1 :sx can we base freedom on ignorance ?sx the paradox .sx " But surely it's always wrong to make moral judgements ?sx " .sx This is the manifesto that I once heard someone lay down in an argument about the duty of toleration .sx It was spoken ardently and confidently , with no expectation that it might be questioned .sx It was not said as a new discovery , but as a moral platitude , something so obvious that it need only be mentioned to be accepted .sx And the speaker was not being at all eccentric in so pronouncing it ; this confidence is normal today .sx In the last few decades , the word 'judgemental' has been specially coined and is used , along with the slightly older word 'moralistic' , to describe and attack this particular form of wrongdoing .sx The question is :sx is this manifesto itself a moral judgement , or not ?sx At first glance , to say that anything is wrong surely does seem to be a moral judgement .sx Remarks like this are in fact used to express active disapproval of particular people who are considered guilty of judging , to blame these people , to stigmatise them , to discourage them from doing it again and to discourage others from imitating them .sx These are surely characteristic uses of moral judgement .sx Of course , people talking like this might not mean to give the manifesto so strong a meaning .sx They might mean by 'a moral judgement' something narrower and more obviously wrong .sx They might merely mean poking your nose into other people's affairs or forming crude opinions about things that you don't understand , and expressing them offensively .sx If that were all , then 'being judgemental' would simply be a new name for being a busybody and a nosey-parker .sx Or again , they might have in mind chiefly the fact that blame can lead to punishment , and that terrible crimes have been committed , in all ages , under the pretext of punishment .sx But to make a moral judgement is not the same thing as to punish .sx If that were all , they should surely be talking directly about punishment itself .sx Clearly , these weaker meanings are not all that is involved .sx If they had been , the new label 'being judgemental' would not have been invented .sx What the statement attacks is not just the intrusive expression of opinions about other people , nor any possible vindictive action on those opinions afterwards , but the forming of opinions in the first place .sx The ban is on judging - not only on judging in a court of law , where sentence and punishment may follow , but in ordinary life .sx And the reason given for this ban concerns our powers of judgement .sx It denies that we are in a position to decide these moral questions even in our own minds .sx That is why ambitious talk of judgement has displaced humbler traditional accusations such as vindictiveness or nosey-parkerdom .sx The old moral objection to intrusive conduct is of course still there , but it is now backed by the new philosophical ruling that nothing at all can be known in the sphere of morals .sx If that is right , then the objection to vindictive punishment is not being made as a moral objection ; it is a logical one .sx It simply springs from the impossibility of judging that anything is a crime .sx A direct moral objection to brutal punishment would itself be just one more moral judgement , and it would not be sustainable if the general invalidation of all moral judgement works .sx If it does work , then moral questions are ( as is often said ) just a matter of everybody's own subjective opinion , of their taste .sx In the terms of this hypothesis people can no more 'impose judgements' on one another here than they can impose their own taste in clothes or in food .sx This seems to mean that moral judgements are not really in any ordinary sense judgements at all .sx 'Making judgements' in this sphere is not so much wrong as impossible .sx The veto on doing it is something like the veto on witchcraft :sx it forbids us to pretend to do something which in fact cannot be done .sx high-minded scepticism .sx In theory , a rather general scepticism of this kind is common today .sx But 'being sceptical' can mean two very different things .sx It can mean habitually asking questions , or it can mean being so sure that there are no answers that one simply issues denials instead .sx These two approaches may be called enquiring and dogmatic scepticism .sx It is the second kind to which I want to draw attention .sx Throughout many contemporary discussions of moral questions in the social sciences it is assumed that these questions make no sense , that there can be no rational way to answer them .sx Thus , the distinguished and humane penologist Baroness Wootton , resisting the suggestion that there might be some real connection between the concepts of crime and sin , wrote as follows :sx Can we then in the modern world identify a class of inherently wicked actions ?sx Lord Devlin , who has returned more than once to this theme , holds that we still can .sx .. nevertheless , this attempt to revive the lawyer's distinction between .sx .. things which are bad in themselves and things which are merely prohibited .sx .. cannot , I think , succeed .sx In the first place , the statement that a real crime is one about which the good citizen would feel guilty is surely circular .sx For how is the good citizen to be defined in this context unless as one who feels guilty about committing the crimes that Lord Devlin would classify as 'real' ?sx .sx ( Barbara Wootton , 1981 , p.42 ) .sx According to this view , there are no actions bad in themselves and no citizens good in themselves ; there are only ones that Lord Devlin ( or someone else ) might think good or bad .sx If we want to say that rape and murder and child-abuse are terrible crimes while parking offences are not , that is just our personal preference and we can give no rational ground for it .sx Again , arguing that the treatment of offenders ought to depend simply on predictions about how this treatment would affect the particular offender , not on judgements about the gravity of the offence committed , Baroness Wootton writes :sx .sx .. Although prediction techniques are still not as reliable as could be wished , they are at least open to objective testing , which should provide data by which their reliability may reasonably be expected to improve , whereas the validity of moral evaluations of the relative wickedness of different criminal acts is merely a matter of opinion and cannot in the nature of the case ever be subjected to any objective test .sx .sx ( Barbara Wootton , 1981 , p.63 ) .sx problems of false universality .sx These remarks have a characteristic that we shall find repeatedly in others like them .sx They were actually aimed at quite a narrow application to particular issues in penal reform .sx And the moral attitudes that called for them on those particular issues were ( as most of us might suppose ) admirable .sx But they were so sweepingly expressed that , if they are taken literally , they carry a much wider and more destructive message .sx It is a message of radical disbelief in the whole existing system of values , including the conceptions of humaneness and regard for the common good which were obviously central to the writer .sx Baroness Wootton certainly did not see the importance of these ideals as a mere 'matter of opinion' in the sense which that phrase usually bears - namely , either as a trivial matter of taste , or as really dubious .sx ( For instance , if one were not quite sure about the importance of the common good , one would scarcely be likely to go to the fearful trouble of campaigning for penal reform .sx ) What is actually involved in calling something a 'matter of opinion' is a point to be considered later .sx But the strength of this writer's objections to the notion of retributive punishment - objections that were certainly moral as well as prudential - led her to use a far more drastic language than was needed for her thought , or than she would have consented to see embodied in practice .sx For instance , if one really allotted punishments merely by their probable effect on those punished , without any reference to the offences committed , there would , it seems , be no need to wait for any offence to be committed .sx People who seemed likely to be dangerous could simply be taken into care and given whatever treatment seemed likely to improve their conduct , without the need to wait until they committed an actual offence .sx ( This could , of course , happen to any of us , since we are all imperfect and most of us are capable of improvement .sx ) And since reward as well as punishment currently works on retributive principles , it too would have to be reorganised in the same way .sx Honours and favours should be handed out , not to those who had earned them , but to those selected as likely to respond best to incentives .sx This misleading appearance of universality has been common in such theoretical discussions .sx Probably there is as much of it in the less formal , more everyday kinds of dogmatic moral scepticism that have become even more familiar .sx Here are three examples from a recent detective story by P.D. James :sx ( 1 ) Hilary has been making what she feels to be a justified claim on Alex :sx After she had finished speaking he said quietly , 'That sounds like an ultimatum' .sx 'I wouldn't call it that' .sx 'What would you call it then , blackmail ?sx ' .sx 'After what's happened between us ?sx I'd call it justice' .sx 'Let's stick to ultimatum .sx Justice is too grandiose a concept for the commerce between us two' .sx .sx ( P. D. James , 1989 , p.139 ) .sx ( 2 ) Caroline has been pressing Jonathan to lie to the police so as to give her a false alibi for the murder , but he refuses .sx Contemptuously , she drops her request :sx 'All right !sx ' ( she says ) 'I'm asking too much .sx I know how you feel about truth , honesty , your boy-scout Christianity .sx I'm asking you to sacrifice your good opinion of yourself .sx No one likes doing that .sx We all need our self-esteem .sx ..' .sx ( P. D. James , 1989 , p. 187 ) .sx In the third , Alice , the actual murderess ( seen throughout as a sympathetic , though damaged character ) is explaining to her friend Meg why she did the murder .sx Meg protests :sx 'Nothing Hilary Robarts did deserved death' .sx 'I'm not arguing that she deserved to die .sx It doesn't matter whether she was happy , or childless , or even much use to anybody but herself .sx What I'm saying is that I wanted her dead .sx ' .sx 'That seems to me so evil that it's beyond my understanding .sx Alice , what you did was a dreadful sin .sx ' .sx Alice laughed .sx The sound was so full-throated , almost happy , as if the amusement were genuine .sx 'Meg , you continue to astonish me .sx You use words which are no longer in the general vocabulary , not even in the Church's , so I'm told .sx The implications of that simple little word are beyond my comprehension .sx ' .sx ( P. D. James , 1989 , p.388 ) .sx The same device recurs often in the conversation in this novel ( and in many others ) , with this same implication that the moral language other people speak is a foreign one , something 'no longer in the general vocabulary' - a language that the more sophisticated speaker finds senseless , childish , naive and ( most damning of all ) out of fashion .sx Since it is always unnerving to be sneered at , this tactic is often successful in silencing people , both in fiction and real life .sx But that is quite another thing from saying that it makes sense .sx Virtually always , the sense of the tactic is annulled by its context .sx Again there is false universality .sx The characters who talk like this are in general quite as ready as other people to live most of their lives by existing standards , to pass judgements about others , and to invoke morality when it happens to be on their side .sx They still feel high-minded , and this is not an accident , but a necessary consequence of their wish to be seen as reformers .sx They are 'immoralists' in the sense that they want to back and recommend actions currently taken to be immoral .sx But this backing and recommending is itself unavoidably a moral stand .sx