The most interesting area of ethical considerations by Bertrand Russell belongs to the field of metaethics and concerns the meaning of basic ethical concepts and their epistemological status. In the classic dispute between cognitivism and noncognitivism, Russell has chosen the emotivist position which deprives moral opinions of any cognitive value by treating them as an expression of individual emotive attitudes. Thus, he advocates a kind of subjectivism in ethics, and at the same time he refutes all arguments ascribing to moral phenomena specific objective qualities independent of human attitudes and emotions. He also puts to doubt all sources of morality that have a religious character. His own normative statements concerning metaethical issues are so phrased, however, that a serious methodological doubt arises: Is it possible to practice normative ethics without using an objectivist hypothesis?