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A Plea for Excuses?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
In ‘A Plea For Excuses’ Austin observes that there are many situations in which a person accused of doing an action A wishes to protest that it is not altogether accurate or fair to say that he did A. The person may wish to excuse himself from an accusation of doing A on the grounds that what happened was inadvertent, or the result of an accident, or done by mistake etc. etc. Moreover if he really has an excuse, then it will no longer be possible simply to say that he did A, because it will be seen that either it is not true that he did anything at all, or that whatever he did it was not A but something else, or that he did A in such a manner that simply to say that he did it would be misleading in the extreme.
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References
1 Austin, J. L.Philosophical Papers (Oxford 1961), p. 123.Google Scholar
2 Austin, J. L. op. cit., p. 128.Google Scholar
3 Austin, J. L. op. cit., p. 129.Google Scholar
4 In The Nicomacheam Ethics III 1Google Scholar Aristotle says “… the man who has done something owing to ignorance, and feels not the least vexation at his action, has not acted voluntarily since he did not know what he was doing, nor yet involuntarily since he is not pained.” He also says that “Since that which is done under compulsion or by reason of ignorance is involuntary, the voluntary would seem to be that of which the moving principle is in the agent himself, he is being aware of the particular circumstances of the action”.
5 Hart, H. L. ‘Prolegomenon To The Principles of Punishment’ in Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford 1968), p. 14.Google Scholar
6 This passage from Hart, H. L. and Honoré, A. M.Causation In The Law (Oxford 1959), p. 147Google Scholar is of interest here: “A man who hands over his purse to a highwayman to save his life, and one who hands over strategic plans to the enemy to save his, are treated differently because the value of the interests sacrificed is different. We have here a meeting place between the notion of a predicament which justifies the action taken and that of pressure which makes it not fully voluntary”. It is I think a fair comment on a number of cases these authors discuss under the heading of ‘non-voluntary conduct’ that they could also be classed as cases in which conduct was justified, or reasonable and to be expected in the circumstances e.g. self-preservation, safeguarding rights, doing what one is legally bound to do. Indeed the analogies in virtue of which conduct of these kinds is classed as ‘non-voluntary’ seem to be very stretched indeed at times.
7 Haksar, Vinit makes a similar point in his interesting paper ‘Responsibility’, Supplementary Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 1966, p. 195.Google Scholar
8 Nowell-Smith, P.Ethics (Pelican 1954), chapters 19 & 20Google Scholar. A similar point can be made about Bentham's list of excusing conditions (See Chapter XIII Principles Of Morals and Legislation): these are all said to be cases in which a person is in such a condition that knowledge that his act is punishable would in no way alter the likelihood of his performing similar acts in similar conditions in the future.
9 Hart, H. L. ‘Ascription of Rights and Responsibility’ Aristotelian Society Proceedings 1948–1949Google Scholar. Hart has recently said that the main contentions of this paper no longer seem to him to be defensible.
10 Hart, , op. cit., p. 171.Google Scholar
11 Hart, , op. cit., p. 174.Google Scholar
12 There is an excellent discussion of the different senses of ‘responsible’ in Hart, 's paper ‘Responsibility and Retribution’ in Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar. I owe the distinction drawn here to this paper.
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