ABSTRACT
The drama of ethical theory in twentieth-century America may be written in five acts, followed by an epilogue. It opens in the first third of the century with attempts to fashion a general theory of value; though there are opposing answers and interpretations there is agreement on the generality. It is succeeded in the 1930s and early 1940s by intense debate over emotivism and ethical relativism. Discussion of ethics in the 1930s and 1940s reflected the consequences of the general theory of value. Theoretical questions were asked in generic form, calling for wholesale answers to such inquiries as the cognitive or noncognitive character of ethical judgement, the possibility of verifying ethical statements, absolute or relative standards for morals. Ethical theory was conceived as metaethics, divorced from the empirical or scientific on the one side and from normative moral judgement of practice on the other. What changed was the mode of analysis.
