154 BUSlNESS ETHICS

Coming to Ethical Terms Right and Wrong Jennifer Jackson

’The virtuous life need not be seen as a life in which every moment has to be justified in relation to some overridingly urgent quest.’

he topic for this entry to the series T Coming to Ethical Terms may seem rather broad. What else, you may ask, remains to be discussed once we have examined the distinction between right and wrong? But it is a mistake to suppose that morality is only about right and wrong. I shall return to this point; but first some remarks about the distinction itself.

The etymology of right and wrong The word ’right’ is related to the German recht, meaning ‘lawful‘, and to the Latin rectus, meaning ’straight’, and to regulu, meaning ’a straight stick, ruler or pattern which acts as a guide’. ‘Wrong’ is a cognate of ‘wring’ which suggest a de- parture from a rule, what gets twisted, goes bent or awry. (Compare ’tort’ the legal term for a civil wrong, which is connected with ’contorted’.)

This etymological connection with law and rule is significant. Even those who do not believe in a divine law-giver often think of morality as a matter of rules or laws. Stealing, for example, is thought not only to be against the laws of the land but to be against the moral law too. Lying cannot sensibly be forbidden by law (except when it is a matter of perjury) but it is held to be against the moral law nonetheless.

Everyone talks in this way. Our doing so can hardly be a mere hangover from a time in which everyone believed in divine law. It is noteworthy that the distinction between what was forbidden by the law of the land and what was forbidden by customs or tradition was very blurred in ancient times. At any rate, any society needs to teach its citizens that certain ways of acting, such as lying, are not allowed, are wrong.

Defining right in terms of wrong

An important point emerges from this. You will see that I have defined ’wrong’, and not ’right’. This is exactly how the explanation should go. Right should be understood simply as a residual category: it means, what is left over, what is not wrong, not unlawful. The importance of proceeding thus can hardly be over- stressed. The distinction between right and wrong can be profoundly misleading if we do not heed it.

Consider, for instance, the question whether everything that you do is either right or wrong. The question is difficult to answer because it is difficult to under- stand; difficult, because the meaning of ’right’ as it occurs here is quite obscure. Are we to understand it here as meaning obligatory or as meaning permissible? If right is taken to mean required by a rule,

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and wrong to mean prohibited by a rule, then there is no reason to suppose that everything that we do is either right or wrong. Many actions may be neither required nor forbidden, such as playing golf, listening to the news, folding one’s arms. In respect of such actions, we might say, the question of their rightness or wrongness simply does not arise.

On the other hand, if we take right to mean not forbidden by any rule, then it becomes simply a residual, or remainder, category for whatever actions are not wrong, not prohibited by some rule or other. On this understanding of right, right actions include both what is morally permissible (alright) and what is morally required (obligatory). Right understood in this way does have the implication that everything that we do is either right or wrong, is either allowed or not allowed, by the rules.

Since talking in terms of right and wrong (and, for the same reason, of just and unjust or of ethical and unethical) generates confusion, we should avoid this vocabulary: it is troublesome and it is unnecessary. Instead, we should draw a three-fold distinction between actions which are obligatory or required, actions which are permitted, and actions which are forbidden. Of course, what is obliga- tory is also alright but the converse does not hold: I may fold my arms but I don’t have to.

This point is not just a theoretical nicety. If we want to make progress in our thinking and discussion of the moral issues or dilemmas that we encounter day-to-day we need to avoid sloppiness in our terminology: if our vocabulary is muddled, our thinking may be fuddled. Thus, in conversation and debate people are often insensitive to this distinction between right meaning obligatory and right meaning permissible. People who say, ’It is right (or ethical) to pay your debts’ really mean that it is obligatory to do so, not merely that no-one can reason- ably complain at the sight of your hand- ing over what you owe. This use of ‘right’ is better avoided (and it is easy to avoid it).

Meanwhile we need to be alert to the ambiguity in people’s use of ’right’. Thus, for instance, before we weigh into the debate over whether it is right to

conform to indigenous business practices and standards when we are doing busi- ness abroad if these same practices and standards are morally unacceptable back home, we should first clarify what ques- tion we are trying to answer: are we asking whether conforming is alright (permissible) or whether it is obligatory (morally required)?

Making sense of ’the right thing’

Bearing in mind this distinction we have noted between right meaning obligatory and right meaning permissible, we can now pursue a point touched on in my previous article in this series Coming to Ethical Terms (vol. 1, no. 1, January 1992): I questioned then whether there is always such a thing as ’the right thing to do’. Now we can see why the definite article will usually be out of place, for there is nearly always a list of actions which are permissible, or right in the sense of alright. But the expectation that there is in general such a thing as the right thing to do may be generated by the question which is often said to define ethics (or, at any rate, to be central to it): ’What ought we, individually or collectively, to do?’ Given a particular context the question may make perfect sense, as when you find yourself in a situation where it seems that you are bound in opposite directions, for example, to keep a confidence, and to break it.

It is another matter, though, to suppose that a life of virtue must be one in which such a question is constantly before your mind: in which you ought to be continually addressing the question, ’What is the right thing for me to be doing here and now?’ If we substitute for talk of right action talk of obligatory and of permitted actions, it is easier to recognize that there may not be anything that is obligatory for you to be doing at every moment. The virtuous life need not be seen as a life in which every moment has to be justified in relation to some overridingly urgent quest.

‘right actions include both what is morally permissible (a1 righ t) and what is morally required (obligatory) ’

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Beyond right and wrong In earlier centuries the word 'just' was used rather more broadly than is custom- ary nowadays. The distinction then between just and unjust was closely analogous to, if not identical with, our distinction between right and wrong. Justice had to do with what was owing to others, in a broad sense. One owed it to others not to defraud them, or assault them, to fulfil promises made to them, etc. Thus, as with right and wrong so with just and unjust, injustice was defined first and justice was defined in its terms as a residual category.

This brings me to the final point. Those who talked about justice in this way (e.g. Plato and Aristotle; but also Aquinas and John Stuart Mill) would think of the obligations of justice as only a part of morality. There would be other virtues, some of which would primarily concern a

'a hinterland of morality'

person's own good, not their treatment of others. The distinction between right and wrong, just and unjust, does not really cover these other virtues. You are not wrong if you are merely untidy or lazy provided you do not thereby neglect your duties to others. You may suffer all the same from moral failings.

There is, thus, so to speak, a hinterland of morality to which the distinction be- tween right and wrong is inapplicable. Even in regard to our treatment of others, a person may behave with impeccable rectitude yet be a cold fish, lacking certain qualities of character that we hold to be morally admirable. An individual dutiful act coldly fulfilled may not be 'wrong', yet it may nonetheless indicate a failing 0

The Centre for Business and Professional Ethics, University of Leeds.

Books Received Notice of a book received does not necessady preclude fu ture review.

Basil Blackwell

PAULINE GRAHAM, Integrative Management. Creating Unity from Diversity, 1991, pp. xx + 197, hard, npg, ISBN: 0 631 17391 9

Georgetown University Press

EDMUND D. PELLEGRINO, Robert M. Veatch & John P. Langan, eds., Ethics, Trust 6 the Professions. Philosophical 6

WOODSTOCK THEOLOGICAL CENTER, Ethical Considerations in Corporate Takeovers, 1990, pp. ii + 19, pamphlet, npg,

WOODSTOCK THEOLOGICAL CENTER, Creating b Maintaining an Ethical Corporate Climate, 1990, pp. ii+ 19,

Cultural Aspects, 1991, pp. xiv+284, hard, npg, ISBN: 0 87840 512 7

ISBN: 0 87840 500 3

pamphlet, npg, ISBN: 0 87840 521 6

Gower

RHYS A. DAVID, ed., The Greening of Business, 1991, pp. xii+ 103, hard, f28.50, ISBN: 0 566 07281 5

II Saggiafore

LORENZO SACCONI, Eticu degZi Affun', 1991, pp. 395, hard, npg, ISBN: 88 04 34226 9 ~

Volume 1 Number 2 April 1992