Moral Rules and Moral Maxims - The University of Texas at Austin

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questions are usually finally decidable ina finite and specifiable number of steps.Judgment is given and, after a smallnumber of appeals and reviews, the caseis finally decided or abandoned. One is declaredguilty or responsible. But moralquestions are much more open-ended,and possibly may be pursued downthrough the ages.Clearly, one of the cruxes is sanctions.The specification of what is peculiar inmoral sanctions would, I suspect, morethan anything else serve to determine thecharacter of moral rules. Were we toknow when, in what manner, and to whatend sanctions were enjoined, we shouldknow a great deal about what constitutesbreaches of the rules, and so the characterof the rules. But, as noted, one thingpeculiar to moral rules is just the absenceof specific penalties. When webreak a club rule a fine may be assessedor membership suspended; breaking therules of a game may cause us to forfeit orto suffer specific compensating disadvantages;when we break the law we are liableto fine or incarceration. The sanctionsare all internal to the enactment ofthe rule: Unless you do such and such,you will suffer such and such penalty.But the sanctions for breach of moralityare either entirely external and unspecifiedor, in the case of a conscientiousindividual, moral reward and punishment"must lie in the action itself."It is interesting that attaching specificsanctions to moral rules, as applied tothose of responsible age, almost automaticallyconverts them into rules of lawor rules of religion, or the like. By judicialprocess or overt legislation, for example,we translate the moral sentimentsof society into public declarations, yieldingrules of law.Now, I have been speaking rather freelyof the consequences of breaking moralMORAL RULES AND MORAL MAXIMS 273rules, but suspect it is metaphorical to callthese sanctions. These consequences consultonly the vicarious and unpredictableaction of "public opinion." One sufficientlysteeled against "moral pressure"and inured to hard scowls and gossipneed not fear these consequences, or mayat worst need to put up with small inconveniences.Indeed, the self-righteous arenot only steeled, inured, and willing, butoften downright eager to suffer such consequences.The most effective penaltiesare curiously subjective-pangs of remorseand the like-and may be totallyabsent. Observe, in any case, that thesanctions, if sanctions, are not specific tothe act, but always, so to speak, generic.The same sanction, so far as we can describeit, attaches to every breach ofmorality. These are the sanctions (ifsanctions) of conscience and publicopinion.My remarks, of course, have nothingto do with how we are taught to differentiatebetween right and wrong. We generallyare taught this by being constrainedto act in certain ways by prearrangedand specific people who awardprestated and specific penalties. But,once one is free from such constraint, thesanctions are no longer present.There are additional difficulties of asimilar kind for the doctrine of moralrules, especially when it comes to seeingexactly how it is to be used to elucidatemoral conflict and our appraisals of thebehavior of agents living in other societies.But enough has been said to showthat the doctrine, if it leads anywhere, isno high road to clarity, but a twisted,narrow path.It is remarkable that moral rules, if wemay speak of them so blithely, seldomgain explicit formulation. We can nowbegin to see why that is so. The momentwe trap a moral practice in a prescrip-This content downloaded on Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:18:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
274 ETHICStion, we are almost bound to specifysanction and clarify the application. Theresult is usually either a law of the landor a law of the church or something comparable.Because they are generally unformulated,it is hard to locate good examplesof moral rules, itself cause for suspicion.Of course, we can describe the moralpractice of societies, our own and others;and, though rarely done, it is not impossibleto transfer these statements intoexplicit rules of behavior.Moral rules, expressly formulated,would have to meet certain requirements.First, it is of the nature of a moral rulethat it might have been otherwise, in thesense in which, while one society mightadopt the practice, another might not.This is the one way in which moral rulesare arbitrary. Second, a moral rule mustbe backed, not by specific sanctions, butby "public opinion."When we look at examples often citedof moral rules we discover that these requirementsare usually not met. A commonexample is the alleged rule againstmurder. In the first place, one usually hasin mind a law rather than a moral ruleagainst murder. But, apart from that,the principle would still fail to meet thesecond requirement for being a moralrule. The proscription of murder is notpeculiar to this or that society; after all,murder is immoral (or illegal) killing.What will be peculiar to this or thatsociety is the specification of what willcount as murder. The moral reformerwould hardly suggest we abandon therule against murder, though he mightrecommend specific alterations in whatshould count as, what we should call,murder. I shall call such pronouncementsas "Do not murder" and "Keep promises"moral maxims, and shall suggestthat the moral practice of a society is tobe understood largely as the manner inwhich members apply moral maxims.Whether or not what we apply be maxims,the idea of application remains central.Baier observed that moral rules requireprinciples of differentiation andpriority and ways of determining exemptionsand exceptions. These wouldseem to me to count as principles of applicationfor moral rules. Now, one isapt, as he looks at these rules of application,to come more and more to see themas the moral rules, which even Baierseems to suggest could be the case (op.cit., pp. 132 f.).Of course, all rules which are used areapplied. But rules such as those for arithmeticcan be distinguished from and consideredapart from the rule or manner oftheir application. But other rules seem tobe nothing more than rules of application-rules of language and (as I suggest)rules of morality. However, this way ofputting it is a puzzling and misleadingresult of a too narrow devotion to thedoctrine of rules, which impels us towonder what it is we apply. We mightless misleadingly say that moral rules arerules in application. Being rules of behavior,they cannot be severed as a calculusfrom the behavior they govern.This is the last (not uniquely) distinguishingfeature of moral rules I want toremark-that they inevitably demandcollateral rules of application, or are bestregarded as rules in application. Whicheverway we put it, the manner and conditionsof "application" are heterogeneousin the extreme, not subject to simple andspecific advance summing up. And tospeak of rules at all is likely, in Hart'sphrase, to impose a "spurious unity."IIIAs stated, I shall call principles like"It is wrong to murder," or "One oughtThis content downloaded on Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:18:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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