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Sir William David Ross (15 April 1877 – 5 May 1971), known as David Ross but usually cited as W. D. Ross, was a Scottish Aristotelian philosopher, translator, WWI veteran, civil servant, and university administrator. His best-known work is
The Right and the Good ''The Right and the Good'' is a 1930 book by the Scottish philosopher David Ross. In it, Ross develops a deontological pluralism based on prima facie duties. Ross defends a realist position about morality and an intuitionist position about mor ...
(1930), in which he developed a pluralist,
deontological In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek: + ) is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, ...
form of intuitionist ethics in response to G. E. Moore's consequentialist form of intuitionism. Ross also critically edited and translated a number of Aristotle's works, such as his 12-volume translation of
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
together with
John Alexander Smith John Alexander Smith (21 April 1863 – 19 December 1939) was a British idealist philosopher, who was the Jowett Lecturer of philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford from 1896 to 1910, and Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosoph ...
, and wrote on other Greek philosophy.


Life

William David Ross was born in
Thurso Thurso (pronounced ; sco, Thursa, gd, Inbhir Theòrsa ) is a town and former burgh on the north coast of the Highland council area of Scotland. Situated in the historical County of Caithness, it is the northernmost town on the island of Gr ...
, Caithness in the north of
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
the son of John Ross (1835-1905). He spent most of his first six years as a child in southern
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and the
University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...
. In 1895, he gained a first class MA honours degree in
classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
. He completed his studies at
Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...
, with a First in
Classical Moderations Honour Moderations (or ''Mods'') are a set of examinations at the University of Oxford at the end of the first part of some degree courses (e.g., Greats or '' Literae Humaniores''). Honour Moderations candidates have a class awarded (hence the ' ...
in 1898 and a First in Literae Humaniores ('Greats', a combination of philosophy and ancient history) in 1900. He was made a Fellow of
Merton College Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, ...
in 1900, a position he held until 1945; he was elected to a tutorial fellowship at
Oriel College Oriel College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Located in Oriel Square, the college has the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford (a title formerly claimed by University College, w ...
in October 1902. With the outbreak of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, Ross joined the army in 1915 with a commission on the special list. He held a series of positions involved with the supply of munitions. At the time of the
armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the ...
he held the rank of major and was Deputy Assistant Secretary in the
Ministry of Munitions The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis ...
. He was made an
Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...
in 1918 in recognition of his wartime service. For his post-war services to various public bodies he was made a
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
in 1938. Ross was
White's Professor of Moral Philosophy The White's Chair of Moral Philosophy was endowed in 1621 by Thomas White (c. 1550–1624), Canon of Christ Church as the oldest professorial post in philosophy at the University of Oxford. In 2021, the chair was renamed the Sekyra and White’s ...
(1923–1928), Provost of
Oriel College, Oxford Oriel College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Located in Oriel Square, the college has the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford (a title formerly claimed by University College, ...
(1929–1947),
Vice-Chancellor A chancellor is a leader of a college or university, usually either the executive or ceremonial head of the university or of a university campus within a university system. In most Commonwealth and former Commonwealth nations, the chancellor ...
of the
University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...
from 1941 to 1944 and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1944–1947). He was president of the
Aristotelian Society The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy, more generally known as the Aristotelian Society, is a philosophical society in London. History Aristotelian Society was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Squa ...
from 1939 to 1940. He was elected a Fellow of the
British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars s ...
and was its President from 1936–to 1940. G. N. Clark
‘Sir David Ross’
''
Proceedings of the British Academy The ''Proceedings of the British Academy'' is a series of academic volumes on subjects in the humanities and social sciences. The first volume was published in 1905. Up to 1991, the volumes (appearing annually from 1927) mostly consisted of the te ...
'', 57 (1971), 525–43
Of the many governmental committees on which he served one was the Civil Service Tribunal, of which he was chairman. One of his two colleagues was
Leonard Woolf Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own wo ...
, who thought that the whole system of fixing governmental remuneration should be on the same basis as the US model, dividing the civil service into a relatively small number of pay grades. Ross did not agree with this radical proposal. In 1947 he was appointed chairman of the first
Royal Commission on the Press, United Kingdom Three Royal Commissions on the Press were held in the United Kingdom during the 20th century. The first (1947–49) proposed the creation of a General Council of the Press to govern behaviour, promote consumer interests and conduct research into t ...
. He was elected an honorary fellow of
Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...
in 1947. He died in Oxford on 5 May 1971. He is memorialised on his parents' grave in the Grange Cemetery in
Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
.


Family

His younger brother was Rev Donald George Ross (1879-1943). He married Edith Ogden in 1906 and they had four daughters, Margaret (who married
Robin Harrison Alick Robin Walsham Harrison CBE (15 November 1900 – 18 May 1969) was an English academic, Warden of Merton College, Oxford, from 1963 until his death in 1969. Life Robin Harrison was born on 15 November 1900 in Hambledon, Surrey and was e ...
), Eleanor, Rosalind (who married John Miller Martin), and Katharine. Edith died in 1953. He was a cousin of Berriedale Keith.


Ross's ethical theory

W. D. Ross was a
moral realist Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that the ...
, a non-naturalist, and an intuitionist. He argued that there are moral truths. He wrote:
The moral order...is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe (and...of any possible universe in which there are moral agents at all) as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic.
Thus, according to Ross, the claim that something is good is true if that thing really is good. Ross also agreed with G.E. Moore's claim that any attempt to define ethical statements solely in terms of statements about the natural world commits the
naturalistic fallacy In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as ''pleasant'' or ''desirable'', is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in ...
. Furthermore, the terms "right" and "good" are ''indefinable''. This means not only that they cannot be defined in terms of natural properties but also that it is not possible to define one in terms of the other. Ross rejected Moore's
consequentialist In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from ...
ethics. According to consequentialist theories, what people ought to do is determined only by whether their actions will bring about the best. By contrast, Ross argues that maximising the good is only one of several ''
prima facie ''Prima facie'' (; ) is a Latin expression meaning ''at first sight'' or ''based on first impression''. The literal translation would be 'at first face' or 'at first appearance', from the feminine forms of ''primus'' ('first') and ''facies'' (' ...
'' duties (prima facie obligations) which play a role in determining what a person ought to do in any given case.


Duties

In ''The Right and the Good,'' Ross lists seven ''prima facie'' duties, without claiming his list to be all-inclusive: fidelity; reparation; gratitude; justice; beneficence; non-maleficence; and self-improvement. In any given situation, any number of these prima facie duties may apply. In the case of ethical dilemmas, they may even contradict one another. Someone could have a prima facie duty of reparation, say, a duty to help people who helped you move house, move house themselves, and a prima facie duty of fidelity, such as taking your children on a promised trip to the park, and these could conflict. Nonetheless, there can never be a true ethical dilemma, Ross would argue, because one of the prima facie duties in a given situation is always the weightiest, and over-rules all the others. This is thus the ''absolute obligation'' or ''absolute duty'', the action that the person ought to perform. It is frequently argued, however, that Ross should have used the term "pro tanto" rather than "prima facie".
Shelly Kagan Shelly Kagan () (born 1956) is Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, where he has taught since 1995. He is best known for his writings about moral philosophy and normative ethics. In 2007, Kagan's course about death was offered for fr ...
, for example, wrote: Explaining the difference between pro tanto and prima facie, Kagan wrote: "A ''pro tanto'' reason has genuine weight, but nonetheless may be outweighed by other considerations. Thus, calling a reason a pro tanto reason is to be distinguished from calling it a ''prima facie'' reason, which I take to involve an epistemological qualification: a prima facie reason ''appears'' to be a reason, but may actually not be a reason at all."


Values and intuition

According to Ross, self-evident intuition shows that there are four kinds of things that are intrinsically good: pleasure, knowledge, virtue and justice. "Virtue" refers to actions or dispositions to act from the appropriate motives, for example, from the desire to do one's duty. "Justice", on the other hand, is about happiness in proportion to merit. As such, pleasure, knowledge and virtue all concern states of mind, in contrast to justice, which concerns a relation between two states of mind. These values come in degrees and are comparable with each other. Ross holds that virtue has the highest value while pleasure has the lowest value. He goes so far as to suggest that "''no'' amount of pleasure is equal to any amount of virtue, that in fact virtue belongs to a higher order of value". Values can also be compared within each category, for example, well-grounded knowledge of general principle is more valuable than weakly grounded knowledge of isolated matters of fact. According to Ross's ''intuitionism'', we can know moral truths through intuition, for example, that it is wrong to lie or that knowledge is intrinsically good. Intuitions involve a direct apprehension that is not mediated by inferences or deductions: they are self-evident and therefore not in need of any additional proof. This ability is not inborn but has to be developed on the way to reaching mental maturity. But in its fully developed form, we can know moral truths just as well as we can know mathematical truths like the axioms of geometry or arithmetic. This self-evident knowledge is limited to general principles: we can come to know the ''prima facie'' duties this way but not our ''absolute'' duty in a particular situation: what we should do all things considered. All we can do is consult perception to determine which prima facie duty has the highest normative weight in this particular case, even though this usually does not amount to knowledge proper due to the complexity involved in most specific cases.


Criticism and influence

A frequent criticism of Ross's ethics is that it is unsystematic and often fails to provide clear-cut ethical answers. Another is that "moral intuitions" are not a reliable basis for ethics, because they are fallible, can vary widely from individual to individual, and are often rooted in our evolutionary past in ways that should make us suspicious of their capacity to track moral truth. Additionally there is no consideration of the consequence of the action undertaken, as with all deontological approaches. Ross's deontological pluralism was a true innovation and provided a plausible alternative to Kantian deontology. His ethical intuitionism found few followers among his contemporaries but has seen a revival by the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Among the philosophers influenced by ''The Right and the Good'' are Philip Stratton-Lake,
Robert Audi Robert N. Audi (born November 1941) is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology, ethics (especially on ethical intuitionism), rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the Univer ...
,
Michael Huemer Michael Huemer (; born 27 December 1969) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has defended ethical intuitionism, direct realism, libertarianism, veganism, and philosophical anarchism. Education and career H ...
, and C.D. Broad.


Selected works

* 1908
''Nicomachean Ethics''
Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * 1923: ''
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
'' * 1924
''Aristotle's Metaphysics''
* 1927: 'The Basis of Objective Judgments in Ethics'. ''International Journal of Ethics'', 37:113–127. * 1930: ''
The Right and the Good ''The Right and the Good'' is a 1930 book by the Scottish philosopher David Ross. In it, Ross develops a deontological pluralism based on prima facie duties. Ross defends a realist position about morality and an intuitionist position about mor ...
'' * 1936: ''Aristotle's Physics'' * 1939
''Foundations of Ethics''
* 1949: ''Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics'' * 1951: '' Plato's Theory of Ideas'' * 1954: '' Kant’s Ethical Theory: A Commentary on the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten,'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.


References


Further reading

* G. N. Clark
‘Sir David Ross’
''
Proceedings of the British Academy The ''Proceedings of the British Academy'' is a series of academic volumes on subjects in the humanities and social sciences. The first volume was published in 1905. Up to 1991, the volumes (appearing annually from 1927) mostly consisted of the te ...
'', 57 (1971), 525–43 * Phillips, David. Rossian Ethics: W.D. Ross and Contemporary Moral Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. * Stout, A. K. 1967
'Ross, William David'
In P. Edwards (ed.), ''The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy''. New York: Macmillan: 216–217. * Stratton-Lake, Philip. 2002. 'Introduction'. In Ross, W. D. 1930. ''The Right and the Good''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Timmons, Mark. 2003
'Moral Writings and The Right and the Good'.
ook Review''Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews''


External links

*
"William David Ross"
by David L. Simpson in the
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia, dealing with philosophy, philosophical topics, and philosophers. The IEP combines open access publication with peer reviewed publication of original p ...
, 2012
''William David Ross''
a biography and online lectures at the Gifford Lectures website *Cooley, Ken.
Sir David Ross's Pluralistic Theory of Duty (The Beginnings)
' {{DEFAULTSORT:Ross, W. D. 1877 births 1971 deaths People from Thurso People educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Alumni of the University of Edinburgh British Army personnel of World War I Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford Honorary Fellows of Trinity College Dublin Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Scottish philosophers Moral realists Moral philosophers Philosophers of ethics and morality 20th-century British philosophers British scholars of ancient Greek philosophy Vice-Chancellors of the University of Oxford Pro-Vice-Chancellors of the University of Oxford Provosts of Oriel College, Oxford White's Professors of Moral Philosophy Presidents of the British Academy Presidents of the Aristotelian Society Greek–English translators 20th-century translators Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of Merton College, Oxford Presidents of the Classical Association