of 'ought' and 'duty'. For this reason it seems to me that a philoso-
phic understanding of morality must be based on a much more com-
prehensive study of the good (and of the ought) than has been
customary in ethics. The name 'Prolegomena to Ethics' would not
be ill-suited for such a study.

I had thought of using this title. But besides the fact that it has
been used before, it would be too ambitious. For it is, after all,
only an aspect of the broader approach needed for ethics, which I
have ventured to study with any thoroughness in the present work.
What it is and what the other main aspects are, I shall indicate later
in this chapter (sect. 4).

2. It has long been current among philosophers to distinguish
between normative ethics and ethics which is not normative.
Ethics of the first type is supposed to tell what is good and bad and
what is our moral duty. Ethics of the second type does not value
or prescribe.

The idea of a sharp distinction between ethics which is normative
and ethics which is not normative can, I think, be regarded as an
off-shoot of a more general idea of a sharp distinction between
norm and fact, between the 'ought' and the 'is'. This second idea
has become associated, in particular, with the name of Hume. One
could, though with caution, talk of a Humean tradition in moral
philosophy.

The distinctions between the ought and the is and between the
two types of ethics is commonly understood in such a way that
the term 'ought' covers both norms and values and that 'normative'
as an attribute of 'ethics' refers both to the prescriptive and to the
evaluative. As another off-shoot of the idea of a sharp distinction
between the evaluative and prescriptive on the one hand and the
factual on the other hand may be regarded the idea that 'science'
is value-free (Die Wertfreiheit der Vissensehaften).

On the question, what a non-normative study of morals is,
there is much obscurity and many divergent opinions. Some
philosophers, particularly from the decades round the turn of the
century, used to conceive of ethics which is not normative as a
science des mu-urs,ie. as a sociological and/or psychological study of
the 'natural history' of moral ideas, codes, and customs.

There is no doubt a way of studying moral phenomena, which
is 'detached' and 'scientific' and which can be sharply distinguished

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