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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
The principle “You can’t be judge in your own cause” is both selfevident and powerful. It is the principle that compels us to recognize that the ethical enterprise entails submitting to a higher judgment than our own first judgment. Moreover, it is the principle that commits us to conceding that ethical judgments are objective. Those two conclusions are accepted by many moralists. There is a third conclusion that, unless I am mistaken, follows just as inexorably as these two, but is rarely, if ever, accepted in modem discussions. If you can’t be judge in your own cause you commit yourself to depend on the praise and blame of a judge who is competent to judge your cause. The principle “Not judge in one’s own cause” entails an ethics of reward and punishment, because praise is a reward and blame a punishment.
“Notjudge in one’s own cause”
The principle “You cannot be judge in your own cause” is self-evident. It ordinarily applies in cases where I am in dispute with someone else over property: perhaps over ownership of land or fishing rights or the proceeds of a will. The principle is extended to cover issues such as the ban on an examiner from examining a relative, or a magistrate from presiding at the trial of a business associate.
No one doubts the applicability of the rule in these relatively unproblematic cases. What could be easier, it might be argued (but never is) than discounting one’s tendency to severity or to leniency when examining one’s own child? Yet most moral dilemmas are far more difficult than property disputes and arguments over examination grades. Every dispute inevitably involves the “cause” of every disputant.
A paper read at the Staff/Graduate Seminar of the Department of Philosophy, The University of Edinburgh on 9 December 1994.
1 Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy: Supplement: “The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion by John Tanner, M.I.R.C. (Member of the Idle Rich Class)”. Final section: Maxims for Revolutionists. “The Golden Rule”, 1903; Collected Plays, (London, 1971), p. 781.
2 Marcus G. Singer, “The Golden Rule”, Philosophy, 38 (1963), 293–314.
3 T. L. S. Sprigge, The Rational Foundations of Ethics (Problems of Philosophy: Their Past and Present; London & New York: Routledge, 1988). 202.
4 op. cit., 209.
5 Sartre, Jean–Paul, L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Collections Pensees; Paris: Les Editions Nagel, 1946), 39–47Google Scholar. See a telling discussion of the same passage by Bambrough, Renford, Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge (Studies in Philosophical Psychology; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 95–96Google Scholar.
6 Op.cit., especially 26–37.
7 Brandt, Richard B., Morality, utilitarianism, and rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 218–219Google Scholar.
8 Op.cit., 119–120.
9 Op.cit., 120; cf. 223; 295.
10 Delivered in Edinburgh, 31 January, 1992.
11 Waismann, Friedrich, Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis (Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von B.F. McGuinness; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967)Google Scholar, 115. See Stem, J.P., J.P. 1992: “Wittgenstein in Context”, in The Heart of Europe: Essays on Literature and Ideology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 384Google Scholar.
12 Rutherford, Samuel, Lex, Rex, or The Law and The Prince: Whether or no the King be the sole supreme and final interpreter of the Law (1644), reissue, (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle, 1982)Google Scholar,138 = Question XXVII, Assertion 2. Paragraph 3.
13 Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments: or, An Essay towards an analysis of the principles by which men naturally judge concerning the conduct and character, first of their neighbours, and then of themselves (1759), cited according to 11th ed. (London: Cadell & Davies; Rivington; Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown. Edinburgh: Creech; Bell & Bradfuth, 1812)Google Scholar, 333–334 = Part IV, Chapter II, end. I am indebted to Clement Dore for directing my attention to the importance of the Ideal Observer in moral discourse. He argued in 1976, and has repeated the argument in 1991, that if something is morally obligatory for a given person, that might well be the same as God's being disposed to disapprove of that person's doing what is morally obligatory. God is “the supremely perfect Ideal Observer”.Dore, Clement, Moral Scepticism (Library of Philosophy and Religion; London:Macmillan,1991), 39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 33–47, referring to an article, “Ethical Supematuralism” Sophia, (1976).
14 Kant, Immanuel, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Riga: Hartknoch, 1785Google Scholar; 2nd ed. 1786), 87–93. English translation: The Moral Law. Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, (Translated & analysed by H. J. Paton; London: Hutchinson, 1948), 101–104. The passage was cited and made the key to his argument by Mackey, James P., Power and Christian Ethics (New Studies in Christian Ethics; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 The Sermon on the Mount recommends that alms be done in secret, so much in secret (a philosophical joke) that the left hand should not be allowed to know what the right hand is doing; but so that “thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly” (Matthew 6.1–4).
16 0 Deus, ego onto te attributed to St Francis Xavier (1506–1552) translated by Edward Caswall (1814–1878).
17 Renan, Ernest, Dialogues et fragments philosophiques (Paris: Calmann–Levy, 1876Google Scholar; 9th ed., 1922) 141–142. The speech ends, “Consolons–nous, pauvres victimes; un Dieu se fait avec nos pleurs”, 143.
18 Op.cit., German, 127–128; Paton, 123, = Part III, concluding remark.
19 Newman, J.H., An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London, 1845)Google Scholar, Chapter I, Section II, Paragraph 7; (The 1878 edition reprinted; New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 70.
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