• Modern Moral Philosophy” 1958 by G.E.M. Anscombe. Anscombe’s challenge

Modern moral philosophy concerns what it calls morality: a set of putatively universal deontic or “juridical” norms of right and wrong [that purport to obligate us]. [The challenge: but how can there be such a law conception of ethics without a divine lawgiver?]

Anscombe:

Is there any “content … in the notion ‘morally ought’”? So far, just some “very fishy” attempts to “retain the psychological force of the term.”

"Morally wrong" is the term which is the heir of the notion "what there is an obligation not to do"

Kant

The quote from the end of the Critique of Pure Reason:

"[I]n regard to the essential ends of human nature even the highest philosophy cannot advance further than the guidance that nature has also conferred on the most common understanding." (p. 1056)

Fichte

Prof. Darwall correct on speculative logic?

Allen W. Wood. 1990. Hegel’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge University Press:

“Viewed from a late twentieth-century perspective, it is evident that Hegel totally failed in his attempt to canonize speculative logic as the only proper form of philosophical thinking. … When the theory of logic actually was revolutionized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the new theory was built upon precisely those features of traditional logic that Hegel thought most dispensable.” (pp. 4-5)

Sidgwick

Prof. Darwall’s book:

The Methods of Ethics also features shocking examples. While analyzing commonsense morality’s treatment of special relations, Sidgwick writes that we would “all agree” about obligations to close family, “kinsmen,” “friends,” “neighbors,” and “countrymen” (Sidgwick 1962: 246). But to this he adds, “perhaps we may [pay more attention to] those of our own race more than to black or yellow men, and generally to human beings in proportion to their affinity to ourselves” (246).

It is in the context of discussing common sense’s recognition of special permissions and special obligations to those to whom we have special relations that Sidgwick makes the outrageously racist remark I mentioned earlier. Just as we are morally permitted to favor our near and dear, so, Sidgwick says, are we permitted morally to give preference to members of our own race.

The Sidgwick quote:

What then are the duties that we owe to our fellow-men… ? Perhaps the mere enumeration of them is not difficult. We should all agree that each of us is bound to show kindness to his parents and spouse and children, and to other kinsmen in a less degree: and to those who have rendered services to him, and any others whom he may have admitted to his intimacy and called friends: and to neighbours and to fellow-countrymen more than others: and perhaps we may say to those of our own race more than to black or yellow men, and generally to human beings in proportion to their affinity to ourselves. And to our country as a corporate whole we believe ourselves to owe the greatest sacrifices when occasion calls.

The Orwell quote is from his review of Mein Kampf in New English Weekly, March 21, 1940

“Greatest happiness of the greatest number” is a good slogan, but at least intermittently, people want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades.