455PARTICULARISM AND UNIVERSALIZABILITYThe Journal of Value Inquiry 37: 455–461, 2003.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Particularism and Universalizability

JÖRG SCHROTHGeorg-August-Universität Göttingen, Philosophisches Seminar, Humboldtallee 19, 37073Göttingen, Germany; e-mail: jschrot@gwdg.de

It is commonly assumed by particularists as well as by generalists that moralparticularism is incompatible with the thesis of universalizability. Particu-larists, therefore, try to disprove the universalizability thesis, while generalistsuse the supposed incompatibility as an easy way to dismiss particularism. Uni-versalizability seems far better justified than particularism and if one of themhas to be given up, the odds are surely against particularism. This commonassumption is wrong. The alleged conflict between particularism and uni-versalizability is due to a misunderstanding of the universalizability thesis.Consequently, particularists need not try to disprove a thesis which is widelyheld to be a conceptual truth and a necessary feature of moral language, andgeneralists need to find substantial arguments against particularism and can-not content themselves with holding that particularism is untenable becauseit contradicts a conceptual truth of moral language.

Let us start with Roger Crisp’s recent discussion of the issue. He writes:

According to Dancy’s understanding of the universalizability thesis, if someaction is judged to be right, then any relevantly similar action must like-wise be judged to be right. It is clear how denying universalizability is likelyto commit one to particularism about reasons, so let me briefly considerwhether it should indeed be denied.1

The relevantly similar action in Crisp’s formulation of the universalizabilitythesis must be similar in morally relevant respects. Further, it must be similarin all morally relevant respects. Two actions are relevantly similar if and onlyif they are similar in all the relevant respects. With these clarifications theuniversalizability thesis can be put as follows: If an action is right, then anyaction similar in all morally relevant respects is also right.

It is obvious that the universalizability thesis is analytic and cannot possi-bly be denied. Two actions similar in morally relevant respects are eo ipsomorally similar. Were they not morally similar, there would be a morally rel-evant difference between them and they would not be similar in morally rel-evant respects. It would be self-contradictory to admit that two actions are

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similar in morally relevant respects and then to judge one to be right and theother to be wrong.

Since the universalizability thesis is analytic, particularism would notwarrant serious attention if particularists were committed to denying it. Butwhy should particularists want to deny it? Which particularist doctrine is sup-posed to contradict it? The essential point of particularism is the rejection ofmoral principles along with the rejection of the claim that properties whichare morally relevant in one case are likewise morally relevant in other cases.Only if the universalizability thesis is thought to be at odds with these claimsdo particularists have reason to reject it. In this context the term “moral prin-ciple” is used loosely and nothing depends on the distinction sometimes madebetween moral principles and moral rules where the latter are said to be morespecific and less abstract than the former. Consequently, “moral principle”should be understood here as covering genuine moral principles like “Avoiddoing harm” or “Doing harm is wrong” as well as moral rules like “Do notbreak your promises” or “Breaking your promises is wrong”. The idea thatthe universalizability thesis implies moral principles is common and is held,in particular, by R.M. Hare, who is the main target of Jonathan Dancy’s criti-cisms of universalizability. Yet, in spite of its general acceptance, this idea iswrong. The universalizability thesis does not imply moral principles. If, forexample, someone judges an action to be wrong because it is a lie, all that sheis committed to by the thesis is that she has to judge as wrong every actionsimilar in all morally relevant respects. This, however, does not imply, thatshe has to judge every lie as wrong, and there is no way to derive this or anyother moral principle from applying the universalizability thesis to the par-ticular moral judgment. The thesis implies nothing as to which actions aresimilar in all morally relevant respects and the point of it is not to apply ajudgment made about one action to other actions or, as Dancy puts it, “to driveus in what may seem a very simple-minded way from one case [. . .] to an-other which happens to resemble the first in some limited way.”2 The point ofthe thesis is that someone who passes different moral judgments on two ac-tions which appear to be similar in morally relevant respects must be able topinpoint a morally relevant difference between them or else revise one of herjudgments. Dancy himself does rely on this pattern of argument as the fol-lowing passage shows:

The coherence of an overall outlook can be questioned in the followingway without generalist motivation. “Here you think the fact that she wasunhappy functions as a reason in one way, and there you took it to functionin quite another. To me they seem to be functioning in much the same wayboth times, so that I can’t really see how you can distinguish in the wayyou do. What is the relevant difference between the two cases?” This chal-lenge can always be made within the constraints of particularism, and there

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must be an answer to it if one’s position across the two cases is to emergeas coherent.3

In this reasoning we see a clear application of the universalizability thesis.Since even particularists must presuppose it, the alleged conflict betweenuniversalizability and particularism must lie somewhere else.

The conflict arises only if the universalizability thesis is confused with whatmay be called the principles thesis: If an action is right, then any action whichhas all the properties in virtue of which the first one is right, is also right. Thisthesis implies the existence of moral principles, and there would indeed be aconflict between universalizability and particularism if it were an adequateinterpretation of the universalizability thesis. Many philosophers fail to dis-tinguish between the two theses. They start talking about the universalizabilitythesis and then interpret it as the principles thesis. As a consequence their talkabout universalizability reflects an ambiguity between the two theses and itis this ambiguity which accounts for the alleged conflict between particularismand universalizability. Some claims made about universalizability are true onlyof either the universalizability thesis or the principles thesis but not of both.In particular, the claim that universalizability is an analytic thesis and a nec-essary feature of moral language is true only if applied to the universalizabilitythesis but wrong if applied to the principles thesis. The claim that universal-izability implies a commitment to moral principles is true only if applied tothe principles thesis and wrong if applied to the universalizability thesis.

The confusion between the two theses can be traced back to Hare’s intro-duction of the universalizability thesis in his Freedom and Reason. There hewrites:

If a person says that a thing is red, he is committed to the view that any-thing which was like it in the relevant respects would likewise be red. Therelevant respects are those which, he thought, entitled him to call the firstthing red; in this particular case, they amount to one respect only: its redcolour. . . . “This is red” entails “Everything like this in the relevant respectsis red” simply because to say that something is red while denying that someother thing which resembles it in the relevant respects is red is to misusethe word “red”; . . . And so if a person who says “This is red” is committedalso to the proposition “Everything like this in the relevant respects is red,”then he is, further, committed to the proposition that there is a property suchthat this has it and such that everything which has it is red. And the secondpart of this proposition contains no singular terms, and can therefore becalled properly universal.4

Universalizability in this sense is, according to Hare,5 a feature not only ofdescriptive judgments but of all judgments with descriptive meaning. Because

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moral judgments too have descriptive meaning they are universalizable in thesame sense as descriptive judgments. The quoted passages, therefore, holdequally if we replace the descriptive judgment “This is red” with the moraljudgment “This action is right”. Applied to moral judgments, then, Hare ismoving here from the universalizability thesis to the principles thesis. But hisreasoning is fallacious. Hare first assumes that if an action is right, then anyaction similar to it in morally relevant respects is also right. Then he claimsthat the morally relevant respects are those properties of the action in virtueof which it is judged to be right. Therefore, any action with the properties invirtue of which the action is right, is also right, which is the principles thesis.As it stands, however, this argument is incomplete and contains as a suppressedpremise what may be called the respects thesis: Two actions are similar in allmorally relevant respects if they share all the properties which are the rea-sons why the first one is right. Dancy has effectively shown that this thesis isuntenable. Besides the properties in virtue of which one action is right, an-other action may have additional morally relevant properties which may re-sult in it being different in some morally relevant respects. From the fact thatone action shares with another all the properties in virtue of which it is right,we cannot infer that the action does not have any further morally relevantproperties which make it wrong. Therefore, we cannot infer that the actionsare similar in all morally relevant respects. Consequently, the respects thesisis wrong.

How could anyone have thought otherwise? Perhaps the reason for hold-ing the respects thesis to be true was: first, it is held that if one action has theproperties in virtue of which another action is right, then both actions havethe same morally relevant properties. Then it is assumed that if two actionshave the same morally relevant properties, they are similar in all morally rel-evant respects. These assumptions naturally lead to the respects thesis if anambiguity in talking about two actions having the same morally relevant prop-erties is neglected. That two actions have the same morally relevant proper-ties could mean either that the properties which are morally relevant for theone action do occur in the other as well, or that the one action shares with theother the properties in virtue of which the other is right and does not have anyfurther morally relevant properties. That two actions have the same morallyrelevant properties according to the first interpretation does not exclude thepossibility that one action has some further morally relevant properties whichdo not occur in another. Therefore, we cannot infer that the two actions aresimilar in all morally relevant respects and have the same moral property. Iftwo actions have the same morally relevant properties according to the sec-ond interpretation, they are similar in all morally relevant respects and have,therefore, the same moral property. But based simply on the fact that one actionhas the properties in virtue of which another is right, we cannot infer that thetwo actions have the same moral properties as interpreted in this second sense.

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We cannot infer that they are similar in all morally relevant respects. To pre-clude the fallacious reasoning from the universalizability thesis to the respectsthesis we might formulate the universalizability thesis in the following moreexplicit way. If an action is right and another action shares with it the proper-ties in virtue of which it is right, and does not have any further morally rel-evant properties, then the other action is also right.

Another way to see the fallacy in Hare’s reasoning is this: Hare claims thatthe expression “like this” can be substituted with a term which describes therespects in which two actions are alike. This claim, however, holds only inone case. If two actions which are similar in all morally relevant respects areboth judged to be right, then in retrospect we can find a term to describe therespects in which the two actions are alike and in virtue of which they areboth right. Yet, from this it does not follow that it is possible to judge oneaction to be right and then to find a term to describe the respects in virtue ofwhich this action is right, such that every other action which has the proper-ties to which this term refers is right too. Neglecting this results in neglectingthe difference between the universalizability thesis and the principles thesis.

Hare’s fallacy is repeated by Dancy.

Hare holds that moral judgements are universalizable in this sense: a per-son who makes a moral judgement is committed to making the same judge-ment of any relevantly similar situation. A situation is relevantly similar tothe first if it shares with the first all the properties that were the person’sreasons for his original judgement. So if we come across a case which re-sembles the first one in those limited respects, we are compelled to makethe same judgement or to retract our first judgement. In this sense eachjudgement creates a moral principle. Where our reasons for approval werefeatures F1-Fn, our judgement establishes for us the principle “All actionsthat have F1-Fn are right.”6

Here Dancy is moving from the universalizability thesis via the respects the-sis to the principles thesis. In a recent article he holds that the universalizabilitythesis and the respects thesis together make up universalizabilty:

The principle [of universalizability] is in two parts:

i. If we judge one action right, we must judge any other relevantly similaraction right.

ii. An action is said to be relevantly similar if, roughly, it shares with thefirst action all the properties which were reasons why the first action wasright.7

Dancy’s two parts correspond to the universalizability and respects theseswhich together entail the principles thesis. Arguments to the effect that

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universalizability is an analytic thesis and a necessary feature of moral lan-guage have been advanced with regard to the universalizability thesis only.The universalizability thesis and respects thesis are two distinct theses, eachof which requires its own justification. The respects thesis is no explicationof the universalizability thesis and cannot be inferred from it. Yet, many phi-losophers moved from the universalizability thesis to the respects and princi-ples thesis by way of the fallacious reasoning we have considered and thenput forward claims about the principles thesis which they have, in fact, estab-lished only with regard to the universalizability thesis. As a consequence ofneglecting the difference between the two theses and the resulting ambiguityin the use of the term “universalizability thesis,” it often happens that defendersand opponents of universalizability talk about different things. The debateabout particularism and universalizability is fruitless as long as some of thedebaters conceive of the universalizability thesis as we have considered it andothers conceive of it as the principles thesis. Whereas Dancy’s attack onuniversalizability is directed only at the respects and the principles theses,supporters of universalizability respond by defending the universalizabilitythesis.

A case in point is Crisp’s recent defense of universalizability. He rendersthe universalizability thesis as we have considered it, claims that the denialof the thesis commits us to particularism and then successfully defends itagainst criticisms put forward by Peter Winch. This defense of the universal-izability thesis, however, is completely beside the point with respect to Dancy’sarguments against the respects and principles theses. After having rebuttedWinch’s arguments Crisp concludes that the plausibility of the universal-izability thesis provides a further argument against particularism:

Particularism about reasons implies the falsity of the universalizabilitythesis. Since, even if it is not practically important, that thesis seems plau-sible, we have here a further argument against particularism.8

This conclusion is wrong. Particularism implies the falsity of the respects thesisand the principles thesis. What Crisp has shown to be plausible is the uni-versalizability thesis which is compatible with particularism, and its plausi-bility provides no further argument against particularism.

The difference between the theses which Crisp defends and Dancy attackscan be further illustrated by taking a quick look at what Winch actually ar-gues against. In Winch’s article, moral principles are not in dispute. In fact,there is no mention of moral principles. The only thing Winch takes issue withis what he calls Sidgwick’s conclusion in the following passage:

I decide that a certain action is right for myself and act accordingly; an-other agent is then confronted with a situation not relevantly different and

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decides that for him the action I had regarded as right would be wrong;then, according to Sidgwick’s conclusion, unless I have changed my mindabout the rightness of the action for me in the earlier situation, I am com-mitted to saying that the other agent decided wrongly.9

Disputing this conclusion is an entirely different matter than disputing theexistence of moral principles. To undermine the case for moral principlesDancy adduces cases whereby, for example, in one situation the fact that anaction produces pleasure is a right-making property of the action whereas inanother situation the very same fact is a wrong-making property. Winch’s caseof Captain Vere and Billy Budd is of a different kind. He maintains that itwould have been wrong for him to act as Captain Vere did but that, neverthe-less, he is not committed to saying that Captain Vere acted wrongly. If it wasright for Captain Vere to hang Billy Budd for killing his superior, then it isone thing to ask whether it would have been right for me in this situation tohang Billy Budd and another thing to ask whether it is always right to hangsomeone for killing his superior. The second question is about moral princi-ples and may be answered negatively by particularists without being com-mitted to answering the first question negatively. The first question is aboutthe universalizability thesis and the second about the principles thesis. Dis-tinguishing between the two theses and being aware of the ambiguity in theuse of the term “universalizability thesis” would advance the discussion bydirecting attention to the real issues between generalism and particularism.

Notes

1. Roger Crisp, “Particularizing particularism,” in B. Hooker and M. Little eds., MoralParticularism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, pp. 23–47), p. 40.

2. Jonathan Dancy, Moral Reasons (Oxford: Blackwell 1993), p. 82.3. Dancy, op. cit., pp. 63f.4. R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1963), p. 11.5. Hare, op. cit., pp. 15ff., 39.6. Dancy, op. cit., p. 80.7. Jonathan Dancy, “Defending particularism,” Metaphilosophy 30 (1999, pp. 25–32), p.

28.8. Crisp, op. cit., p. 42.9. Peter Winch, “The univeralizability of moral judgments,” in Peter Winch, Ethics and

Action (Oxford: Blackwell 1972, pp. 151–170), p 152.

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