ABSTRACT
Many sciences are ridden with disputes concerning their principles. Not even mathematics is free of them, but nowhere do they rage so fiercely as in the field of ethics. Indeed, the confusion and the differences of opinion are so great that many people believe there is no natural basis of ethics in reason. What is right and what wrong, what is morally good and what morally bad is determined solely by positive prescriptions (including those which are set forth in public opinion). Aristotle tells us that such controversy and confusion was already prevalent in his time; today, after more than two thousand years, the situation is still just as he described it then. The same conclusion is still drawn from the confusion, even by those not otherwise inclined to scepticism.
