Will, Utilitarianism, Descriptive Ethics

The claim that a Moral principle is descriptive is vulnerable to two challenges. First, it does not suffice to defend against the assertion that such a principle ought to be prescriptive. Second, it presupposes the objectivity of the Good, absent which, it is susceptible to the charge that it is an expression of 'bad faith', i. e. of a disowning of one's own creation. On the other hand, the exhortation 'Act!' is ironic--to fulfill it involves the self-activation of Will, for which any antecedent, including an exhortative utterance, can be no more than a describable phenomenon. Thus, it is unclear whether Mill's insistence that his Utilitarian principle merely describes the Good is an expression of naivety, of irresponsibility, or of an appreciation of the irony entailed in the alternative.