Universalizability
Richard M. Hare
A thesis about moral statements, held by most, though not all, moral philosophers, namely that to make a moral judgment about one situation commits one to accepting a similar judgment about any situation having the same universal non moral properties, no matter what individuals occupy what roles in the two situations. The thesis is associated above all with Kant, but is related to the views of earlier thinkers, and to the Christian (and pre Christian) golden rule. ‘‘Individuals’’ is best taken (though Kant thought otherwise) to include all sentient beings, human or non human (see kantian ethics).
The thesis is crucial for moral reasoning. The following confusions about it are common.
- Universalizability is not the same as generality or simplicity, although simple general rules do have a place at the intuitive level of moral thinking. The universal non moral properties in question may be highly specific. Thus a believer in the universalizability of moral statements does not have to believe that they ought always to be made in accordance with very simple general rules. Specific (even very detailed) differences between situations may make a moral difference, pro vided that they can be expressed without reference to individual roles. Thus a lie told to someone in one situation could be wrong, but a lie told to someone in a subtly different situation not wrong, if the difference were morally relevant. Kant was unclear about this.
- References to individuals are not the same as specifications of relations in which the individuals stand. Thus, if Jane is John’s mother, it is not a breach of the thesis to say that John has a certain duty to Jane in virtue of being her son. The universal principle here is that all sons owe this duty to their mothers – for example, to care for them in old age, or to do so in certain minutely specified circumstances. It is not relevant that a son can have only one (genetic) mother.
- It is likewise not relevant that no two actual people and no two actual situations are exactly similar. Hypothetical people and situations can be imagined that are exactly similar in their non moral universal proper ties, and we can ask what should be done in these exactly similar situations if we occupied different roles in them (for example, that of the victim of a dirty trick that we are thinking of playing in our present actual role).
- The roles in the situations include the de sires of the people in them; so I cannot argue, ‘‘I wouldn’t mind it being done to me,’’ if my victim very much minds it being done to him.
The argument from universalizability thus goes as follows: we say to someone planning a wrong act, ‘‘Are you prepared to say that the same ought to be done to you, if just the same situation were to recur, but with you in your victim’s place?’’ Most people, if they understand what ‘‘ought’’ means, will say that they are not.