“Hume’s Guillotine” as a Pseudo Problem

Abstract

The is/ought separation, initiated by D. Hume, but only gained popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, occupies a very important place in ethical discourse for it calls into question the possibility of justifying moral norms. At the same time, the Humean distinction rests on a number of ontological assumptions that need to be clarified in order to understand the limits of the principle. In particular, if Hume’s “guillotine” and its subsequent adaptation in metaethics presupposes an ontology of atomic facts, then the is/ought separation will prove problematic in revising the ontological model. The article shows that the common version of Hume’s “guillotine” is a pseudo-problem because it only works within a reductionist method­ology, when a moral judgment is decontextualized and decomposed into atomic components from which nothing is logically derived. A more correct approach to the problem leads to the conclusion that the being and the ought are to be distinguished, but cannot be separated. In this form, Hume’s “guillotine” ceases to be destructive for the ethical systems.