Moral philosophy in recent years has been largely occupied with a discussion between two rival views of the ultimate ground of moral obligation. This has been sometimes briefly summarized as the distinction between rule and end as the final criterion of moral action, and it is this distinction, as applied to politics, that I had in mind in my choice of title. So many further developments have been introduced in the course of the discussion that a brief summary necessarily runs the risk of being misleading. But we may say roughly that the question at issue is this. On the one side, there are those who hold, in one form or another, the view that the moral value of an action lies in its results, and that in deciding which course of action to pursue we should judge in the light of its relation to an end or purpose, a state of things which we think and hope it will tend to bring about. On the other, there are those who, while admitting that many actions are only of value or importance for their results, maintain that there must be some actions which are right or wrong in themselves, irrespective of their consequences, just because they are that kind of action. And they maintain, further, that it is only with that sort of action that the specifically moral judgement is directly concerned.
(G. C. Field, Principles & Ideals in Politics, L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Trust Lecture No. 18 [London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1948], 6, reprinted in Hobhouse Memorial Lectures 1941-1950 [London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1952] [lecture delivered on 25 May 1948] [italics in original])
Note from KBJ: The first view described by Field is today known as consequentialism. The second is known variously as nonconsequentialism and deontology.
