The question of whether an ideal has frequently, or ever, been acted upon by men is totally irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether a propo… - R. W. K. Paterson

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The question of whether an ideal has frequently, or ever, been acted upon by men is totally irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether a proposed ideal is one which ought to be acted upon, one which legitimately claims a place in our souls, whether or not we do in fact admit it into our souls and try to live up to it. Justice is not metamorphosed into injustice because there are men who habitually act unjustly. A moral claim, if authentic, does not lapse merely because it is denied, however widely and flagrantly. On the contrary, the very nature of a value implies the possibility that men may fail to comply with it, since a ‘value’ which had legitimacy only if men accepted it but was automatically nullified whenever rejected it could not properly be said to constitute a value at all, that is, something which distinctively seeks to guide and direct our motives and conduct and not just passively reflect what we are already doing or have decided to do. The nature of values is to command or entreat us, to alter and redress our character, not just superfluously to describe it as it already anyway is.