J. O. Urmson was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Originally published in 1968, this book traces the development of the emotive theory of ethics. Attention is paid to the positive features of the ethical theory whilst the author also shows how a more adequate view can be reached through critical reflection on it.

1. Preliminaries 2. The Grounds for Emotivism 3. Emotive Meaning 4, 5 & 6 Stevenson's Ethics and Language 7. Validity 8. The Vocabulary of Evaluation 9. Good of a Kind and Good From a Point of View 10. A test For Evaluative Terms 11. Meaning and Illocutionary Force 12. Conclusion