Philosophical Review

The Trivializability of UniversalizabilityAuthor(s): Don LockeReviewed work(s):Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 25-44Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183181 .Accessed: 02/06/2012 20:55

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THE TRIVIALIZABILITY OF UNIVERSALIZABILITY

A NALYTIC ethics can easily be a frustrating business. We , would like very much to arrive at substantial ethical con- clusions, but these seem to be ruled out by the very nature of the subject. So it is not surprising that some hope, by reflecting on the essential nature of moral judgment, moral praise and blame, to arrive at formal principles which, while not embodying any particular moral content, nevertheless have some practical bearing on moral argument and moral opinion. One such principle would seem to be the principle that we must-logically must, must if we are to be judging morally in the first place-treat like cases alike. The only trouble is that as soon as any weight is put on this principle it seems to collapse into the shattering triviality that cases are alike, morally or in any other respect, unless they are different. In this paper I want to argue that Professor R. M. Hare's recent ingenious attempt to put forward a thesis of uni- versalizability (in Freedom and Reason [Oxford, i963], abbreviated to FR) suffers precisely this fate.

I

What, to begin with, does it mean to say that moral judgments are universalizable ? To say that a judgment is universal is to say that it applies to everything covered by the subject term, so to say that it is universalizable is, presumably, to say that it can be applied to everything covered by the subject term. If "This child ought to obey his parents" is universalizable, then it can be applied to all children; to say that it is universalizable is to say that all children ought to obey their parents.

Yet this cannot be quite right. I may say of a man who has promised to be home by eight o'clock that he ought to be home by eight, but in saying this, as a moral judgment, I certainly do not commit myself to saying that all men ought to be home by eight.

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Rather I commit myself to saying that all men who promise to be home by eight ought to be. So to universalize a moral judgment is to pass from saying that a particular thing is good or bad, right or wrong, ought or ought not be done, to saying that all things of a certain kind (a kind of which this one is an instance) are good or bad, right or wrong, ought or ought not be done. The particular thing is good or bad, and so forth, because it falls under some moral principle; the reason this child ought to obey his parents is that all children ought to obey their parents, and the reason this man ought to be home by eight is that all men ought to do what they promise to do. Thus to universalize a moral judgment is to state a principle from which that particular judgment can be derived, in the sense that the particular judgment would not be true unless that principle were true. In other words, the thesis of universalizability is, at least to begin with, the thesis that particular moral judgments presuppose moral principles.

Hare's argument is that this universalizability of moral judg- ments is a matter of logic, and that although nothing of importance follows from this logical fact by itself, important consequences do follow once universalizability is joined to certain other facts, about moral judgments and about us. He begins by saying that the universalizability of moral judgments is simply a logical conse- quence of the fact that they possess "descriptive meaning." Moral judgments, like "This is good," are universalizable in precisely the same way that descriptive judgments, like "This is red," are universalizable. "If a person says that a thing is red, he is com- mitted to the view that anything which was like it in the relevant respects would likewise be red. The relevant respects are those which, he thought, made it true that the first thing was red; in this particular case, they amount to one respect only: its red colour" (FR, p. i i). Thus the judgment "This is red" is univer- salizable in that we can pass from it to the "principle" that anything which is like it in being red is red. And if the judgment "This is good" is universalizable in precisely the same way, as Hare says it is, then this means that we can pass from "This is good" to the "principle" that anything which is like it in being good is good.

There are three things to notice about this. First, it is as trivial

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as trivial can be, whether we are dealing with the universalizability of descriptive judgments or with the universalizability of moral judgments-although Hare thinks that the thesis is "not so trivial" (FR, p. i 2) when applied to moral judgments. Second, this universalizability is not just a feature of judgments which possess descriptive meaning; it is a feature of any judgment which is capable of being true or false. If a judgment P is true in a certain state of affairs S then any state of affairs which was like S in the relevant respects (those which make P true) would likewise be a state of affairs in which P was true. Of course it may be that Hare does not wish to deny this, since the examples he gives of things which are not universalizable-for example, decisions, desires, imperatives-are not things which are capable of being true or false. The judgment "I have decided to do x," on the other hand, is universalizable in the present sense. Still, if this is what Hare meant, it is surprising that he did not save himself a lot of trouble by simply defining "judgment with descriptive meaning" as "judgment capable of being true or false." Third, the fact that moral judgments are universalizable in this sense does nothing to show that particular moral judgments presuppose moral principles, for the simple reason that "Anything which is like this in being good is good" is not a moral principle.

Hare is thinking along these lines. If something is red or a husband or good, then there must be something X which makes it true to say that it is red or a husband or good, such that if any- thing else possessed X it too would be red or a husband or good. So from the fact that something is red or a husband or good, we can derive the principle that all things which are X are red or husbands or good. In the case of descriptive terms, like "red" or "husband," the principle that all X's are red, or that all X's are husbands, will be a truth of logic; but with prescriptive terms, like "good," the principle that all things which are X are good will, thanks to this prescriptivity, be a substantial, a synthetic, moral principle. But what Hare forgets is that the X which makes it true to say that this thing is red or a husband is the fact that it is red or a married male-that is, a husband. Indeed, if the X in question did not logically entail being red or being a husband, then the claim that all X's are red or husbands could not be a

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truth of logic at all. So if moral judgments are, in the same sense, universalizable, what follows from the fact that this is good is only that all things which are X are good, where being X logically entails being good.

We need to distinguish, as Hare does not, between two inter- pretations of the claim that if something A is X, there must be something X which makes it true to say that A is r, such that if anything else were X it too would be Y. On the one hand, we can take the relationship between X and Y to be a logical relation, so that it is a matter of logic, that A's being X makes A r. In this case the principle "All X's are r's" will be a necessary, analytic truth-or if you prefer, a meaning rule. But on the other hand, we can take the relationship between X and r to be a factual relation, so that it is a matter of fact, not of logic, that A's being X makes A r. In this case the principle "All X's are r's" will be a contingent, synthetic truth-or, among moral judgments, a moral principle. Hare passes from the claim that if a thing is red it must possess features, even if only the color red itself, which make it correct to call it red, to the claim that if a thing is good there must be something, logically independent of the fact that it is good, which makes it good. Now to assert that if A is Y there must be something which, as a matter of logic, makes A Y is to assert that if the term "1" can be applied to anything there must be rules governing its application, even if the rule is only "What- ever is Y is Y." This is what is as trivial as trivial can be. But to assert that if A is r there must be something which as a matter of fact makes A Y is to assert what is traditionally known as the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Which is not so trivial.

Thus the reason the universalizability of moral judgments yields synthetic moral principles, and not mere meaning rules, is not, as Hare thinks, that moral terms are prescriptive. It is that the universalizability in question is not the universalizability of "to say that something is red to say that it is of a certain kind, and so to imply that anything which is of that kind is red" (FR, p. ii); but the universalizability of "if something is red there is some reason why it is red" ("To universalise is to give the reason," FR, p. 5). The claim is that if a thing is good or bad, right or wrong, ought or ought not be done, there must be some

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contingently sufficient reason why it is, where a contingently sufficient reason is a reason R such that anything which is R is, ceteris paribus, good or bad, right or wrong, and so forth, this being a contingent and not a logical truth. This contingent truth that anything which is R is good will be the moral principle presup- posed by the particular moral judgment that this thing is good.

II

The question of whether moral judgments are universalizable, in Hare's sense, now becomes the question of whether the Prin- ciple of Sufficient Reason applies in ethics. Indeed, if Hare's claim that his universalizability thesis is a logical thesis is to be upheld, the question is whether it is a fact of logic that the Principle of Sufficient Reason applies in ethics. For Hare's arguments to this effect we have to turn to Chapter 5, Section 2, of his Language qf Morals (Oxford, I 952; abbreviated to LM).

The argument there is that goodness is what has been called a "supervenient" or "consequential" property. If someone says that X is good and r is not, and yet denies that there is any other difference between X and r, then we will know that something has gone wrong with his use of the word "good." In Freedom and Reason, Hare says, "He must either produce (or at least admit the existence of) some principle which makes him hold different moral opinions about apparently similar cases, or else admit that the judgments he is making are not moral ones" (p. I02). I think he would say that this holds of all evaluative judgments, and not just moral ones. By itself this argument is little more than persuasive-what we need is some account of why the logic of evaluative terms should be like this-but nevertheless it persuades me. It does seem that if one thing is good and another not, there must, as a matter of logic, be some difference between them which explains why one is good and the other not.

Let us agree, then, that the Principle of Sufficient Reason applies in ethics as a matter of logic, that if something is good then there must be some reason why it is good-which is to say that particular moral judgments, like "This is good," presuppose

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moral principles of the form "Whatever is like this in certain respects is also good." This conclusion has, indeed, been challenged on the grounds that one need not think of one's own moral views as binding on others, but I doubt whether this is a valid objection. Let us take the standard example of Sartre's student who was uncertain whether he ought to leave occupied France and join the Free French in the attempt to liberate his country, or whether he ought to stay with his mother and protect her. The main point of this example for Sartre is that previously formulated and accepted principles are of no help in this situation. The student accepts that one ought to act for one's country and that one ought to protect one's parents, but this tells him nothing when, as here, the principles point in opposite directions. The student has to decide for himself what, in such a situation, is the right thing to do, and in this sense he, as Sartre would put it, chooses his own morality-although it is worth remembering that this happens only because antecedently accepted principles have come into conflict. The point of this example for us is rather different. The question is whether, in deciding that he ought to join the Free French, in deciding that his country takes precedence over his family, the student is adopting a principle which will apply equally to anyone who is in his situation. Or is he merely that saying that this is what he ought to do, whereas perhaps others ought to act differently, even in a situation precisely like this? To put it in the sort of terms that Sartre might favor: in deciding that he ought to join the Free French, is the student legislating only for himself, or is he legislating for all humanity?

Hare's view is that, if he is not to be misusing the word "ought," the student must be legislating for everyone; if he has decided that the reasons for joining the Free French outweigh the reasons for staying with his mother, then he has decided that they do so no matter who is placed in this position. Of course, the student might say, "Matters are so evenly balanced here that it is impos- sible to say which of the two you ought to do. I have decided to join the Free French, but other people may well decide different- ly." But once the student has decided that he ought to join the Free French, then he has decided that this is the right decision, and that anyone who decides differently has decided wrongly.

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This view of the matter is certainly tempting, but so too is the opposite view, which has been argued by Alisdair MacIntyre: "Someone faced with such a decision might choose either to stay or to go without attempting to legislate for anyone else in a similar position. He might decide what to do without being willing to allow that anyone else who chose differently was blameworthy" ("What Morality Is Not," Philosophy, 32 [I957],

p. 325). MacIntyre suggests the further example of the conscien- tious objector who says, "I ought to abstain from participation in war, but I cannot criticize or condemn responsible nonpacifists."

The first thing to notice about this is that the point at issue is not, as MacIntyre suggests, whether in deciding that I ought to do r I decide that anyone who, in the same situation, acts differently is blameworthy; but whether in deciding that I ought to do Ir I decide that anyone who, in the same situation, acts differently is acting wrongly. For I will not blame someone for doing what I regard as wrong if I believe that he is entitled to his opinion that what he does is right, just as I do not blame people who hold different, and I believe mistaken, moral views from me on such contentious matters as abortion and the war in Vietnam. Thus the conscientious objector might say, "I do not blame responsible nonpacifists, but I think that what they do is wrong." And Sartre's pupil might say, "Since the situation is so difficult I would not blame someone who acted differently from me, although I would think that his decision and his action were wrong." All this is quite consistent with Hare's universalizability thesis.

In order for these examples to count against Hare, the conscien- tious objector would have to say, "I believe that I ought not take part in the war, but someone else in my situation might quite correctly think otherwise"; and Sartre's pupil would have to say, "I have decided that I ought to join the Free French, but someone else in the same situation might quite correctly decide that he ought to stay with his mother." This may seem harder to defend, but it is still defensible. Indeed, interpreted in one way, it is something that many people would agree with. For Sartre's pupil might say, "I belive that I ought to join the Free French but if, in a situation like mine, you sincerely believe that you ought to stay with your mother, then that is what you ought to do-you

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ought to act differently, even though your situation is the same as mine." But notice that this does not count against Hare's universalizability thesis, for there is still a reason why Sartre's student ought to join the Free French, while someone else ought not-namely, that Sartre's student sincerely believes that this is what he ought to do. The student's decision presupposes the principle that, in a situation like this, one ought to do what one believes one ought to do, which means that if different people think differently then they ought to act differently. The principle is, in other words: in a situation like this, follow your conscience.

The claim is not that if I ought to do X then there is some reason why anyone ought to do X, but that if I ought to do X then there is some reason why I ought to do X (Principle of Sufficient Reason), such that anyone else to whom that reason applies ought also to do X (logical consistency). For example, Hare says, "Offences against the thesis of universalizability are logical, not moral. If a person says 'I ought to act in a certain way, but nobody else ought to act in that way in relevantly similar circumstances,' then, on my thesis, he is abusing the word 'ought'; he is implicitly contradicting himself" (FR, p. 32).

This, he says, is a feature not specifically of moral judgments, but of any judgment using the word "ought." So let us take an example where "ought" is not used morally, as when I say, "I ought to go and see Hamlet before the season finishes." At first sight it seems that I am not at all committed to saying that anyone else in my situation ought to see it, too; my decision is a purely personal one and I am not "legislating" for anyone else. Nevertheless, I have some reason for thinking I ought to see Hamlet-for example, that I will enjoy it- and by "relevantly similar circumstances" Hare must mean, whether he realizes it or not, circumstances where the same reason applies. So the point is that if I think I ought to see Hamlet because I would enjoy it, then I will think that anyone else who would enjoy it ought, for the same reason, to see it, too. A reason is a reason for anyone for whom it is a reason, but this is not to say what is obviously false, that a reason for one person is a reason for anyone, that all reasons apply equally to everyone.

Thus the universalizability that Hare argues for is immune

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from MacIntyre's criticisms. But it may still be that the univer- salizability which Hare actually holds is not, for he continually states his view in terms of "same situation" or "same circum- stances," as if he took the thesis to be that if A ought to do X then anyone, no matter who he is, in the same objective state of affairs ought also to do X. MacIntyre has given us good reason for doubting this claim. Thus Hare says, for example, "It is . . . char- acteristic of desires that they are not universalisable .... To want something does not commit the wanter to wanting other people, in the same circumstances, to have it" (FR, p. 157), as if the universalizability of moral judgments meant that thinking that you ought to do something commits you to thinking that other people, in the same circumstances, ought to do it also. Again, "All that the universalist is committed to in making a moral judgment is to saying that if there is another person in a similar situation, then the same judgment must be made about his case" (FR, pp. 48-49). Then (p. I54) Hare considers the good-health idealist who says to himself, "I ought to get out of bed now," without wanting to say that everyone else (of a similar age, and so forth) ought to get out of bed, too. Hare says, "This may be only a hypothetical 'ought'; he may mean merely that if he wants to live up to his ideal, he ought . . ," as if the possibility that it is a categorical "ought" would conflict with the claim that all "oughts" are universalizable. But this "ought" can be categorical without this committing the good-health idealist to believing that everybody in his situation ought to leap out of bed. For the universal principle presupposed by his "ought" may be "Everyone with the good-health ideal ought to leap out of bed now." This would conflict with the universalizability thesis only if the thesis were that "oughts" apply universally, irrespective of the indi- vidual's particular interests, beliefs, and opinions. But Hare has given us no argument for such a thesis, and MacIntyre's arguments count against it.

In other words, Hare has established that if something ought to be done, then anything to which the same reason applies ought also, ceterisparibus, to be done. He has not established that different people ought in the same situations to do the same thing, for the fact that they are different people might mean that the reasons

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which apply to them are different-as with Sartre's example, or with the good-health idealist, or with my thinking that I ought to see Hamlet.

III

In Freedom and Reason, Hare insists that the moral principles presupposed by particular moral judgments may be of any kind whatsoever: "On my view, there is absolutely no content for a moral prescription that is ruled out by logic or by the definition of terms." But in an earlier article, "Universalizability" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society [I954-55]; abbreviated to U), he had held that moral principles must, qua moral principles, be of a particular kind which, following Ernest Gellner, he called U-type. In Freedom and Reason he describes what he originally said as "worse than misleading" by which he means, I take it, that it is false. So it might seem that Hare has changed his mind about whether moral principles must be U-type principles. But in fact this is not so.

A U-type principle is one which contains no singular terms, no proper names, or definite descriptions, but is couched solely in general-Hare would prefer to say universal-terms. A singular term is one which refers to, or is defined by reference to, a par- ticular thing or things, as "English" is defined by reference to England. Thus for Hare "being English" is not a universal; we will see how this misleads him. The first thing to notice is the difference between a judgment's being universal and its being U-type. "All Lockes are muddle-headed philosophers" is a universal proposition, but it is not U-type because it contains the proper name "Locke." In "Universalizability," Hare seemed to be aware of this distinction; he holds that all principles are universal, but that moral principles differ from others in being U-type principles: "I cannot be accused . . . of making my thesis [that moral judgements are U-type valuations] analytic in virtue of the meaning of the word 'reason'; for I see no grounds in common language for confining the word 'reason' to reasons involving U-type rules. I shall, however, argue later that it is analytic in virtue of the meaning of the word 'moral' " (U, p. 298). But in Freedom and Reason Hare ignores this distinction: " 'England'

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is here a singular term, which prevents the whole proposition from being universal" (p. 36) or "The second part of this proposition contains no singular terms, and can therefore be called properly universal" (p. i i). So Hare thinks that all principles, being universal, will be U-type, and hence that the assumption that moral principles are universal in this sense-that is, are U-type principles-puts no restriction on the content of moral principles. In the next section we shall question the assumption that not all principles are universal, but for a start it is clear that not all principles are U-type, as Hare himself has shown. "I do not claim.. . that the rule or maxim which is involved in giving a reason is always of type U.... 'It resulted in an improvement in Great Britain's balance of payments' might be given as a reason for an action by someone who would only think it a reason if it improved Great Britain's balance of payments, not if it improved the balance of payments of some other country, however similar qualitatively" (U, pp. 297-298).

The question is, then, whether Hare was right in thinking that moral principles must be U-type principles. His argument (U, pp. 304 ff.) was that we could not understand a person's claim to be making a moral judgment-for example, that you ought not to do that-unless he were prepared to say that other similar people in other similar situations ought not do it either. This argument fails to establish the conclusion. Suppose I say, "You ought not do that," and, when asked why, say, "Because you are an English- man." I happen to believe that the English are, by virtue of being English, a race subject to specially high moral standards, which do not apply to other lesser beings. I accept, as a moral principle, that Englishmen ought not to do things like that-for example, kiss one another when they score goals at soccer-though I see nothing wrong with members of other nationalities doing it. My principle is a universal principle, in the sense that it applies to all Englishmen, but it is not a U-type principle because it contains what Hare would consider a singular term, "Englishmen." Nevertheless, when I say that you ought not do that, I am prepared to say that other similar people-that is, other Englishmen- ought not to do it either. So Hare's argument against the possibil- ity of a moral principle which is not of type U does not apply

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against this moral principle, which is not of type U. No doubt Hare would say that my "You ought not do that" cannot be a moral judgment unless I am prepared to say that it applies to everyone who is like Englishmen. That is, if on some far-distant planet we were to come across people who were born in a country which is in all respects precisely like England then, if my principle is to be a moral principle, I would have to say that they, too, ought not kiss one another when they score goals. But it is clear that my saying "Englishmen ought not kiss one another when they score goals" does not necessarily commit me to applying this same principle to these other people. I may say that no matter how like the English these people happen to be, they are still not English, and in a matter like this that makes all the difference. Perhaps I would be regarded as inconsistent in not extending my principle to cover these nouveaux English, but my inconsistency would not be a logical inconsistency; it would be more like putting sugar in your tea one day and not the next. But the important point is that if I extend my principle to cover these nouveaux English I am extending it; my original principle did not cover them, it applied only to the genuine English, and it was no less a moral principle for that.

Thus Hare's argument does not establish that a moral principle must be a U-type principle. What it does seem to establish is that a moral principle must be a universal principle, in that "I ought not to do that" implies "A person like me in circumstances of this kind ought not to do that kind of thing when the other people involved are the sort of people they are" (U, p. 305). We can now see how, in Freedom and Reason, Hare comes to assume that any principle, moral or not, must be U-type, and why he describes his earlier argument as "worse than misleading." He sees that, in the sense in which his argument shows moral prin- ciples to be universal, all principles are universal, and so the ar- gument cannot demonstrate a difference between moral and nonmoral principles. But, in Freedom and Reason, he fails to notice the distinction between "universal" and "U-type," and so he thinks that his original argument shows not just that moral judgments presuppose universal principles, but that they presup- pose U-type principles. In the end, as Professor D. H. Munro

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has pointed out (in a review of FR, Australasian Journal of Philos- ophy, 42 [i964], p. I25), Hare seems to be saying that since "It is illegal to marry one's own sister" is not universalizable (it con- tains an implicit reference to a particular jurisdiction), it must lack descriptive meaning (cf. FR, p. 36)!

IV

Why should Hare have wanted to say that moral principles must be U-type? The main reason people have wanted to insist that moral judgments are universalizable is that they hope to show that it is a logical truth, and therefore something that can be established by a theory-neutral analytic ethics, that we ought not to make exceptions in our own favor: I cannot, logically cannot, claim an obligation for others that would not apply to me, nor a right for myself that would not apply to others. Morality, we might say, is no respecter of persons. Less metaphorically, moral principles do not make exceptions of particular individuals just because they happen to be those particular individuals. If a moral principle applies or does not apply to a particular person, it is not because he is that particular person, but because he possesses some feature or combination of features which could, at least in principle, be possessed by others. It does not matter who you are; what counts is only the general-Hare would prefer to say the universal-features of you and your situation.

Now I think it is clear that this thesis is not one which is logically true, either in virtue of what we mean by a principle or in virtue of what we mean by a moral principle. Rather the claim that morality is no respecter of persons is itself a substantial moral claim which some might not accept. Someone might well believe in the divine rights of kings, and believe that his king is the only monarch in whom these rights are invested. "The king and only the king," he says, "has the right to deprive his subjects of their lives." This, he believes, is a moral truth and one which applies to only the one person; the king alone has the right to take human life. Here is a moral principle which makes an exception of a particular individual. Indeed, here is a principle, and a moral one at that, which does not seem to be universal.

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It might be said that "The king may deprive his subjects of their lives" is implicitly universal, despite the fact that it begins with a "the" and not an "all," in that it says, in effect, that all kings have this right. But for a start I see no reason in logic why someone should not restrict the application of this principle to this particular king, and not apply it to his predecessors and successors. Or, if this seems implausible, suppose someone to believe that there will and can be only one Christ, and that this Christ has rights and duties which no one else can have. "Christ was alone in having a duty to die for us" is not even implicitly universal, if being universal means being of the form "All X's are T's."

Hare's argument has been, however, that particular moral judgments presuppose universal moral principles, in that if anything is, for example, good, there will be some principle of the form "Everything like this in the relevant respects is good" which states the reason why this thing is good. Thus, if the king alone has this right to deprive people of their lives there must be some reason why he has it-for example, that, as king, he derives it from God. If Christ alone has this duty to die for us there must be some reason why he has this duty-for example, that he was the Son of God and so alone was in a position to die for us. But in what sense do these reasons provide us with universal moral principles? "Everyone (anyone) who is king has this right," "Everyone (anyone) who is the Son of God has this duty," may be universal in form, but they still apply to only one person. Inasmuch as there is only one king, only one Son of God, these principles precisely do make exceptions of particular people.

The point is that even if moral judgments do, as a matter of logic, presuppose reasons, no limit has been set on what can be offered as a reason. All that the argument has shown is that if I believe that I am morally privileged, then I must be able to offer reasons why I am thus privileged-for example, that I am the author of "The Trivializability of Universalizability." No doubt this reason is morally unacceptable; no one will accept this fact as morally relevant. But to say this is to import a moral element into an argument supposed to be purely logical. All that is required by logic is that I offer some reason; whether you find

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my reason morally acceptable is neither here nor there. My reason generates the "universal" moral principle "Everyone like me in being the author of this article has these special rights," but since I am the only person who wrote it-and though others may write similar articles with the same name, no one else can write this article-the principle is only formally universal; it still applies to only one person.

The error is obvious enough. Once we say that moral principles are universal principles, we will naturally think of them as apply- ing to everyone, as allowing no exceptions. Thus, for example, Bernard Mayo: "Secondly, it [a moral judgment] must be universalizable in the sense that it applies not only to me but to you; not only to you but to me; not only to us but to everybody; this is involved in speaking of moral principles as opposed to maxims or private policies" (Ethics and the Moral Life [New York, 1958], p. 9i). Yet the plain fact is that not all moral principles do apply to everyone. "Wives ought to honor and obey their husbands" does not apply to me, and "Thou shalt not commit adultery," taken strictly, does not apply to anyone who is not married. What is true, of course, is that these principles apply to anyone who is a wife, to anyone who is married, and principles containing singular terms are no different in this respect; "English- men ought not do that" applies to anyone who is English. These principles apply universally in the sense that they would apply to anyone if he were a wife, if he were married, if he were an English- man. The point is merely that any principle, moral or not, U-type or not, applies to anyone who falls within its scope, under its range of application. Which is yet another triviality.

If it is false to say that all moral principles apply to everyone, and trivial to say that all moral principles apply to everyone who falls within their range of application, what of the claim that moral principles apply to people irrespective of who they are? This would be correct only if it were true that moral principles cannot contain references to particular items and individuals- that is, if moral principles must be U-type principles. But this, as we have seen, is precisely what Hare does not establish; he merely takes it for granted because he does not distinguish "U-type" from "universal." All that has been shown is that moral principles

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must be universal in the trivial sense of applying to everyone and everything that they apply to.

V

All this may seem unfair to Hare. For his avowed position in Freedom and Reason is that the universalizability of moral judgments sets no limit on their possible content. Rather, when coupled with the fact that moral judgments are prescriptive and that there are, in fact, limits to what most of us are prepared to prescribe for ourselves, the universalizability of moral judgments sets a limit to what we can honestly and sincerely assert as a moral judgment. If someone says that, in a particular case, something ought to be done, then he himself must be prepared to do that same thing, should he find himself in the same situation or one which is similar in the relevant respects. If he is not prepared to, then he cannot be making a genuine moral claim; indeed, he must be misusing the word "ought."" What circumscribes ... moral prescriptions... is, on my theory, not... a verbal restriction on the content of moral judgments; it is rather the desires and inclinations of the human race" (FR, p. I95).

Thus the fact that there are limits to what we are prepared to prescribe for ourselves-and, for Hare, to prescribe something for oneself is to do it if one can-does set a limit to what any ordinary nonfanatical person will be willing to offer as a moral prescription. For example, if I want to say that Jews ought to be exterminated or that homosexuals ought to be imprisoned, then I must be prepared to accept extermination or imprisonment for myself, should I turn out to be a Jew or a homosexual. Only what Hare calls a fanatic would go to this extreme; such people "must e.g. want to get rid of Jews more than they themselves want to live; or they must want to lock up homosexuals more than they want to be at liberty themselves" (FR, p. I97).

Someone might say, "I believe that Jews ought to be extermin- ated, and therefore that if I were aJew I too ought to be extermin- ated. But this doesn't mean that if I were a Jew I would accept extermination. For if I were a Jew I would not believe that Jews

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ought to be exterminated. What this shows is not that there is something wrong with my moral beliefs, but that there is some- thing wrong with Jews-that they are too stupid or insensitive to recognize what is morally right." Hare has an answer to this. The question is not what I would or would not be prepared to do if I were in some situation S, but what I am or am not, here and now, prepared to commit myself to doing should I find myself in situation S. We ask not "What would you say or feel or think, or how would you like it, if you were he?" but "What do you say (in propria persona) about a hypothetical case in which you are in his position?" (FR, p. io8).

Now this theory of moral reasoning presupposes that moral judgments are universalizable in a further sense which we have not so far discussed. For the form of the argument presupposes that it is always possible to construct at least a hypothetical case in which the moral principles in question apply to the person who was originally applying them to someone else. This means that, despite Hare's claim that he is not setting limits to the content of moral judgments, moral principles cannot admit of exceptions being made of particular people-or else it would be compar- atively easy to avoid having a particular principle used against oneself. But more than that, it also means that it must always be possible to apply any moral principle to anyone, at least in a hypothetical case. We have already seen that not all moral principles do apply to everyone; "Englishmen ought not to kiss one another when they score goals" does not apply to me. But it could be applied to me; it would apply to me if I were English.

Nevertheless, not all moral principles are hypothetically applicable in this way. True, "Wives ought to honor and obey their husbands" would apply to me ff I were a wife. But in so far as this condition is not one which I could satisfy, this principle is not one which can be applied to me (in propria persona), even in a hypothetical situation. It is not necessary to labor this defect in Hare's argument. The point has been made, elegantly, by C. C. W. Taylor (review of FR, Mind, I4 [i965], p. 287):

How would Hare's argument deal with a white man who said "Africans who have been brought up in a tribal society, whose moral outlook

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is consequently quite different from ours, who don't accept European standards of culture, education etc. are not worth the slightest moral consideration, but should be treated simply as chattels by their white masters"? There is no point in saying to this man, suppose him to be a South African farmer of Dutch descent, moderate means, secondary school education and rigid Calvinist principles, "What do you, Heinrick Potgeiter, say of a hypothetical situation in which you, Heinrick Potgeiter, are in the situation of such an African?" For what can count as being in the situation of such an African other than having not only the physical characteristics but also the upbringing, outlook, sympathies and interests of such an African? And what is this other than actually being such an African? But what is the sense of the supposition that a white farmer of Dutch descent etc., might in certain circumstances be an African of a totally different educational level and moral and social outlook? Surely the only sense is that the farmer has come to be another person. But the whole force of the argu- ment depended on the assumption that the person in the hypothetical situation and the person required to legislate for that situation should be the same person.

The important point for Hare is not so much that moral principles do not admit of exceptions being made of particular people but, more generally, that moral principles can always be applied to anyone. Unfortunately this is not so, and no doubt the word "universal" is to blame once again (notice, for example, FR, p. I07: "If it is a universal property, then, because of the meaning of the word 'universal,' it is a property which might be possessed by another case in which he played a different role"). Moral principles may be universal in the sense of applying to everything of the particular sort, though this universality becomes trivial when there is and can be only one thing of that sort. They are not universal in the sense of being applicable to everyone. Indeed, as Taylor shows, this does not follow even if it is shown that moral principles must necessarily be U-type principles.

VI

We began by asking what it means to say that moral judgments are universalizable. Predictably enough, we have found that it

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might mean several different things. In particular, to say that "A ought to do X" is universalizable might mean:

(i) that it presupposes some logical truth, dependent upon a meaning rule, to the effect that anything which is r ought to be done (since if X ought to be done there must be some feature or combination of features r which, as a matter of meaning or logic, makes X something which ought to be done);

(2) that it presupposes some synthetic moral principle to the effect that anything which is r ought to be done (since if X ought to be done there must be some feature or combinations or features r which, as a matter or fact as opposed to a matter of logic, makes X something which ought to be done);

(3) that it presupposes some universal principle (since any principle, moral or otherwise, will be universal in some sense);

(4) that it presupposes some U-type moral principle (since if the principle were not U-type, if it contained some singular terms, it would not be a universal principle);

(5) that it presupposes some moral principle which applies to anyone and everyone (since a universal or U-type principle applies to anyone and everyone);

(6) that it presupposes some moral principle which cannot allow exceptions to be made of particular people just because they happen to be those particular people (since a universal or U-type principle applies equally to all);

(7) that it presupposes some moral principle which could be applied to anyone and everyone (since a universal or U-type principle could be applied to anyone and everyone).

My argument has been as follows:

(i) is a necessary consequence of the fact that moral judgments can be true or false, and is therefore a logical truth, but also a trivial one.

(2) is a necessary consequence of the fact that the Principle of Sufficient Reason applies to moral truths, and in so far as this is a consequence of the logic of moral terms, as I believe it is, so far thesis (2) is also a logical truth. It may also be trivial, but it is not so trivial as (i).

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(3) is a logical truth only if "universal" means "applying to everything it applies to," in which case it too is utterly trivial. Otherwise it is false, so long as "The Son of God alone had a duty to die for us" is a possible moral judgment.

(4) is also false, so long as "Englishmen ought not to kiss one another when they score goals" is a possible moral judgment.

(5) is also false, so long as "Wives ought to honor and obey their husbands" is a possible moral judgment.

(6) may well be true, though as a matter of fact rather than a matter of logic. Or rather it is true as a matter of morals, since it is in itself a substantial moral claim, not in the sense of setting limits to what is good or bad, right or wrong, and so forth, but in the sense of setting limits on what considerations can be accepted as morally relevant.

(7) is false, so long as there are some morally relevant properties which cannot be possessed by particular people.

Hare's errors seem to spring originally from his loose and idiosyncratic use of "universal." The most that his argument shows is that if we make exceptions we must have reasons for making them. But as a thesis about the logic of moral judgments, it sets no limits whatsoever to what those reasons might be. If I want to, I clan always find some reason why you ought to do X while I need not, or why I may do X while you ought not, though if I do this often enough my moral opinions are going to look odd or my moral judgments insincere, or both. Nevertheless, though sticks and stones may break my bones, logic cannot hurt me.

DON LOCKE

University of Newcastle upon Tyne

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