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3 J. Value Inquiry 1 (1969)

handle is hein.journals/jrnlvi3 and id is 1 raw text is: 1 ON BEING MORALLY JUSTIFIED HENRY L. RuF In this paper I intend to argue in support of three claims. (1) In many cases, perhaps in most cases, it is inappropriate to ask man to provide a moral justification. (2) The contextual conditions which make a request for a justification appropriate also determine the criteria for evaluating the successfulness of any effort to meet such a request. (3) Understanding what these justification criteria are enables us to understand what the criteria are by which we evaluate the truth of moral claims about what a man is morally free to do, what he has a moral right to do, what he has a moral obligation to do, what he morally ought to do. I hope to make intelligible and plausible these arguments by showing the appropriateness of using the concepts of a criminal indictment and a scientific explanation to illuminate the moral situation. In Anglo-American and Roman law a person does not have to justify what he has done until someone can build a prima facie case showing that he has committed a crime. A man need not justify doing what is not illegal. Even when a person has been charged with committing a crime, there are several moves open to the accused, only one of which consists in giving justifi- cation. He can claim that he never did anything which fits the description of the action which is illegal. He can try to excuse all or some degree of the responsibility for doing such an act. Legal justification, in other words, is called for only when a prima facie supported indictment is leveled, the act performed fits the description of the illegal action, and no acceptable excuses can be offered. If a person does attempt to justify his act, then there are also a number of ways he could try to do this. He could claim that if he had not broken this law he would have broken a higher one. (He would have caused the death of thousands if I had permitted him to get away to the enemy with those secrets.) He could claim that the law is unconstitutional. He could claim that the law is a bad law, so bad that living in accordance with it, even for the period of time it takes to try to get it changed, will bring about such disastrous consequences that it must not be obeyed. Thomas Hobbes argued that what is true of legal indictments and justi- fications is also true in the case of moral accusations and justifications.' It seems to me that Hobbes is right. He argued that first man is morally free and then man becomes morally obligated. A man is morally obligated only when it is not all right for him to exercise his moral freedom. For Hobbes, 1 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIV, as reprinted in Ethical Theories, A. I. Melden (ed.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1950, pp. 198-200.

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