 Value-based intuitionism is a blend
of Rossian and Kantian ideas. Audi could (and I take it he
does) argue that the best philosophical interpretation of
Ross is that Ross is a value-based intuitionist. This is not
supposed to be true by definition. And it is not supposed
to be true because everything Ross says fits value-based
intuitionism—some of what Ross explicitly says conflicts
with value-based intuitionism. It is supposed to be true
rather because, Audi thinks, the best way to make phil-
osophical sense of Ross—to attribute to Ross a view that
matches much of what he says and is independently philo-
sophically plausible—is to understand him as a value-based
intuitionist. I will be arguing (contra Audi) that the best
philosophical interpretation of Ross is as a classical deon-
tologist. Like Audi, I will not take my interpretive claim to
be true by definition. Rather, I will be arguing that the best
way to make philosophical sense of Ross—to attribute to
him a view that matches much of what he says and is inde-
pendently philosophically plausible—is to understand him
as a classical deontologist.
Any philosophical project like Audi’s, Kavka’s, Strawson’s,
or mine involves two potentially conflicting prima facie phil-
osophical duties—to interpret the texts faithfully, and to de-
velop the most plausible philosophical view. A Rossian might
well deny that there is any helpful general rule about how
to balance these prima facie philosophical duties against one
another.
I ntroduction | 5
Ross’s distinctive philosophical views did not arise in a

vacuum. They developed by acquaintance with and reflec-
tion on the ideas of earlier central figures in the British in-
tuitionist tradition, which stretches, as Thomas Hurka has
persuasively argued, from Sidgwick to Ewing.9 Prichard and
Moore were particularly important to him. They are the two
influences he mentions by name in the preface to The Right
and the Good. Of Prichard he says:
My main obligation is to Professor H. A. Prichard. I be-

lieve I owe the main lines of the view expressed in my first
two chapters to his article “Does Moral Philosophy rest on a
Mistake?”10 (RG v)
He goes on to say:
I also wish to say how much I owe to Professor G. E. Moore’s

writings. A glance at the index will show how much I have re-
ferred to him. (RG v)
And indeed there are more references to Moore in the

index of The Right and the Good than there are to any other
philosopher.
There is also a particularly close relationship between
Ross’s work and some of C. D. Broad’s. In Five Types of Ethical
Theory,11 published in the very same year as The Right and the
Good, Broad arrived independently at views strikingly like
Ross’s. In the later Foundations of Ethics (1939), Ross noted
this similarity:
In the main, Professor Broad’s view is just that which I wish to

advocate, viz. that among the features of a situation that tend
to make an act right there are some which are independent of
the tendency of the act to bring about a maximum of good.

To say this is to hold an intuitionistic view of one kind. (F 82)
And Broad responded enthusiastically to Ross’s work,

observing in his review of the Foundations,
The Provost of Oriel’s book, The Right and the Good, published
in 1930, was much the most important contribution to ethical
theory made in England for a generation,
and concluding,
I hope that generations of undergraduates, in the intervals

between making the world safer and safer for democracy,
will come to know and appreciate this book under the af-
fectionate and accurate nickname of “The Righter and the
Better.”12
My interpretive target here is Ross, not Prichard or Broad (or

Moore). But I will draw freely on Prichard and Broad in de-
veloping my interpretation of Ross.
I hope, of course, to make a convincing case for
interpreting Ross as a classical deontologist. But I hope that
those who are not convinced will still find the discussion of
Ross illuminating: that they will think the questions I raise
about how to place Ross within contemporary moral theory
and how to understand the core of his opposition to conse-
quentialism are important questions, even if they think I give
them the wrong answers.
This study will have four further substantive chapters. In
the first three I consider in turn the three central elements
of Ross’s normative view: the concept of prima facie duty,
the moderate pluralism about the right, and the moderate
I ntroduction | 7
pluralism about the good. I begin in chapter 2 with the con-

cept of prima facie duty. Ross introduces it to address the
objection that deontology is rendered incoherent by conflicts
of duty. I raise two central interpretive issues, about the char-
acterization of prima facie duty and the structure of an ethics
based upon it, and about whether Ross’s central normative
claims are best understood as claims about morality or as
claims about normative reasons. And I argue that Ross was
wrong in the Foundations to follow Prichard in prioritizing
subjective rather than objective rightness. In c hapter 3 I turn
to Ross’s moderate pluralism about the right. I focus on his
diagnosis of ideal utilitarianism as missing “the highly per-
sonal character of duty.” I argue that almost everything on
his list of underived prima facie duties consists either (a) of
duties to promote the good or (b) of what he calls “special
obligations”: reasons to keep promises, repay wrongs, and
manifest gratitude. I argue that these special obligations are
(what I call) “agent-relative intensifiers” of reasons to pro-
mote goods. I argue that if we understand deontological
reasons as consisting only of (b) we can avoid problems with
standard deontology. I argue, following Sidgwick, that there
are other agent-relative intensifiers Ross himself does not rec-
ognize. And I argue that the normative theory that all reason-
giving features are either goods or agent-relative intensifiers
of reasons to promote goods is distinctive and attractive.
In chapter 4 I turn to Ross’s moderate pluralism about the
good. I begin with aspects of his view with which I am sym-
pathetic: his provisional list of intrinsic goods, virtue, know-
ledge, pleasure, and the proportioning of pleasure to virtue;
and his appeal to intuitions about the relative goodness of
quite abstractly described possible worlds to defend the
list. But I argue against his position on the relative value of
different goods. In different ways in The Right and the Good

and the Foundations Ross is a radical antihedonist, arguing
that virtue is in some way systematically more valuable than
pleasure. I reject both his (excessively negative) treatment of
pleasure and his (excessively positive) treatment of virtue.
Finally I ask whether Ross’s list of intrinsic goods is exhaus-
tive. I argue that it is at the least a very plausible core list and
that Ross’s explanation of its unity is helpful in assessing pos-
sible additions. In c hapter 5 I consider the metaethical and
epistemological framework within which Ross develops his
normative views. I argue that the metaethical framework is
plausible and defensible on the whole, though problematic in
various important details. But I argue that Ross’s distinctive
views in moral epistemology should be rejected.
My interpretation of Ross is the product of a range of
specific judgments of interpretive and philosophical plausi-
bility. But it is also, as I indicated above, shaped by a guiding
idea: that Ross develops a version of deontology that is close to
consequentialism and a product of important modifications
to consequentialism. One way to approach that guiding idea
is historical. Ross is the clearest and most articulate oppo-
nent of consequentialism and utilitarianism in the Sidgwick-
to-Ewing school; so of course we should look to him for
reasons to reject consequentialism. But he doesn’t show
the hostility to consequentialism characteristic of Kantians
and some other more recent deontologists. What we should
look for in reading him is a theory that is consequentialism
plus: that allows that consequentialists are right that there are
goods, and that we have a duty to promote them, and that
this is one crucial truth about the normative; but denies that
it is the whole truth. If (as the title of a paper by Hurka has
it) Audi offers “a marriage of Ross and Kant,” what I suggest
I ntroduction | 9
by contrast might be characterized as “a marriage of Ross

and Sidgwick.”13 For not only do I emphasize in general the
ways in which Ross is a friendly rather than a hostile critic of
consequentialism; the ways in which I suggest a revisionary
reading of Ross all bring him closer to Sidgwick.
NOTES
1. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1930). I will refer to it as “RG”; page references will be placed in
the text. W. D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1939). I will refer to it as “F”; page references will be
placed in the text. While at least chapter 2 of The Right and
the Good has long been quite widely read, the Foundations
was till recently much less studied. I think both are essen-
tial for understanding and evaluating Ross’s contribution to
moral philosophy. Ross also published other work in moral
philosophy, in chronological order: a chapter (chapter 7) in
Aristotle (London: Methuen, 1923); four articles leading up
to The Right and the Good: “The Basis of Objective Judgments
in Ethics,” International Journal of Ethics 37.2 (1927): 113–
27; “Is There a Moral End?,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society: Supplementary Volumes 8 (1928): 91–98; “The Nature
of Morally Good Action,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
new series, 29 (1928–29): 251–74; “The Ethics of Punishment,”
Journal of Philosophical Studies 4.14 (April 1929): 205–11; one ar-
ticle between The Right and the Good and the Foundations: “The
Coherence Theory of Goodness,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society: Supplementary Volumes 10 (1931): 61–70; and the later
Kant’s Ethical Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954). In my
judgment none of this other work is nearly as important as The
Right and the Good and the Foundations.
2. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed.
(London: Macmillan, 1907). I will refer to it as “ME”; further
page references will be placed in the text. G. E. Moore, Principia
Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903). I will
1 0 | R ossian  E thics
refer to it as “Principia”; further page references will be placed

in the text.
3. Some remarks on terminology are called for. By “consequen-
tialism” I will mean what might also be called “traditional
consequentialism”: the agent- neutral thesis endorsed both
by hedonistic utilitarians and by ideal utilitarians like Moore
according to which, as Ross puts it (RG 17), “what produces
the maximum good is right.” Ross himself has no name for
this thesis. In Five Types of Ethical Theory (London: Kegan
Paul, 1930), Broad does introduce a name. He calls theories
according to which “the rightness or wrongness of an ac-
tion is always determined by its tendency to produce certain
consequences which are intrinsically good or bad” teleolog-
ical theories (206–7). He contrasts them with deontological
theories. In so doing, he introduces the term “deontology”
in its now standard philosophical sense: “I would first divide
ethical theories into two classes, which I will call respectively
deontological and teleological. Deontological theories hold that
there are ethical propositions of the form: ‘Such and such a
kind of action would always be right (or wrong) in such and
such circumstances, no matter what the consequences might
be’ ” (206). While “deontological” and “deontology” stuck, “tel-
eological” and “teleology” were replaced by “consequentialist”
and “consequentialism,” terms introduced by Anscombe in
“Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33 (1958): 1–19. For
discussions of the history of the term “deontology,” see Robert
Louden, “Towards a Genealogy of ‘Deontology,’” Journal
of the History of Philosophy 34.4 (1996): 571–92 and Jens
Timmerman, “What’s Wrong with ‘Deontology’?,” Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society 115 (2015): 75–92.
In recent years a sophisticated literature has developed fo-
cused on the possibility of “consequentializing” supposedly
nonconsequentialist moral and normative theories. Important
work in this literature includes Jamie Dreier, “In Defense of
Consequentializing,” in Mark Timmons, ed., Oxford Studies in
Normative Ethics, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2011), 97–119; Douglas Portmore, “Consequentializing Moral
Theories,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2007): 39–73,
I ntroduction | 1 1
and Commonsense Consequentialism (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2011) (especially chapter 4); and Campbell
Brown, “Consequentialize This!,” Ethics 121.4 (2011): 739–
71. A key claim in this literature is what Portmore calls “the
deontic equivalence thesis” and Dreier “the extensional
equivalence thesis”: that all plausible moral theories can be
represented as forms of consequentialism. Unless I specify
otherwise, I will not be using “consequentialism” and cognate
terms in this broad way. I say more about consequentializing
and its implications for the project of this book in chapter 3.
4. My justification for “classical” is that the form of deontology
in question was suggested by the philosopher—Broad—who
introduced the term “deontology” in its now standard phil-
osophical sense. I also considered “Rossian deontology,” but
thought it too likely to suggest that the question how to inter-
pret Ross was not substantive. As I say in what follows, I do
intend it to be a substantive question whether Ross is best
interpreted as a classical deontologist or as (for example) a
value-based intuitionist.
5. Unlike Ross, who standardly italicizes “prima facie,” I will not
do so to avoid cluttering the text with italics.
6. P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen,
1966), 11.
7. Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 3.
8. See in particular Robert Audi, The Good in the Right
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
9. For these ideas, see in particular Thomas Hurka, “Moore in
the Middle,” Ethics 113 (2003): 599–628; “Introduction” and
“Common Themes from Sidgwick to Ewing,” in Thomas Hurka,
ed., Underivative Duty (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011); and, for the fullest presentation, Thomas Hurka, British
Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014). Hurka initially presented his view as
a corrective to the idea that Moore’s work represented a “clean
break” from earlier ethical theorizing. (Interestingly, though
of course she is much less of a fan than Hurka, Anscombe
also identifies something like a Sidgwick-to-Ewing school in
“Modern Moral Philosophy.” The difference between her and

Hurka is that she includes the postwar “Oxford Moralists,” in-
cluding Hare and Nowell-Smith, as well as the prewar “Oxford
Objectivists” like Ross.) For a brief expression of skepticism
about whether the philosophers Hurka includes constitute a
school see Bart Schultz’s review of Underivative Duty, British
Journal for the History of Philosophy 20.6 (2012): 1223–26. One
might object, as Schultz there does, that Hurka’s conception
of the dimensions of the school is too expansive. One might
alternatively object that his conception is too restrictive, and
that earlier important rational intuitionists like Clarke and
Price should be included too. Ross refers to Clarke and Price
only once in RG and the Foundations: in a note on page 54
of the Foundations about defining rightness in terms of fit-
ness or suitability. The eighteenth-century figure he cites more
and seems more deeply influenced by is Butler. He quotes at
length from the Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue on pages
78–79 of the Foundations in arguing against utilitarianism; and
(as I discuss in c hapter 4), the differences between his treat-
ment of moral goodness in The Right and the Good and the
Foundations are to a large extent the product of complicating
the psychological picture by incorporating Butler’s distinction
between general and particular desires.
10. H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”
Mind 21 (January 1912): 21–37.
11. C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1930). I will refer to it as Five Types; further
page references will be placed in the text.
12. C. D. Broad, “Critical Notice of W. D. Ross, Foundations of
Ethics (Oxford, 1939),” Mind, new series, 49 (April 1940): 239.
13. Thomas Hurka, “Audi’s Marriage of Ross and Kant,” c hapter 6
in Mark Timmons, John Greco, and Al. Mele, eds., Rationality
and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
2
✦
WHAT ARE PRIMA
FACIE DUTIES?
ROSS’S MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION

is the idea of prima facie duty. He introduces the term on
page 19 of The Right and the Good:
I suggest “prima facie duty” or “conditional duty” as a brief

way of referring to the characteristic (quite distinct from that
of being a duty proper) which an act has, in virtue of being of
a certain kind (e.g. the keeping of a promise), of being an act
that would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of
another kind which is morally significant. Whether an act is a
duty proper or actual duty depends on all the morally signifi-
cant kinds it is an instance of. (RG 19–20)
Later he characterizes prima facie duties as “tendencies,”

compares them to physical forces, and distinguishes prima
facie duties as “parti-resultant attributes” from duties which
are “toti-resultant attributes”:
We have to distinguish from the characteristic of being our

duty that of tending to be our duty. Any act that we do contains
various elements in virtue of which it falls under various
categories. In virtue of being the breaking of a promise, for
instance, it tends to be wrong; in virtue of being an instance

of relieving distress it tends to be right. Tendency to be one’s
duty may be called a parti-resultant attribute, i.e. one which
belongs to an act in virtue of some one component in its na-
ture. Being one’s duty is a toti-resultant attribute, one which
belongs to an act in virtue of its whole nature and of nothing
less than this. . . . Another instance of the same distinction may
be found in the operation of natural laws. Qua subject to the
force of gravitation towards some other body, each body tends
to move in a particular direction with a particular velocity; but
its actual movement depends on all the forces to which it is
subject. (RG 28–29)
The main argument for introducing the concept of

prima facie duty is that it allows the deontologist to avoid
familiar objections to simple absolutist deontology. The most
standard such objection is that duties may conflict, and that
in the face of conflicts of duty deontology is rendered inco-
herent. Ross explains very clearly in the Foundations how the
concept of prima facie duty helps the deontologist solve or
dissolve this problem:
It is the overlooking of the distinction . . . between actual

obligatoriness and the tendency to be obligatory, that leads to
the apparent problem of conflict of duties, and it is by drawing
the distinction that we solve the problem, or rather show it
to be non-existent. For while an act may well be prima facie
obligatory in respect of one character and prima facie for-
bidden in virtue of another, it becomes obligatory or forbidden
only in virtue of the totality of its ethically relevant character-
istics. We are perfectly familiar with this way of thinking when
we are face to face with actual problems of conduct, but in
theories of ethics responsibilities have often been overstated as
being absolute obligations admitting of no exception, and the
W hat A re P rima F acie D uties ? | 1 5
unreal problem of conflict of duties has thus been supposed to

exist. (F 86)
A related but more historical point concerns Sidgwick’s

critique of absolutist deontology (what he calls “dogmatic
intuitionism”) in the Methods. Like many earlier readers,
though not so many more recent ones,1 Broad in Five Types
of Ethical Theory finds Sidgwick’s critique convincing:
I think that anyone who reads the relevant chapters in Sidgwick

will agree that the extreme form of Intuitionism which he
ascribes to common-sense cannot be maintained. And he is
no doubt right that common-sense wants to hold something
like this, and retreats from it only at the point of the bayonet.
(Five Types, 217)
But rather than agree with Sidgwick that the only alternative
is a mainly teleological view, it is at this point that Broad,
working (so far as I know and can tell) quite independently
of Ross, sketches an alternative “form of Intuitionism which
is not open to Sidgwick’s objections,” featuring, inter alia, a
version of the concept of prima facie duty developed in terms
of fittingness, which (as we will see) Ross goes on largely to
endorse in the Foundations. Broad suggests that actions have
two quite different kinds of ethical features,
fittingness or unfittingness . . . and . . . utility or disutility. . . .

Fittingness or unfittingness is a direct ethical relation between
an action or emotion and the total course of events in which it
takes place. . . . It is quite easy to give examples. . . . I may be an
elector to an office, and one of the candidates may have done
me a service. To prefer him to a better qualified candidate
would fit one aspect of the situation, since it would be re-

warding a benefactor. (Five Types, 219)
And he remarks that
It seems quite clear that the Intuitionist will have to moderate

his claims very greatly. He will be confined to statements about
tendencies to be right and tendencies to be wrong. He can say
that a lie has a very strong tendency to be wrong, and that it will
be wrong unless telling the truth would have very great disutility
or unless the situation be of a certain very special kind in which
it is a matter of honour to shield a third person. (Five Types, 222)
Ewing observed that the concept of prima facie duty

was “one of the most important discoveries of the century in
moral philosophy.”2 But its importance does not mean that
the concept is unproblematic or that the character of the con-
ceptual scheme in which it plays a key role is immediately
clear. Ross himself was dissatisfied with the name “prima
facie duty.” Various later theorists went further in criticizing
his characterizations of it. And while Ross did not use the
concept of a normative reason, its ubiquity in contemporary
philosophical ethics means that any reconstruction of Ross
must consider whether prima facie duties are just normative
reasons, or, if not, how to understand the relationship be-
tween prima facie duties and normative reasons.
My aim in this chapter is to explore these issues. I will
begin by asking about the coherence and adequacy of Ross’s
treatment of the concept of prima facie duty in its original
philosophical context. I will then ask what to make of his
views once we introduce the contemporary concept of a
normative reason. And I will turn finally to the questions
whether Ross is or ought to be a scalar deontologist, and
whether he was right in the Foundations to follow Prichard

in prioritizing subjective over objective rightness.
1 . P R I M A FA C I E D U T Y:
C H A R A C T E R I Z AT I O N
Concerns about the characterization and definition of

prima facie duty begin with Ross himself. Immediately after
introducing the term he apologizes:
The phrase, “prima facie duty” must be apologized for, since

(1) it suggests that what we are speaking of is a kind of duty,
whereas it is in fact not a duty, but something related in a spe-
cial way to duty. Strictly speaking, we want not a phrase in
which duty is qualified by an adjective, but a separate noun.
(2) “Prima” facie suggests that one is speaking only of an ap-
pearance which a moral situation presents at first sight, and
which may turn out to be illusory; whereas what I am speaking
of is an objective fact involved in the nature of the situation, or
more strictly in an element of its nature. (RG 20)
He considers, in The Right and the Good and in the

Foundations, Prichard’s alternative suggestion, “claim,” but
rejects it as not fitting duties to self. In the Foundations he
substitutes “responsibility” for “prima facie duty.” But that
terminology never caught on.
Moreover, he at least partly changed his mind about how
to characterize the key concept. As we saw in the passages
previously quoted, in The Right and the Good he characterizes
prima facie duty in two distinct ways in terms of duty
proper: as what would be a duty proper in the absence of
conflicting prima facie duties (what we can label, following
Jonathan Dancy, the “isolation account”) and as tendencies to

be a duty proper (following Dancy again, call this the “ten-
dency account”).3 By contrast, in the Foundations he adopts
and amends Broad’s alternative idea (found in the passages
I have quoted) that prima facie duty should be characterized
in terms of fittingness, not in terms of duty proper:
It seems to me that [Professor Broad] should make right-

ness depend not on a joint consideration of fittingness and
utility, but on a joint consideration of fittingness arising from
utility and fittingness arising from other sources, such as
that a promise has been made. I feel, myself, no difficulty in
recognizing, in the tendency which an act has . . . to produce
maximum good, something in virtue of which that act tends to
be fitting to the situation. (F 81)
But he does not straightforwardly give up on the earlier ten-

dency account; he talks in terms of forces and tendencies
soon afterward, on page 84 of the Foundations.
Further important questions about definition and theoret-
ical structure were then raised by a number of mid-twentieth-
century critics. Some of their criticisms were quite pointed. In
an article published in 1963, H. J. McCloskey observed,
Ross’s discussion of prima facie duties . . . [is] obscure, con-

fused and inconsistent . . . [and] suffers from the basic defect
that Ross attempts to account for the nature of these prima
facie duties by reference to absolute duties.4
And in a celebrated discussion from 1978, John Searle wrote,
The discussions I have seen of [the notion of a prima facie obli-

gation] . . . are extremely confused. Some, though by no means
all, of the confusion is due to Ross. . . . I shall not spend much

space on Ross’s account, because it does not seem to me that it
can be made consistent internally.5
I shall argue first that these verdicts are too harsh. I don’t
deny that Ross’s characterizations of prima facie duty are
often problematic or at best partly true. Nor do I deny that he
sometimes fails to appreciate the full significance of his key
conceptual innovation. But, unlike critics like McCloskey
and Searle, I think that he has a clear and plausible theoret-
ical picture nonetheless.
Ross lays out this theoretical picture towards the end of
chapter 2 of The Right and the Good:
We may try to state . . . the universal nature of all acts that are
right. It is obvious that any of the acts that we do has count-
less effects, directly or indirectly, on countless people, and the
probability is that any act, however right it may be, will have
adverse effects . . . on some innocent people. Similarly, any
wrong act will probably have beneficial effects on some de-
serving people. Every act, therefore, viewed in some aspects,
will be prima facie right, and viewed in others, prima facie
wrong, and right acts can be distinguished from wrong acts
only as being those which, of all those possible for the agent
in the circumstances, have the greatest balance of prima facie
rightness, in those respects in which they are prima facie right,
over their prima facie wrongness, in those respects in which
they are prima facie wrong. (RG 41)6
The theoretical picture Ross here lays out contrasts

sharply with the theoretical picture associated with simple
absolutist deontology. It is worth dwelling on the contrast.
Consider first a simple absolutist deontology. Suppose there
is a possible act P that would be the keeping of a promise.

Suppose the absolutist deontology includes a principle: it is
your duty to keep a promise. The acts that are duties have
two relevant properties; the base property7 of being of a kind
that is duty-making (in this case the property of being the
keeping of a promise) and the normative property of being
a duty.
Contrast this with Ross’s picture developed for a simple
two-option case. Suppose there are just two possible acts: P,
an act that would be the keeping of a promise, and G, an
act that would produce the most good. Suppose the Rossian
theory also includes just two relevant principles of prima
facie duty: the principle that it is a prima facie duty to keep
your promises and the principle that it is a prima facie duty
to produce the most good. Unlike simple absolutist deon-
tology, Ross’s picture has to include something that comes
in degrees: weight or degree of obligatoriness or prima facie
rightness, in order to determine, in this case, whether the
prima facie duty to keep the promise is weightier than the
prima facie duty to produce the most good or vice versa.
And, again unlike simple absolutist deontology, there needs
to be a principle connecting prima facie duty to duty proper.
The principle Ross endorses is that it is your duty proper to
do whatever act there is most prima facie duty to do. It thus
involves (as Ross says explicitly in the preceding passage)
first considering all possible acts and determining which of
these has the greatest balance of prima facie rightness over
prima facie wrongness.
Ross’s picture is thus significantly more complicated
than simple absolutist deontology in that it includes mul-
tiple distinct normatively important properties. As in
simple absolutist deontology, each possible act has the base

properties named in the principles—in this case, that of
being (or not) the keeping of a promise, and of being (or
not) the doing of the most good. And, for each of these base
properties, there is a consequent normative property. But now
this initial consequent normative property has to be scalar: it
has to be the property of having a certain degree of weight or
obligatoriness. And there are then three further normative
properties: the property of having a certain degree of overall
obligatoriness, which is a property of each possible act that
depends on combining8 the degrees of obligatoriness it has in
virtue of each of its normatively significant component base
properties; the property of being (or not) more obligatory
than any other act, which depends both on its overall degree
of obligatoriness and on the overall obligatoriness of each al-
ternative possible act; and the further property of being (or
not being) a duty proper, which depends on the property of
being more obligatory than any other act and the further
principle that it is your duty proper to do whatever act there
is most prima facie duty to do.
In the light of these reflections, return to the question of
the adequacy of Ross’s characterizations of prima facie duty
earlier in chapter 2 of The Right and the Good. Consider first
the claim that
“prima facie duty” . . . [is] . . . the characteristic (quite

distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act
has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e.g. the keeping
of a promise), of being an act that would be a duty
proper if it were not at the same time of another kind
which is morally significant.
What Ross says here is not an adequate characterization of the

property of being a prima facie duty, for three reasons. First,
whether an act is a duty proper doesn’t depend only on the
morally significant properties it has. It depends also on the
morally significant properties of alternative possible acts. So
it is not straightforwardly true that an act that is of only one
(positive) morally significant kind is thereby a duty proper.9
Second, prima facie duties don’t matter for the evaluation of
an option only when that option has only one morally signif-
icant property. As Ross’s theoretical picture makes clear, they
matter in two different ways in other (much more common)
sorts of cases: when there are multiple prima facie duties that
together make it the case that one possible act is more oblig-
atory than any other and hence is a duty proper; or when, on
the flip side, they are outweighed and the act that is (in some
respect) a prima facie duty is not a duty proper. In some of
the latter cases (as Ross elsewhere recognizes) an outweighed
prima facie duty will still have other normative significance.
What Dancy calls the “isolation account” is not an adequate
characterization of the property of being a prima facie duty
in part because it misses these important roles of prima facie
duty, and focuses only on the role of prima facie duties in the
rare (or indeed impossible) situations in which there is only
a single one. And Dancy also emphasizes a third reason why
the isolation account is unsatisfactory: it doesn’t capture the
idea that prima facie duties come in degrees. In the situation
in which there are no other relevant prima facie duties, de-
gree of obligatoriness can be ignored. But in the other (much
more usual) situations, degrees of obligatoriness are crucial.
In this passage Ross also says that the characteristic of
being a prima facie duty is “quite distinct from that of being a
duty proper.” Some commentators10 have criticized this claim
too; I am inclined to think it is basically right. The character-

istic of being a prima facie duty is the characteristic of having
a certain degree of obligatoriness or weight in virtue of being
of a single morally significant kind. The characteristic of
being a duty proper is, on Ross’s picture, quite different: it
is a further characteristic that acts have in virtue of having a
greater overall degree of obligatoriness than any alternative.
If by saying that the two properties are “quite distinct”
Ross meant that the property of being a prima facie duty
was not in itself normatively significant he would be wrong.
Searle criticizes him in part on this ground. He suggests (81)
that on Ross’s official view prima facie duties are merely ap-
parent duties. If so, Ross cannot make any proper sense of
situations in which duties conflict.
But this is clearly not what Ross meant. It is true that
Ross picked the wrong Latinism to name his new concept; he
would have been better off with “pro tanto duty” than “prima
facie duty.”11 But it is no part of his “official view” of prima
facie duties that they are merely apparent. He goes out of his
way to stress the reverse: that they are “objective fact(s) in-
volved in the nature of the situation” (RG 20).
Now consider a second claim.
The property of being a prima facie duty is the property

of tending to be a duty proper.
This claim might just be an alternate way of stating the isola-

tion account: an act would be understood to have a tendency
to be a duty proper just in that it would be a duty proper if nei-
ther it nor any alternative to it were of any other normatively
relevant kind. If so, for the reasons already given, the claim
would be inadequate as a characterization of prima facie
duty. On another interpretation, the claim about tendencies

would be equivalent to some statistical claim. One candidate
would be the following:
(a) “There is a prima facie duty to keep promises” means

(b) Most acts of keeping promises are right.
Though Ross thinks both (a) and (b) are true, he clearly
doesn’t think (a) means (b). For it is, though false, perfectly
possible that most acts of keeping promises should not be
right because in most cases the prima facie duty to keep a
promise is outweighed by other competing prima facie
duties. And even in this unlikely event, (a) would still be true.
The other and better line of thought closely connected in
Ross to the talk of tendencies is the force metaphor: the analogy
between prima facie duties and individual forces acting on a
body. Each prima facie duty is like an individual force on a
body; duty proper is analogous to the motion or acceleration
of the body produced by the combination of forces to which it
is subject. This comparison is, I think, helpful but problematic.
It is helpful in three main ways. First, forces are real features
of the physical situation regardless of the direction in which a
body ultimately moves. Second, forces, like prima facie duties,
come in degrees. Third, forces interact and the final motion of
a body depends on the interaction of all the forces to which it
is subject; similarly with prima facie duty.
There are also, though, four important respects of
disanalogy. In one way the normative case is simpler than
the force case: the normative is only one-dimensional, while
forces operate in three dimensions. But in two other ways the
normative case is more complicated than the force case: the
interaction of individual prima facie duties need not be
additive, and indeed on Ross’s view there are important cases

where it isn’t; and normative judgment is comparative in that
it involves evaluating different options rather than just looking
at the forces operating on a single body. Finally, though prima
facie duty is importantly analogous to individual forces, duty
proper is not analogous to the final motion of a body, even if
we stick to one dimension. The final motion of a body even in
one dimension is scalar, not all-or-nothing: it is motion (or ac-
celeration) of a certain degree positively or negatively. This is
most closely analogous to the overall degree of obligatoriness
of a possible act. It is not at all so directly analogous to the
property of having a greater degree of obligatoriness than
any other possible act. And it is still less directly analogous
to the property of being a duty proper (which Ross thinks
depends on but is distinct from that of having a greater degree
of obligatoriness than any other possible act).
Consider finally Ross’s claim that prima facie duty is a
parti-resultant attribute and duty proper a toti-resultant at-
tribute. The first half of the claim seems true: that an act has
a certain degree of obligatoriness in virtue of possessing a
base property seems to depend just on that base property.
But the claim that duty proper is toti-resultant is in two main
ways more problematic. A first problem is that the degree of
overall obligatoriness of an act doesn’t depend on all of an
act’s properties. Many of these (as Ross sometimes explicitly
notices, including in the passage where he first introduces the
concept of prima facie duty) are on his view normatively inert.
So the overall obligatoriness of an option doesn’t depend on
all its base properties, but instead only on its “morally sig-
nificant” base properties. Second, the property that depends
on all of an act’s morally significant base properties is the
property of having a certain overall degree of obligatoriness.
But, again, as reflection on Ross’s theoretical picture makes

clear, this is not the property of being a duty proper. We
have to distinguish the property of having a greater degree
of overall obligatoriness than any other option from the pro-
perty of having a certain overall degree of obligatoriness. And
then we further have to distinguish the property of having a
greater degree of overall obligatoriness than any other option
from the property of being a duty proper. These latter two
properties are in an important sense not toti-resultant. For
they depend not only on the degree of overall obligatoriness
of this possible act; they depend also on the degree of overall
obligatoriness of each possible alternative act.
Much of what Ross says in introducing and explaining
the concept of prima facie duty thus is indeed misleading or
problematic. But he has a clear and coherent theoretical pic-
ture nonetheless. The main source of the problems is, I sug-
gest, his failure fully and consistently to recognize and to
take into account the additional complexities entailed by the
move from principles of duty proper to principles of prima
facie duty—in particular, the complexities involved in having
four rather than two distinct kinds of normatively important
property in the theoretical picture. But, again, I don’t think
this shows that there is anything fundamentally wrong with
the theoretical picture.
2 . R O S S , P R I M A FA C I E D U T Y, A N D
N O R M AT I V E R E A S O N S
If I am right so far, no intractable problems with Ross’s theo-

retical picture were raised by mid-twentieth-century critics.
But a different set of issues arises when we try to understand

and relate Ross’s claims to those made by many more con-
temporary moral theorists. As T. M. Scanlon observes at the
start of Being Realistic about Reasons,
Contemporary metaethics differs in . . . important ways from

the metaethics of the 1950s and 1960s, and even the later
1970s, when John Mackie wrote Ethics. . . . In that earlier pe-
riod, discussion in metaethics focused almost entirely on mo-
rality. . . . Today . . . a significant part of the debate concerns
practical reasoning and normativity more generally.12
Like many other contemporary philosophers, Scanlon here

draws a distinction between claims about morality and
claims about normative reasons.13
As Scanlon and many others see it, the concept of a nor-
mative reason is fundamental in that it is both naturalisti-
cally and nonnaturalistically irreducible.14 Scanlon inclines
to the further view that all other normative claims can be
reductively analyzed in terms of the concept of a reason.
These views of Scanlon’s are far from universal. Some
philosophers want to reject and others to reductively ana-
lyze the concept of a normative reason.15 But at least among
those who embrace the concept of a normative reason,
Scanlon’s views about its character and fundamentality are
widely shared.
By contrast, though many philosophers distinguish
claims about morality from claims about normative reasons,
there is considerably less agreement about how to under-
stand the distinctively moral and its relation to the generi-
cally normative. One possibility is to identify the moral as a
subspecies of the normative with a distinctive substance or
content. Michael Smith articulates a view of this kind in The

Moral Problem:
What the analysis of normative reasons quite generally leaves

out of account—and rightly so, of course—is the distinctive sub-
stance or content of reasons that makes them into moral reasons
as opposed to non-moral reasons. The fact that there is such a
distinctive substance or content is . . . evident from the platitudes
concerning substance that we find amongst the platitudes con-
stitutive of the moral. These are platitudes like “Right acts are
often concerned to promote or sustain or contribute in some
way to human flourishing,” “Right acts are in some way expres-
sive of equal concern and respect,” and the like.16
Another possibility is to understand moral claims as

claims about the rationality of distinctively moral emotions,
as Allan Gibbard does:
What a person does is morally wrong if and only if it is rational

for him to feel guilty for doing it, and for others to resent him
for doing it.17
As Gibbard notes, the roots of this conception of morality go at

least as far back as Mill.18 Indeed Stephen Darwall traces it much
further back, to the early modern natural lawyers. And Darwall
articulates the conception in a distinctive and influential way:
The concept of moral obligation is conceptually tied to that of

moral responsibility or accountability. It is a conceptual truth
that what we are morally required or obligated to do, what it
would be wrong for us not to do, is what we are warrantedly
held accountable for doing and blamed for not doing if we
omit the action without a valid excuse. Moral philosophers
from Grotius on made a fundamental distinction between le-

gitimate demands, on the one hand, and rational “counsel” on
the other, and placed moral obligations squarely on the de-
mand side of the ledger.19
A further influential approach is Scanlon’s. He

understands the core of morality, what we owe to each other,
as involving a distinctive and important subclass of reasons
defined in terms of hypothetical agreement:
What we need to do . . . is to explain . . . how the idea that

an act is wrong flows from the idea that there is an objec-
tion of a certain kind to people’s being allowed to perform
such actions, and we need to do this in a way that makes clear
how an act’s being wrong in the sense described can provide
a reason not to do it. . . . Contractualism offers such an ac-
count. It holds that an act is wrong if its performance under
the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of princi-
ples for the general regulation of behavior that no one could
reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general
agreement.20
Ross makes no such distinction between morality and

reasons. His unitary concept of duty blends the generically
normative with the distinctively moral. Indeed, as I shall
now argue, Ross does not possess the contemporary concept
of a normative reason. To see this, consider a striking con-
trast between Ross’s views and Parfit’s. At the very start of
On What Matters Parfit introduces the concept of a norma-
tive reason. Since it is indefinable, it cannot be explained by
giving a definition. Instead, Parfit says
We must explain . . . concepts [like “a reason”] in a different

way, by getting people to think thoughts that use these
concepts. One example is the thought that we always have a

reason to avoid being in agony. (OWM 1, 31)
Parfit’s appeal to this thought at this point suggests that he

thinks one of the clearest and most compelling examples of a
reason is the reason to avoid pain for oneself.
In a starkly contrasting passage, Ross writes,
That we are conscious of no duty to maximize pleasure for our-

selves seems to be so clear as not to need argument; and per-
haps what is needed is rather some explanation of why the fact
has been so much overlooked in ethical theory; it certainly is
not overlooked in our natural thinking. . . . Perhaps only a gen-
eration for which the view that we should seek only our own
pleasure is already out of date can see clearly that we are under
no obligation to pursue our own pleasure at all. (F 273–74)
Ross focuses here on the positive, pleasure, while Parfit focuses

on the negative, pain. But Ross also thinks that we are under no
obligation to avoid pain for ourselves. This comes out clearly
in a passage a bit later in the Foundations. He writes:
We are never conscious of a duty to get pleasure or avoid pain

for ourselves, as we are conscious of a duty to give pleasure to
or prevent pain for others. (F 277, italics added)
That is, I take it, the difference between Parfit and Ross can
be captured like this:
Ross: We never have a prima facie duty to avoid pain

for ourselves.21
Parfit: We always have a reason to avoid pain for
ourselves.
There are two possible ways to understand this differ-

ence. On one interpretation Parfit and Ross here share the
same concept—“prima facie duty” and “reason” are just
different names for this shared concept—and the differ-
ence between them is a substantive difference in opinions
about what reasons or prima facie duties we have. On the
other interpretation Parfit and Ross do not here share the
same concept—Ross’s term “prima facie duty” refers to a
different concept than Parfit’s term “reason”—so the differ-
ence here between Parfit and Ross is conceptual rather than
substantive.
The latter diagnosis seems to me clearly right. To see
why, notice first how radical Ross’s substantive view would be
if he were using the same concept as Parfit. Ross would not
merely be denying that we have any special reason to avoid
pain for ourselves; he would be denying that we have any
reason whatever to avoid pain for ourselves. Other people’s
pains and pleasures would give us reasons for action; but
our own pains and pleasures would give us no reasons for
action. It would surely be exceptionally uncharitable to at-
tribute such a view to Ross. Then, second, notice that there
is a way (on which we have already drawn) to illuminate the
difference between Ross’s fundamental concept and Parfit’s.
Parfit’s concept of a normative reason is, as Gibbard puts it,
flavorless. It can be alternately expressed by talking about
what makes sense. By contrast, Ross’s fundamental concept
is morally loaded; it is naturally expressed (as Ross himself
does) by talking about “duty” and “obligation.” Ross denies
that we have a moral duty to avoid pain for ourselves; Parfit
thinks we always have a normative reason to avoid pain for
ourselves. These claims do not straightforwardly conflict be-
cause they employ different fundamental concepts.
My claim that Ross did not possess the contemporary

concept of a normative reason is liable to remind the reader
of controversial claims Parfit himself makes to the effect that
many more recent moral philosophers lacked the concept.22 So
I need to be clear that my claim about Ross differs in an impor-
tant way from Parfit’s claim about later philosophers like Hare,
Brandt, and Williams. Parfit’s claim about those philosophers
is that they lacked the concept of a kind of truth that provides
the best answer to normative questions. I do not suggest that
Ross lacked the concept of a normative reason in this way. He
had a concept of a kind of truth that provides the best answer
to normative questions. But it was not the concept of a norma-
tive reason because it was morally loaded rather than flavorless.
I shall now argue that this omission is a defect; we should
include the concept of a normative reason in our conceptual
scheme. One reason to do so, in a book of this kind, is that
unless we do we will have trouble understanding the relation
between Ross’s central claims and important related claims
made by contemporary moral philosophers. But there are
also independent considerations. If Scanlon and others are
right, of course, all normative claims involve the concept of
a normative reason; it is a concept that is both fundamental
and unavoidable. But it may also help to argue more specif-
ically that it is a concept we need to frame important nor-
mative questions. Unsurprisingly, some of these important
questions are in the ballpark of the difference between Ross
and Parfit we just discussed, questions raised by Sidgwick
and others about egoistic and agent- relative reasons. In
introducing some of these questions, Parfit writes
Objective theories also differ in their claims about whose well-

being we have reason to promote. . . . According to
Rational Egoism: We always have most reason to do

whatever would be best for ourselves.
According to
Rational Impartialism: We always have most reason to

do whatever would be impartially best.
. . . In his great, drab book The Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick

qualifies and combines these two views. According to what
Sidgwick calls
the Dualism of Practical Reason: We always have most

reason to do whatever would be impartially best, un-
less some other act would be best for ourselves. In such
cases, we would have sufficient reasons to act in either
way. . . .
Of these three views, Sidgwick’s, I believe, is the closest to the

truth. (OWM 1, 130–31)
These are important questions. They cannot be properly

raised in a conceptual framework like Ross’s that has the con-
cept of moral obligation but not the concept of a normative
reason. So we should in this respect revise Ross’s conceptual
framework; we should adopt a conceptual framework that
includes the concept of a normative reason.
We then face the question how to understand Ross’s
most important normative claims. Any such understanding
will inevitably be revisionary. Once we introduce the con-
temporary concept of a normative reason and distinguish,
as Ross did not, between claims about morality and claims
about normative reasons, we will inevitably be reframing his
views. The two simplest revisionary possibilities are to rein-
terpret Ross so as to make his central claims claims about
normative reasons; or to reinterpret him so as to distinguish
claims about morality from claims about normative reasons,

and to make his central claims about morality. The first pos-
sibility makes “prima facie duty” equivalent to “normative
reason” and “duty proper” equivalent to “required by reason”;
the second possibility makes prima facie duties right-making
features, and duty proper a matter of distinctively moral
obligation.
The first option seems to me clearly preferable. It involves
no further interpretive difficulties beyond those involved in
revising Ross’s conceptual scheme (as we should) to include
in it the concept of a normative reason. By contrast, if we
revise Ross so as to interpret his central claims as claims
about morality, we then need to decide among competing
conceptions of the distinctively moral, on which matter (in
the nature of the case) nothing in Ross is likely to help us.
There is however one version of the idea that Ross’s
claims are about the distinctively moral that can avoid these
difficulties—the kind of idea that Smith articulates, that
moral reasons are a subclass of normative reasons distin-
guished by their content. Indeed, though Ross himself of
course does not offer a way of distinguishing moral from
nonmoral reasons by content, there is a version of the idea
that can be grounded in his writings: the idea that moral
reasons are unselfish reasons.
To see that this idea has a textual grounding, we can
argue that important features of Ross’s thinking can be
explained by attributing to him what we can call “the self-
ishness constraint.” The general idea of the selfishness con-
straint is that the moral and the selfish are contraries. It helps
make sense of various features of Ross. Consider his treat-
ment of the moral value of motives. In that treatment, the
value of motives is largely determined by the value of their
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Fig. 49.—Old
(degenerated)
trichina cyst.
(Colin.)
The parasite, which at first appeared straight, soon assumes a bent

form, then that of a figure “6,” then of a figure “3,” and preserves a
latent vitality throughout the entire period of encystment. These
cysts are of very small dimensions, invisible to the naked eye, and
their discovery necessitates the use of the microscope. They are
about ¹⁄₆₄th inch in length and ¹⁄₁₂₀th inch in width. Very frequently
two or three cysts may be found arranged in line, presenting the
appearance of beads on a string: more rarely two parasites may be
found in one cyst; exceptionally, as many as six or seven. The
appearance of “beads on a string” is due to the fact that the parasites
follow the interfascicular capillaries.
In animals which are kept for a long time and fattened the cyst
walls undergo fatty infiltration. The change is commonest in pigs. In
the same way calcareous infiltration sometimes occurs, but only
when the parasites have lost their vitality. This calcareous
degeneration consists in the deposit of carbonate and phosphate of
lime in the walls of the cyst; it never begins before the seventh or
eighth month after infestation, and is sometimes much longer
delayed.
No man or animal ever becomes infested except by the ingestion of
meat or drink containing larval trichinæ. The pig and small rodents
are most frequently attacked. Man contracts trichinosis by eating
insufficiently cooked infected pork. The fact that small rodents,
particularly rats, eat the bodies of their kind explains the persistence
of trichinosis in certain regions. Pigs roaming at large, and thus
liable to find and eat the dead bodies of such rodents, may contract
trichinosis in this way or from eating ordure.
For some weeks after the larvæ have penetrated the muscular
tissues the animals show stiffness of the limbs, difficulty in moving,
and in mastication, etc., but these troubles disappear in a short time.
The above facts explain why trichinosis in the pig is almost
unknown in France, Italy, and Spain. It is commoner in Germany
and in certain States of Europe, such as Holland and Russia,
although investigations had previously shown that in Paris about 7
per cent. of the sewer rats were sufferers from trichinosis and that in
Germany the percentage rose as high as 15 to 20. In Chicago and
Cincinnati, U.S.A., the proportion of rats suffering from trichinosis
has been as high as 50 to 70 per cent., and as in some of the
Northern States pigs were bred in complete freedom, it follows that
at one time very large numbers of American pigs must have suffered
from trichinosis.
In consequence of sanitary precautions this proportion has since
greatly diminished.
Diagnosis. During the animal’s life diagnosis is a difficult matter,
though, on the other hand, simple microscopic examination of
suspected meat is sufficient at once to settle the question. In dealing
with the living animal, however, it is necessary, as in examining
suspected meat, to obtain a fragment of muscle in order to submit it
to microscopic examination. This fragment can be obtained by the
method known as “harpoonage,”—a trocar provided with a cutting
hook, or a trocar the canula of which has a sharp-edged opening near
its end, being thrust into the muscle. On removing the trocar the
elasticity of the tissues causes a fragment to project into the opening
in the canula, and on withdrawing the latter a fragment sufficient for
examination is obtained. One may proceed in the same way by
harpoonage when examining large masses of suspected meat the
surface of which reveals no lesion.
The specimen having been obtained, a few fragments of the
muscular fasciculi are crushed between two glasses and examined
with a low power.
The trichinæ will be found towards the ends of the muscle near the
region of the tendons; few or none exist in the fat. These parasites
are most readily discovered in the diaphragm, in the muscles of the
shoulders and quarters, and in the psoas muscles.
Prognosis. The prognosis is relatively favourable so long as
infestation is only moderate. But it is very grave from the point of
view of public hygiene, on account of the possibility of persons
becoming infected by eating the diseased meat.
Treatment. There is no curative treatment. Formerly it was
believed that, provided the condition were early diagnosed, the
intestinal form might possibly be cured by administering purgatives
and vermifuges so as to prevent the embryos penetrating the system.
After Askanazy’s discoveries this view had to be abandoned, and
the practitioner is necessarily powerless in dealing with the muscular
form. Time alone effects improvement and a relative cure by causing
caseo-calcareous degeneration of the cysts. With a prophylactic
object, every precaution should be taken to prevent the possibility of
pigs being contaminated. This question particularly interests
America, because of the extreme prevalency of pig trichinosis there.
From the point of view of public hygiene all infected meat should
be seized and destroyed, despite the fact that perfect cooking
destroys the vitality of the parasites, which perish at 120° Fahr.
Ordinary salting but slightly affects their vitality, which explains
why from time to time the importation of meat has to be prohibited
and why meat should always be scrupulously inspected.
CHAPTER V.
RHEUMATISM.
In bovine pathology the term “Rheumatism” is applied to a

number of different morbid conditions, the sole connection between
which is that they seriously affect the organs of locomotion. This
reason may perhaps be accepted as sufficient for including the study
of rheumatism amongst diseases affecting locomotion.
The disease is of considerable importance, and for this reason the
study of rheumatism itself necessarily precedes the description of
pseudo-rheumatism, secondary rheumatism, or infectious
rheumatism in young and adult animals.
ARTICULAR RHEUMATISM.
Acute rheumatism has a clearly marked predilection for the

articulations. Sometimes the great serous membranes are
simultaneously affected (pleura, pericardium, endocardium), but
only in very exceptional circumstances are they primarily attacked.
That form of rheumatism known as visceral is as a general rule
secondary in comparison with articular rheumatism. Several joints
and tendon sheaths may be attacked at the same time. Under such
circumstances rheumatism may be defined as a febrile disease,
probably of an infectious nature, revealing itself by simple or
multiple inflammation of joints and the tissues surrounding them,
and capable of becoming complicated with inflammation of the
pleura, pericardium, endocardium, meninges of the brain, etc.
Causation. All authors agree in recognising the influence of
heredity, of wet and cold, of sudden changes in temperature,
draughts in the stable, prolonged exposure to low temperatures, or
the chilling of animals saturated with perspiration. These are and
cannot be otherwise than occasional causes; but the determining
cause remains at present unknown.
In human pathology it has been proved beyond dispute that a
certain relationship exists between arthritism, or the “uric acid
diathesis,” and rheumatism. This fact is so well recognised that
doctors have said that rheumatism was to arthritism what scrofula is
to tuberculosis. That, however, does not advance our knowledge of
the question in the smallest degree, and it may simply be that
arthritism represents one of the principal favouring conditions in the
development of rheumatism.
In domestic animals the uric acid diathesis is little known, renal
lithiasis is no more a rarity than gravel; but at the present time no
one appears clearly to have established the relationship between
these diseases and the development of rheumatism. What, however,
we must all admit is that rheumatism exhibits all the phases of
development of a rapidly progressive infectious disease.
Numerous attempts have been made by doctors during the last few
years to discover the presence of a microscopic agent and to
demonstrate its pathological characteristics. Several microbes have
been described, but one is forced to confess that the results have
until now been very contradictory and uncertain; and yet there is
little room to doubt that the disease is of an infectious character.
Symptoms. The symptoms are generally well defined and well
developed. The onset is sudden; an animal which one day before
appeared perfectly well is attacked in one or several joints. Usually
the upper joints of the limb are involved—the shoulder, elbow, knee,
haunch, stifle, hock.
Nevertheless, invasion is probably not as sudden as it appears to
be, and, as in the human species, the subject begins by feeling erratic
pains, which, however, pass unnoticed. The animal moves with
difficulty, as though it were suffering from laminitis, and has pain
when placing weight on the limb, while the joint attacked soon shows
a swelling which extends to the tendon sheaths and the neighbouring
serous bursæ. The local temperature is higher than that of
surrounding parts, sensibility becomes very marked, and pain
attends the slightest pressure on, or even movement of, the affected
joint. Intense lameness follows, which may even at first give rise to
the suspicion of fracture. The animals remain lying for long periods,
groan from time to time, and suffer great pain when rising.
In some cases the local manifestations appear to be transferred
from one joint to another.
These local symptoms are accompanied by high fever. The
temperature rises to 105° or 106° Fahr., the pulse to 80 or 90, and
the breathing is enormously accelerated if the patients are forced to
move.
Loss of appetite is very marked. Rumination may be suspended,
and these grave symptoms are accompanied by constipation, rapid
wasting, cessation or marked diminution of the milk supply, decrease
in the quantity of urine passed, etc.
A few days after the onset, visceral complications may occur,
though fortunately such complications are far from being constant.
Auscultation and percussion sometimes reveal the lesions of
pleurisy, endocarditis, pericarditis, etc.
The development of articular rheumatism varies greatly, and may
occasionally continue for weeks or months, the condition of one joint
improving only to be followed by inflammation of another.
The visceral lesions rarely disappear completely, and it is not
uncommon to note symptoms of chronic valvular endocarditis.
Relapses are somewhat frequent, and the disease may continue in a
chronic form after the acute symptoms have disappeared.
Lesions. The joint itself is not alone affected. All the tissues
surrounding it are congested, swollen and painful, particularly the
sheaths and insertions of the tendons. Within the inflamed synovial
capsules of the joints an increased quantity of turbid synovia
accumulates, distending the joint and producing a condition of
hydrarthrosis.
In animals slaughtered during the course of the disease one finds
congestive infiltration of the limbs.
The temperature of the parts near the affected joints is higher than
that of neighbouring regions. Sensibility is much more acute, and the
slightest external pressure gives rise to pain.
In favourable cases the joint may appear scarcely injured. The
principal symptoms are those of pain. In old-standing cases certain
permanent changes may occur, such as thickening and hardening of
the wall of the synovial capsule, fibrous infiltration of the tissues
around the joint, or even diffuse and irregular calcareous infiltration.
Cases of false or true anchylosis are rare, the animals usually being
slaughtered before such conditions can develop.
Complications. The commonest complications are endocarditis
and pericarditis. Valvular endocarditis localised in the auriculo-
ventricular valves is revealed by a systolic sound, and by tumultuous
or irregular beating of the heart when the animals are forced to
move. Pericarditis, which seems rare in bovine animals, is much
commoner in sheep. This pericarditis, however, produces none of the
external signs of pericarditis due to a foreign body. Like tuberculous
pericarditis, it is only accompanied by a trifling amount of exudate,
and is recognised by increased cardiac dulness and diminution in the
cardiac sounds on auscultation.
Simple pleurisy associated with pericarditis is frequent in sheep,
but unknown or little known in the ox.
If in animals other visceral complications occur, affecting the
peritoneum, meninges of the brain or intestines, they are at present
little recognised.
Diagnosis. Articular rheumatism can only be confused with
osseous cachexia or laminitis. Osseous cachexia, however, possesses
symptoms peculiar to itself, and generally extends to an entire
district, whilst rheumatism appears in an isolated form. Again, the
arthritis peculiar to osseous cachexia most commonly affects the
joints of the extremities (fetlock and phalanges). The disease may be
differentiated from laminitis by simply manipulating the joints,
which are painful in rheumatism but not in laminitis, and by
percussing the claws, which are painful in laminitis but not in
rheumatism, and by noting the character of the gait.
Prognosis. The prognosis is grave, as in all acute diseases which
are capable of assuming a protracted chronic form. It is also
necessary to take into account the loss of condition, the possibility of
relapse, and the complications due to prolonged decubitus.
Treatment. The first indication is to place the patients in a nearly
constant temperature, to supply bedding generously, and to arrange
for the animal being undisturbed. Among drugs salicylate of soda
gives the best results if administered in sufficient doses—6 to 7
drams per day for oxen or cows of medium size, 45 to 75 grains for
sheep.
Diuretics, like bicarbonate of soda, nitrate of potash and hay tea or
infusion of couch grass, pellitory, etc., also give good results.
The joints attacked may be blistered, but it is often preferable to
use mild ointments, containing camphor or belladonna, because, as
soon as pain diminishes, moderate massage of the affected parts,
which favours rapid absorption of the effusions, can then at once be
resorted to. The diet should consist of easily digested food and of
lukewarm hay tea, etc. When the animals are suffering from kidney
disease in any form salicylate of soda is contra-indicated.
Antipyrin may also be of service in doses of 45 to 75 grains for
bovines and 15 grains for sheep. Preparations of methyl salicylate can
only be used for animals of value.
MUSCULAR RHEUMATISM.
Muscular rheumatism is due to causes similar to those of articular

rheumatism. The symptoms, moreover, often occur simultaneously,
or may alternate with the articular manifestations, with which they
are seldom entirely unconnected.
Moist cold seems to be the predetermining cause, whether it acts
indirectly on the nerve trunks or affects the capillary circulation in
the muscles, through the medium of the vaso-motor supply. The
results are revealed by the development of neuralgia, neuritis or
interstitial myositis; and these diseases, by producing more or less
intense pain, cause difficulty in movement or distinct lameness.
Attempts have been made to explain the development of these
lesions by ascribing a certain action to the uric acid (which is said to
be in excess in the body), and to the lactic acid, which accumulates in
the muscular tissue after fatigue or over-exertion, and may
occasionally produce temporary myositis. Up to the present time, no
satisfactory proof has been furnished enabling us to identify the
myositis of rheumatism with the myositis of over-exertion, which,
moreover, appears to differ from it in essential particulars.
Symptoms. Muscular rheumatism is often ill-recognised in
veterinary medicine, and closer observation would appear to suggest
that it is much less frequent than has been stated. Generalised
muscular rheumatism is rare; patients stand stiffly as though
incapable of moving; the limbs and the back appear rigid, and the
animal seems only capable of changing its position by a single
movement of its whole body. One might readily believe at first sight
that the case was one of generalised laminitis or slight generalised
tetanus. The animal has difficulty in rising; when moving the limbs
are dragged, and the patient is cautious in lying down.
Most frequently the disease is localised in one region, such as the
shoulder, the loins, or the quarters. The affected part is stiff, tense,
painful, hard, and as though in a state of cramp. Palpation and
pressure reveal the presence of very exaggerated sensibility, which
varies within wide limits, according to circumstances, changes in
atmospheric conditions, etc. These local signs are accompanied by a
general reaction of varying severity, somewhat resembling that seen
in articular rheumatism. Appetite is diminished or suppressed, as is
rumination; the muzzle is dry and hot; the temperature may rise as
high as 103° or 104° Fahr.
Lesions. The lesions are imperfectly recognised, because those
who might most easily observe and study them have often neither
the means nor the leisure for the purpose. Possibly one would at
times discover lesions of neuritis; but in any case it is not so very rare
to discover lesions of interstitial sclerosing myositis in the depths of
the muscles of the quarter, loins, shoulders, etc., a condition rarely
found in any other disease. Naturally these are only the ultimate
lesions of muscular rheumatism; for slight attacks leave no traces
visible to external examination.
Diagnosis. The commonest error is that of mistaking the
condition for laminitis of all four limbs. The history often suffices to
eliminate this disease from consideration, while palpation and
percussion of the claws remove any remaining doubt.
The prognosis is not usually grave, and recovery sometimes
follows the adoption of good hygienic conditions. On the other hand,
certain patients lose flesh rapidly.
Treatment. Salicylate of soda and antipyrin still form the two
most efficacious drugs, particularly the first, which may almost be
regarded as a veritable specific in rheumatism. The doses vary with
the size of the patients, from 2½ to 7 drams per day. These doses are
continued for six to eight days consecutively. Some authors prefer
salicylic acid, which, however, is more irritant, in doses of 15 to 75
grains. Tartar emetic, in doses of 2½ to 4 drams per day until
purgation is established, is also said to have proved of great value in
the hands of the older practitioners. Local treatment comprises
stimulating frictions with camphorated alcohol, ammonia, and oil of
turpentine. Such applications are usually of great service,
particularly when associated with methodical massage of the affected
parts. These modes of treatment should be supplemented with a
proper dietary and the administration of tepid, diuretic fluids as
required.
INFECTIOUS FORMS OF RHEUMATISM OR PSEUDO-

RHEUMATISM.
Under the head of infectious rheumatism or pseudo-rheumatism

may be grouped joint diseases of a rheumatic type accompanying
various general or local diseases in young animals and adults:
diseases of the umbilicus, rachitis, peripneumonia, retention of the
fœtus, dysentery, etc. These diseases are characterised by articular
symptoms, which sometimes appear early, sometimes only when the
disease itself is declining, and develop suddenly or gradually, the
joint cavities themselves either being directly invaded by the agents
of the primary disease or remaining exempt. These pseudo-
rheumatic attacks are due to the localised action of microbic toxins
on the articular synovial membranes. Sometimes the serous
membranes of the large body cavities are also implicated.
This theory explains the development of acute arthritis without the
presence of gonococci during the course of an attack of blenorrhagia
in man, and may be applied in respect of certain forms of arthritis or
synovitis without the presence of microbes in domestic animals.
INFECTIOUS RHEUMATISM IN YOUNG ANIMALS.
Causation. To explain the occurrence of infectious rheumatism

in young animals a variety of causes has been invoked, such as bad
feeding, the absence of that purgation which usually follows the
action of the mother’s first milk (i.e., colostrum), and clears the
bowel of meconium, the effect of heredity, of chills, of insufficient
food, and of unduly abundant or very rich food, which has been said
to produce indigestion and its various complications.
All these causes may play a certain part in favouring the
development of infectious rheumatism, but none constitutes the
direct cause.
Lecoq and Loiset in their investigations regarding this disease in
colts mentioned the almost invariable existence of lesions in the
umbilical region. Bollinger in 1869 recognised the possibility of
infection by way of the umbilical vein. Röll and Guillebeau are of the
same opinion, and Morot’s excellent study shows that here must be
sought the most frequent point of origin of the articular symptoms.
In animals born in dirty stables the umbilical cord becomes infected
at the time of birth, or its cicatrix a few days later. The result is the
development of rapidly fatal septicæmia, suppuration in the wound,
omphalitis, omphalo-phlebitis, or umbilical arteritis; and to this
infection are due the various complications, which may appear
almost immediately, as in the case of septicæmia of calves, or may be
deferred for a shorter or longer interval, for so long indeed that the
umbilicus may appear to have healed externally (infectious
pneumonia and endocarditis, infectious arthritis, etc.). The umbilical
cord and the tissues surrounding the cicatrix form excellent culture
grounds for those microorganisms which always exist in such
abundance in litter and manure; and there is, therefore, no difficulty
in understanding why in dirty stables infection so readily occurs. The
infective agents may be of very varying kinds, a fact which explains
the difference in the symptoms which follow umbilical infection;
although ovoid bacteria, streptococcus pyogenes, and the bacilli of
necrosis seem most common.
Omphalitis and omphalo-phlebitis are not the only diseases
capable of producing infectious rheumatism in young animals.
Certain infections resembling dysentery and diarrhœic enteritis are
also its frequent forerunners. In young animals even rachitis, which
is accompanied by various digestive disorders, may serve as the point
of origin for infectious rheumatism and all its complications.
In older animals—i.e., in animals from five to six months, or even
twelve to fifteen months—infectious rheumatism may occur without
a clearly defined cause. It then develops with the symptoms and
lesions of that condition known as “osteomyelitis of adolescence” in
human pathology. These forms of osteomyelitis are due to infection
with streptococci and staphylococci. In veterinary medicine the
pathogeny has not yet been accurately ascertained.
Symptoms. Infectious rheumatism in young animals assumes
one of two clinical appearances, possibly due to different causes, viz.
—plastic or suppurative arthritis following umbilical infection, and
simple exudative arthritis. In the former variety symptoms appear
soon after birth, rarely after the age of two months, and as an
exception in animals of six to eight months affected with rachitis.
The onset is sometimes sudden; the patient, though healthy on the
previous evening, is unable next morning to rise or move. Hence in
France this disease has received the titles, amongst others, of
laminitis and paralysis of the newly born.
Certain joints, often a pair, appear swollen, hot and painful. The
synovial sacs are distended, and in the upper joints of the limb
appear much more prominent than in the lower. When the patients
are still able to move they walk on three legs, but usually they remain
lying permanently, and if aroused show great difficulty in rising and
very acute pain in moving.
Fig. 50.—Young bull suffering from infectious rheumatism.
General disturbance is also very marked; the temperature varies

between 103° and 105° Fahr. The animals are dull, have no appetite,
and exhibit intense thirst. The pulse rate and respirations are
increased, and not uncommonly symptoms of grave visceral
complications, such as endocarditis, pleurisy, pneumonia, etc., can
be detected. Diarrhœic enteritis sometimes appears as a secondary
development.
The animals remain permanently lying down. They can only be
induced to rise with difficulty, and, when moved, exhibit very acute
pain.
In many cases the disease then takes a rapid course and ends
fatally. Death is the usual termination whenever any of the above-
mentioned visceral complications exist. Recovery is exceptional. In
certain lucky cases, sometimes without any treatment whatever, the
symptoms become less acute, the appetite persists or improves, fever
dimi
nish
es,
the
cond
ition
of
the
joint
s
rema
ins
stati
onar
y,
and
after
the
lapse
of
sever
al
Fig. 51.—Attitude when walking of a calf suffering from week
infectious rheumatism. s
there
is
ground for anticipating recovery. In all cases, however, the
convalescents remain thin and sickly, exhibit pain and capricious
appetite, and in very few cases indeed is there any economic reason
for keeping them alive.
More frequently infectious rheumatism terminates by abscess
formation in the joints. The articular cavity becomes filled with pus,
the tissues covering one of the synovial sacs soften, and the abscess
opens, discharging fibrinous clots, thin watery pus mixed with
synovia, and débris of articular cartilages or ligaments. Pyæmia is
the final complication when the patients are not slaughtered.
In the cases comprised under the second heading the symptoms
appear more slowly and develop insidiously, the chief, viz., a
tendency to remain lying and difficulty in movement, long preceding
the appearance of exudative arthritis. The course depends chiefly on
the nature of the infective agent. In calves suffering from
peripneumonia, calves from stables in which epizootic abortion
rages, rachitic calves or calves suffering from severe diarrhœic
enteritis, the joints do not become the seat of suppuration.
In such cases the arthritis is of a simple exudative character, but
without microbic infection of the joint cavity. This form is less
dangerous, and is often curable provided the original cause be kept
in mind.
Lesions. The lesions are always very marked, and are quite
different from those of simple rheumatism. The synovial membranes
and the periarticular tissues are always thickened, injected, inflamed,
and infiltrated.
In more benign cases the synovial exudate from the joint cavities is
simply cloudy, contains no infectious germs, and proves sterile on
attempts at cultivation. In such cases there is no abscess formation.
But most frequently this stage of serous exudation is only temporary,
and the articular fluid, which at first seems sterile, may, when tested
some days later by means of cultures, reveal the presence of
organisms. The synovia accumulated within the joint sometimes
contains fibrinous flocculi, which are at first small, but later form
veritable coagula, filling up and thickly coating all the prominences
of the joint and moulding themselves on the extremities of the bones
constituting the articulation. Sometimes the cartilages undergo very
rapid ulceration, the subjacent layers of bone become inflamed, and
the osteoarthritis which develops is so severe and painful that the
patients are forced to remain absolutely still, and are quite incapable
of rising. The lesions may remain stationary at this point. In other
cases suppuration occurs in the articulation itself, the wall of the
synovial cavity, the periarticular tissues, and the skin soften; then the
abscess breaks, giving rise to open suppurating arthritis. Animals are
rarely kept long enough to become so gravely affected; many die
before this stage, and the others are usually slaughtered. Moreover,
they rapidly perish from exhaustion and from visceral complications
of a pyæmic character.
Fig. 52.—Ulceration of the articular cartilage in infectious rheumatism.
In many cases post-mortem examination reveals nothing whatever

in the region of the umbilical cord (through which infection has
occurred), but the germs of infection may be found in the blood or
general circulation; or again, careful investigation may show
ulceration of the umbilicus, lesions of omphalitis, of ascending
umbilical arteritis in consequence of infection of the thrombus, of
umbilical phlebitis, or of infective peritonitis, etc. The infectious
agent reaches the liver through the blood-vessels, then attains the
posterior vena cava, after which the infection assumes the gravest
possible character, producing complications like arthritis and
purulent infection, with the formation of multiple abscesses in the
depths of the viscera.
The Staphylococcus aureus and various streptococci are the most
frequent but not the only causes of these infections.
The diagnosis is not difficult, provided the disease be not
mistaken for true rheumatism. As true rheumatism is very rare in
young animals, and as, on the other hand, attention is aroused by the
presence of lesions of the umbilicus and by the existence of diarrhœic
enteritis, rachitis, etc., there is seldom room for doubt.
Prognosis. The prognosis is extremely grave whenever the case
results from infection of the umbilicus. French statistics place the
mortality at 90 per cent. and German at 75 per cent.
Curative treatment can only be attempted with any chance of
success in the simple exudative form. Even then it is necessary to
simultaneously treat the primary disease, such as rachitis or
diarrhœic enteritis.
The recommendations of former practitioners as to the use of
saline purgatives, cream of tartar, etc., were probably due to their
having recognised that diarrhœa is sometimes the primary cause.
Moussu has seen simple exudative arthritis in rachitic subjects
disappear, together with the rachitis, under proper treatment.
The indications therefore are, firstly, to take measures against the
primary disease, treating the local lesions separately with blisters,
douches, or simply cold applications and massage. Provided the
general condition can be improved, recovery may follow.
Unfortunately, this treatment is useless against infectious
rheumatism with suppurative arthritis resulting from infection of the
umbilicus. In such cases treatment, if undertaken, should be directed
towards perfectly disinfecting the umbilical wound or any existing
sinuses.
Injections of strong carbolic solution, the application of antiseptic
ointments or of antiseptic pencils containing iodoform, salol, etc.,
into the sinuses, followed by a surgical dressing covering the
umbilicus, form the basis of this primary treatment, which, it need
scarcely be said, has little chance of checking the course of already
existing arthritis. The use of internal antiseptics and of antipyretics
like camphor, salicylate of soda, etc., is worthy of trial. On the other
hand, prophylactic treatment in an infected area has every chance of
succeeding. The use of dry, clean litter under the mother and the
new-born calf, thorough cleansing of the umbilical cord or umbilical
cicatrix, and the application to the umbilicus of a small surgical
dressing or even a smear of tar, almost always suffice to prevent the
occurrence of these forms of arthritis.
INFECTIOUS PSEUDO-RHEUMATISM IN ADULTS.
The infectious pseudo-rheumatism of adults differs from

infectious rheumatism in young animals in that it never becomes
complicated with suppurative arthritis, and rarely affects more than
one joint at a time. The hind limbs are the parts usually attacked, and
the joints seem predisposed to disease in the following order of
frequency: the femoro-tibial, coxo-femoral, and hock joints.
On account of its greater frequency in cows, it has been termed
“arthritis of milch cows” and “infectious arthritis of milch cows,” etc.
In reality it may also attack bulls and oxen, but such cases are
exceptional.
Causation. First mentioned by Coulbeaux in 1824, and by
Pauleau in 1832, this disease has been well studied by Ph. Heu. Old
works mention it as attacking good milkers in the best dairies around
Paris, and Heu declares it to be the most deadly disease after
peripneumonia and tuberculosis.
This form of arthritis usually appears in an insidious form after
abortion, retention of the fœtus, or post-partum metritis. In cases of
epizootic abortion infectious rheumatism sometimes assumes an
epizootic form, and completes the devastation begun by abortion.
Under other and much rarer circumstances it may follow enteritis of
adults or attacks of mammitis, etc. The pathogeny of these forms of
arthritis is not difficult to understand, for in the greater number of
instances they form delayed consequences of local uterine infection.
Fig. 53.—Infectious rheumatism. Arthritis of the left stifle joint.
The soluble products secreted by infectious organisms multiplying

within the uterus are absorbed by the uterine mucous membrane,
causing slow intoxication; and in consequence of the special elective
affinity which the toxins show for the articular serous membranes,
and in many cases also for the visceral serous membranes, the
special characteristics are developed. Under certain circumstances
the joint cavity may even become the seat of true microbic infection.
Symptoms. The appearance of the first symptoms is difficult to
identify, for many cows abort, fail to “cleanse,” or become affected
with metritis without infectious rheumatism supervening. It is a
long-delayed condition, which may be postponed for weeks or even
for several months after an abnormal parturition, and to a time when
the symptoms of metritis have almost entirely disappeared. The
onset is characterised by difficulty in rising, and soon afterwards by
lameness, or by the animal failing to place weight on one of the hind
limbs. The affected joint, usually one of the articulations of the stifle,
appears markedly enlarged, is not appreciably hot to the touch, but
reveals a certain amount of painful sensibility on pressure. The
periarticular tissues are infiltrated and the synovial sacs slightly
distended.
After a few
days, a week or
two at most, the
periarticular
swelling
diminishes, and
the condition
appears to
remain
stationary.
Appetite is
normal or only
diminished. The
pain continues,
and causes
progressive
wasting and
diminution in
the yield of milk.
If at this time
the practitioner
Fig. 54.—The femoro-tibial makes a careful Fig. 55.—Normal
joint in a case of infectious digital femoro-tibial joint.
rheumatism. All the examination of
articular surfaces of one the diseased
side have undergone change region, he may find one of two
(the condyle of the femur, conditions. In the first, the synovial
interarticular cartilage, and sacs appear distended, fluctuating and
the upper extremity of the in exactly the same condition as in
femur). ordinary bog spavin. This is what has
been termed the exudative form of
infectious arthritis. In the second, the
enlarged joint remains very sensitive, the walls of the synovial sac are
thickened, fluctuation is either absent or only slightly marked, but
induration is very manifest. This constitutes the plastic form.

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Rossian Ethics: W.D.

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I have been extremely fortunate in the help I have received

I HAVE TWO CONNECTED AIMS in this book. The first is

hostility and contempt. But a quite different attitude is pos-

I have tried to present a clear, uncluttered and unified inter-

In a similar vein, at the start of Hobbesian Moral and Political

Though he has been more than three hundred years in the

Strawson’s and Kavka’s projects have the same char-

Ross’s distinctive philosophical views did not arise in a

My main obligation is to Professor H. A. Prichard. I be-

I also wish to say how much I owe to Professor G. E. Moore’s

And indeed there are more references to Moore in the

In the main, Professor Broad’s view is just that which I wish to

the tendency of the act to bring about a maximum of good.

And Broad responded enthusiastically to Ross’s work,

I hope that generations of undergraduates, in the intervals

My interpretive target here is Ross, not Prichard or Broad (or

pluralism about the good. I begin in ­chapter 2 with the con-

different goods. In different ways in The Right and the Good

by contrast might be characterized as “a marriage of Ross

1. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

refer to it as “Principia”; further page references will be placed

and Commonsense Consequentialism (New York: Oxford

“Modern Moral Philosophy.” The difference between her and

ROSS’S MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION

I suggest “prima facie duty” or “conditional duty” as a brief

Later he characterizes prima facie duties as “tendencies,”

We have to distinguish from the characteristic of being our

instance, it tends to be wrong; in virtue of being an instance

The main argument for introducing the concept of

It is the overlooking of the distinction . . . between actual

unreal problem of conflict of duties has thus been supposed to

A related but more historical point concerns Sidgwick’s

I think that anyone who reads the relevant chapters in Sidgwick

fittingness or unfittingness . . . and . . . utility or disutility. . . .

would fit one aspect of the situation, since it would be re-

And he remarks that

It seems quite clear that the Intuitionist will have to moderate

Ewing observed that the concept of prima facie duty

whether he was right in the Foundations to follow Prichard

Concerns about the characterization and definition of

The phrase, “prima facie duty” must be apologized for, since

He considers, in The Right and the Good and in the

Jonathan Dancy, the “isolation account”) and as tendencies to

It seems to me that [Professor Broad] should make right-

pluralism about the good. I begin in chapter 2 with the con-

Objective theories also differ in their claims about whose well-