Rules and Exceptions

Rules and Exceptions

One of the factors which have led many philosophers to adopt a more or less sceptical attitude in moral philosophy has been the recognition that most rules have exceptions. This has commonly been regarded as a threat to the entire moral enterprise. How can a philosopher even attempt to find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things which will weave them into the unity of a stable system if every principle, every rule, every judgment has to be qualified by who knows how many exceptions?

Plato was acutely aware of how devastating the admission of an exception might be. In the Republic Socrates completely invalidates Cephalus' thesis that justice is simply a matter of returning to others what is due to them by pointing out that if a friend deposited a weapon with us for safekeeping and then asked for it when he was not in his right mind, there would be justice in not returning it to him. Ordinarily we should return what does not belong to us, but this case would seem to be a legitimate exception. Socrates mentions another. It would be right in such circumstances he says to lie to a person who was out of his mind. On the other hand Plato also realised that by no means all alleged exceptions are justified. In the Euthyphro Socrates upon being informed that Euthyphro intends to prosecute his own father for murder suggests that perhaps it would be right to prosecute his father if he killed a relative but not if he murdered a stranger. Euthyphro rebukes Socrates for suggesting such an exception. Socrates offers no defence except to express amazement at the certainty with which Euthyphro claims to know what is right.

There are several ways to resolve the problem of uncertainty which the ex...

... middle of paper ...

...speak both universally and correctly. That is to say rules inevitably fail to take account of all the relevant peculiarities of some cases and situations but in saying that rules are deficient by virtue of their universality.

On the contrary many are perfectly good rules. It's just that rules are rules. Aristotle does not mean to suggest that all rules are bad or useless. Therefore unless we are to become rule worshippers and so fail to do the right thing in individual cases just to preserve the integrity and universal application of rules we must appeal in certain cases to another method in order to decide those cases. Fortunately there is such a method: the appeal to intuition.

References

Immanuel Kant Fundamental Principles and The Metaphysical Principles Of Virtue

Kurt Baier Ethics and Society (1966)

Kurt Baier The Moral Point Of View (1965)