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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory.
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92 H. L. A. Hart isolates four features distinguishing morality (in this sense) from law: importance, immunity fron deliberate change, the voluntary character, of moral offences, and the distinctive form of moral pressure. See Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961).Google Scholar
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96 Mackie, , Ethics, 106Google Scholar. Compare Alan Gewirth's definition of ‘a certain core meaning’ of ‘morality’ as ‘a set of categorically obligatory requirements for action that are addressed at least in part to every actual or prospective agent and that are concerned with furthering the interests, especially the most important interests, of persons or recipients other than or in addition to the agent or speaker’ (Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 1).Google Scholar
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