ABSTRACT
In ‘Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can’t, Condemn The Terrorists?’, G.A. Cohen draws attention to a feature of moral judgment which has received comparatively little attention in analytical moral philosophy (Cohen 2013). He claims that one’s condemnatory ‘moral voice’ – one’s position as an articulator of what morality says in criticism of someone – is ‘silenced’, robbed of at least some of its weight or force, in two types of situation even when what one says in those situations is indeed what morality has to say about them. They are:
[1] where one is responsible for something relevantly similar to that for which one is criticising the other person. Cohen offers three labels for the ‘silencing’ riposte that could be offered by the latter: ‘look who’s talking’, ‘pot calling the kettle black’ and tu quoque (‘you, too!’; ‘you’re guilty of the same thing!’). (Hereafter I shall call this the tu quoque response.)
[2] where the critic has significant direct responsibility for causing that which he is condemning. No snappy name is at hand to characterise the reply warranted from the other person, not least because the nature of the critic’s ‘direct responsibility’ – and hence the wording of the reply itself – differs between the various relevant situations. Cohen’s list of responses to which one might be rightfully subject in this kind of instance includes: ‘you started it!’; ‘you made me do it!’; ‘you ordered me to do it!’; ‘you asked me to do it’; ‘you left me no reasonable alternative’; and ‘you gave me the means to do it’ (Cohen 2013: 123). (I will call this, in its general form, the ‘co-responsibility’ response.)
In neither situation is morality’s validity undermined, as the criticism which the critic is said not to be entitled to make is in itself justified. But it matters greatly who gives voice to morality’s judgments, for one lacks the moral authority to do so when one is rightfully liable to one (or more) of these moral rejoinders. A morally criticisable person, when criticised by someone who is morally impugnable in one, or both, of these ways can pertinently deflect their criticism by responding ‘you have no right to condemn me!’.