posed to be the moral order of Samuel Johnson, with the novelsrnof Jane Austen, which echo that world, as a late fictionalrnpendant. So let us look at that alleged instance of moral consensus.rnBoswell reports that Johnson was once taken by a friend tornhear a sermon at the Temple in London, where the preacherrn”ranted about liberty.” As they left the church, Johnson bitterlyrnremarked that “our liberty was in no sort of danger: he wouldrnhave done much better to pray against our licentiousness.”rnThat is a loyal member of the Church of England in 1770 disagreeingrnwith the pulpit pronouncements of an Anglican clergyman;rnand the point at issue, which sounds rather like anrnanti-Whig point, is devastatingly fundamental. Some 18thcenturyrnEnglishmen, notably Whigs, wanted more liberty;rnsome, notably Tories, wanted less. The American Revolutionrnof 1776 similarly divided British public opinion—and Americanrntoo, as the Loyalists illustrate; so did the French Revolutionrn13 years later. Again, there was an embittered debate about thernmorality of slavery in the late 18th century and after, on bothrnsides of the Atlantic. Where is the moral consensus there? ThernGolden Age of moral agreement does not exist, I suggest, exceptrnin the minds of moralists who wish that it did.rnThe third assumption is that a moral consensus could onlyrnbe explicit, like St. Benedict’s Rule. That is an instance of arnwider fallacy: that knowledge is the same as account-giving.rnMoral rules like the Ten Commandments claim to give precisernaccounts of a moral system. When Maclntyre complainsrn”there are no longer any clear criteria” in moral matters, he implies,rnin all probability, that one could only have a moral consensusrnif there were such criteria—rules which, like St. Benedict’s,rnwere stated and agreed, much like a monk’s. He isrnmistaken on both counts. Nobody needs stated criteria in orderrnto make sound judgments, whether in the arts, in morality,rnor elsewhere; agreement has nothing to do with it. Therernwas widespread agreement before the 18th century, after all,rnthat slavery was acceptable, which suggests that in moral matters,rnas in the natural sciences, it is possible to be agreed andrnwrong. The view that the sun goes around the Earth, after all,rnwas once agreed to.rnOdd for an academic, of all people, whether philosophical orrnnot, to argue that stated criteria are needed in making judgments.rnDaily experience suggests otherwise. To mark a studentrnpaper is to make a judgment; if all judgments require such criteria,rnthen that would. So what are thev? 1 do not suppose anyrncollege department on earth, philosophical or other, wouldrnwaste two minutes together debating such an issue. Theyrnwould know perfectly well that any answer to that questionrncould only be trite if it were true: “A good paper is one that isrnwell-written and says true things in the right order.” But answeringrnin that fashion, as anyone can see, is not answering atrnall: it is merely restating the question in another form. Whatrndoes well-written mean here, it will reasonably be asked, orrntrue, or in the right order? It is notable that no one in practicernjudges a paper, or a book, by appealing to agreed criteria. Inrnfact, good books can be distinguished from bad, and are—byrnchildren, for example—before the word “criterion” is understoodrnat all.rnA moral consensus would be much like that. It would not bernlike agreeing about the Ten Commandments or the Rule of St.rnBenedict, and those who condemn child-murder know thatrnthey do not need to turn to a rule-book before they condemnrnit. You know child-murder is wrong before learning any rulesrnat all, often enough; and you know that the rule “Thou shalt dornno murder” is right, on hearing it, because you already know itrnto be so. So if there are no clear criteria for moral judgment,rnas Professor Maclntyre complains, there may still be plenty ofrnmoral certitudes, and the world may still be a long, long wayrnfrom moral anarchy or the law of the jungle.rnAgood deal of moral despair, I suspect, arises because,rnthough the question “How do you know?” is often regardedrnseriously, it is not usually regarded literally. If someonernasks “How do you know that murder (or slavery) is wrong?” hernis not usually asking how you know it but whether you know it;rnhe implies that only if you can produce grounds, at once statedrnand agreed, can the matter be judged to be beyond allrndoubt. The question is not a question, in fact, but a challenge,rnand to answer it literally would be to misunderstand it. If askedrnhow you know that two plus two equal four, for example, yournmight reply, “Because I was taught it at school and have sincernseen it work admirably in practice”; but that is not what thernquestioner wants to hear. Knowing the difference betweenrnright and wrong might be even harder to answer. One did notrnlearn morality, on the whole, as a set of propositions, as therntwo-times table is a set of propositions. On being told “It isrnwrong to murder somebody” the remark did not exactly representrnthe beginning of knowledge; it summarized a truth yournalready in some sense knew.rnSo there are truths one knows already and with certitude,rnand before language itself. In estimating that underratedrntruth it can be instructive to watch a prelinguistic child. An infantrna few weeks old, on seeing an outstretched finger, will hesitaternto clasp it, and when it does so it looks surprised, as if itrnhad learnt something—something about the relation betweenrnhow things look and how thev feel. Even that is something onernonce had to learn; seeing that a person is a person is a furtherrnstep: that hands, eyes, nose, and ears add up to an individualrnbeing. All this was once less than obvious, though it all seemsrnobvious now—much as it is now obvious that murder andrnslavery are wrong. No wonder the moral consensus is so easilyrndenied. It is denied not because it is not there, but becausernmost of it has been there for so long that it is easily forgotten.rnImagine asking Professor Maclntyre to explain how he learnedrnEnglish, for example, or how he knows the name of an old acquaintancerncalled Smith. Everybody knows the man is calledrnSmith, or at least all his friends do, and that sounds like a factualrnconsensus—though not, it will be said, a very interestingrnone. But it only seems obvious. Once upon a time you did notrnknow it at all, and it had to be learned.rnWittgenstein once remarked to his American friend NormanrnMalcolm that a philosophical confusion is rather like a manrnwho does not know how to get out of a room. Malcolm wasrneventually to tell the story in his Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoirrn(1958): “He tries the window but it is too high. He tries thernchimney but it is too narrow. And if he would only turnrnaround, he would see that the door is open all the time.”rnThe door that leads out of moral and critical skepticism, too,rnhas been open all the time. Nobody needs grounds for knowledgern—least of all stated and agreed grounds—in order tornknow and to be certain that he knows. It does not matter howrnwe know. As the philosopher said, turn around—the door isrnopen.rn22/CHRONICLESrnrnrn