A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address

Author(s): J. L. Austin
Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 57 (1956 - 1957), pp. 1-30
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4544570
Accessed: 07/03/2010 11:09
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aristotelian.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The Aristotelian Society and Blackwell Publishing are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.

http://www.jstor.org

-Meetingof theAristotelianSocietyat 21, BedfordSquare,London,

W.C.1, on 29th October,1956, at 7.30 p.m.

PAPERS READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY

1956-57
I.-A

PLEA FOR EXCUSES

BY PROF. J. L.

AUSTIN,

M.A.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

subject of this paper, Excuses, is one not to be treated,
but only to be introduced, within such limits. It is, or
might be, the name of a whole branch, even a ramiculated
branch, of philosophy, or at least of one fashion of philosophy.
I shall try, therefore, first to state what the subject is, why
it is worth studying, and how it may be studied, all this at
a regrettably lofty level: and then I shall illustrate, in more
congenial but desultory detail, some of the methods to be
used, together with their limitations, and some of the
unexpected results to be expected and lessons to be learned.
Much, of course, of the amusement, and of the instruction,
comes in drawing the coverts of the microglot, in hounding
down the minutiae, and to this I can do no more here than
incite you. But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has
long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and
made, barren of-the fun of discovery, the pleasures of
co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement.
THE

What, then, is the subject? I am here using the word

excuses " for a title, but it would be unwise to freeze too
fast to this one noun and its partner verb: indeed for some
time I used to use " extenuation" instead. Still, on the
whole " excuses " is probably the most central and embracing
term in the field, although this includes others of importance
-"plea", "defence", " justification" and so on. When,
then, do we " excuse " conduct, our own or somebody
else's? When are " excuses " proffered?
A

PROF. J. L. AUSTIN.

In general, the situation is one where someone is accused

of having done something, or (if that will keep it any
cleaner) where someone is said to have done something which
is bad, wrong, inept, unwelcome, or in some other of the
Thereupon he, or
numerous possible ways untoward.
someone on his behalf, will try to defend his conduct or to
get him out of it.
One way of going about this is to admit flatly that he,
X, did do that very thing, A, but to argue that it was a
good thing, or the right or sensible thing, or a permissible
thing to do, either in general or at least in the special
circumstances of the occasion. To take this line is to justify
the action, to give reasons for doing it: not to say, to brazen
it out, to glory in it, or the like.
A different way of going about it is to admit that it
wasn't a good thing to have done, but to argue that it is
not quite fair or correct to say baldly " X did A". We may
say it isn't fair just to say X did it; perhaps he was under
somebody's influence, or was nudged. Or, it isn't fair to say
baldly he did A; it may have been partly accidental, or an
unintentional slip. Or, it isn't fair to say he did simply Ahe was really doing something quite different and A was
only incidental, or he was looking at the whole thing quite
differently. Naturally these arguments can be combined or
overlap or run into each other.
In the one defence, briefly, we accept responsibility
but deny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was
bad but don't accept full, or even any, responsibility.
By and large, justifications can be kept distinct from
excuses, and I shall not be so anxious to talk about them
because they have enjoyed more than their fair share of
philosophical attention. But the two certainly can be
confused, and can seem to go very near to each other, even
if they do nbt perhaps actually do so. You dropped the
tea-tray: Certainly, but an emotional storm was about to
break out: or, Yes, but there was a wasp. In each case
the defence, very soundly, insists on a fuller description of
the event in its context; but the first is a justification, the
second an excuse. Again, if the objection is to the use of

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

such a dyslogistic verb as " murdered ", this may be on

the ground that the killing was done in battle (justification)
or on the ground that it was only accidental if reckless
(excuse). It is arguable that we do not use the terms
justification and excuse as carefully as we might; a miscellany
of even less clear terms, such as "extenuation", "palliation",
" mitigation," hovers uneasily between partial justification
and partial excuse; and when we plead, say, provocation,
there is genuine uncertainty or ambiguity as to what we
mean-is he partly responsible, because he roused a violent
impulse or passion in me, so that it wasn't truly or merely
me acting " of my own accord " (excuse) ? Or is it rather
that, he having done me such injury, I was entitled to
retaliate (justification) ? Such doubts merely make it the
more urgent to clear up the usage of these various terms.
But that the defences I have for convenience labelled
" justification " and " excuse " are in principle distinct can
scarcely be doubted.
This then is the sort of situation we have to consider
under " excuses ". I will only further point out how very
wide a field it covers. We have of course to bring in the
opposite nuinbers of excuses-the expressionsthat aggravate,
such as " deliberately ", " on purpose " and so on, if only
for the reason that an excuse often takes the form of a
rebuttal of one of these. But we have also to bring in a
large number of expressions which at first blush look not
so much like excuses as like accusations-" clumsiness ",
"tactlessness ", "thoughtlessness " and the like. Because
it has always to be remembered that few excuses get us
out of it completely: the average excuse, in a poor situation,
gets us only out of the fire into the frying pan-but still,
of course, any frying pan in a fire. If I have broken your
dish or your romance, maybe the best defence I can fi nd
will be clumsiness.
Why, if this is what " excuses " are, should we trouble to
investigate them? It might be thought reason enough that
their production has always bulked so large among human
activities. But to moral philosophy in particular a study
of them will contribute in special ways, both positively
A2

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

towards the development of a cautious, latter-day version of

conduct, and negatively towards the correction of older and
hastier theories.
In ethics we study, I suppose, the good and the bad,
the right and the wrong, and this must be for the most part
in some connexion with conduct or the doing of actions.
Yet before we consider wlhat actions are good or bad, right
or wrong, it is proper to consider first what is meant by,
and what not, and what is included under, and what not,
the expression " doing an action" or " doing something ".
These are expressions still too little examined on their own
account and merits, just as the general notion of " saying
something" is still too lightly passed over in logic. There
is indeed a vague and comforting idea in the background
that, after all, in the last analysis, doing an action must
come down to the making of physical movements with parts
of the body; but this is about as true as that saying something
must, in the last analysis, come down to making movements
of the tongue.
The beginning of sense, not to say wisdom, is to realise
that "doing an action", as used in philosophy,1 is a highly
abstract expression-it is a stand-in used in the place of any
(or almost any?) verb with a personal subject, in the same
sort of way that " thing " is a stand-in for any (or when
we remember, almost any) noun substantive, and "quality "
a stand-in for the adjective. Nobody, to be sure, relies on
such dummies quite implicitly quite indefinitely.
Yet
notoriously it is possible to arrive at, or to derive the idea
for, an over-simplified metaphysics from the obsession with
" things " and their " qualities ". In a similar way, less
commonly recognised even in these semi-sophisticated times,
we fall for the myth of the verb. We treat the expression
" doing an action " no longer as a stand-in for a verb with
a personal subject, as which it has no doubt some uses, and
might have more if the range of verbs were not left unspecified, but as a self-explanatory, ground-level description,
one which brings adequately into the open the essential
I This use has little to do with the more down-to-earth occurrences of
"action " in ordinary speech.

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

features of everything that comes, by simple inspection,

under it. We scarcely notice even the most patent exceptions or difficulties (is to think something, or to say something, or to try to do something, to do an action?), any
more than we fret, in the ivresse des grandes profondeurs,as
to whether flames are things or events. So we come easily
to think of our behaviour over any time, and of a life as a
whole, as consisting in doing now action A, next action B,
then action C, and so on, just as elsewhere we come to think
of the world as consisting of this, that and the other substance
or material thing, each with its properties. All " actions "
are, as actions (meaning what?), equal, composing a
quarrel with striking a match, winning a war with sneezing:
worse still, we assimilate them one and all to the supposedly
most obvious and easy cases, such as posting letters or
moving fingers, just as we assimilate all " things " to horses
or beds.
If we are to continue to use this expression in sober
philosophy, we need to ask such questions as: Is to sneeze
to do an action? Or is to breathe, or to see, or to checkmate,
or each one of countless others? In short, for what range
of verbs, as used on what occasions, is " doing an action "
a stand-in? What have they in common, and what do those
excluded severally lack? Again we need to ask how we
decide what is the correct name for " the " action that
somebody did-and what, indeed, are the rules for the use
of " the " action, " an ' action, " one ' action, a part '
or "phase " of an action and the like. Further, we need
to realise that even the " simplest " named actions are not
so simple-certainly
are not the mere makings of physical
movements, and to ask what more, then, comes in
(intentions? conventions?) and what does not (motives?),
and what is the detail of the complicated internal machinery
we use in " acting "-the
receipt of intelligence, the
appreciation of the situation, the invocation of principles,
the planning, the control of execution and the rest.
In two main ways the study of excuses can throw light
on these fundamental matters. First, to examine excuses
is to examine cases where there has been some abnormality
CC

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

or failure: and as so often, the abnormal will throw light

on the normal, will help us to penetrate the blinding veil
of ease and obviousness that hides the mechanisms of the
natural successful act. It rapidly becomes plain that the
breakdowns signalised by the various excuses are of radically
different kinds, affecting different parts or stages of the
machinery, which the excuses consequently pick out and
sort out for us. Further, it emerges that not every slip-up
occurs in connexion with everything that could be called an
"action", that not every excuse is apt with every verbfar indeed from it: and this provides us with one means of
introducing some classification into the vast miscellany of
" actions ". If we classify them according to the particular
selection of breakdowns to which each is liable, this should
assign them their places in some family group or groups
of actions, or in some model of the machinery of acting.
In this sort of way, the philosophical study of conduct
can get off to a positive fresh start. But by the way, and
more negatively, a number of traditional cruces or mistakes
in this field can be resolved or removed. First among these
comes the problem of Freedom. While it has been the
tradition to present this as the " positive " term requiring
elucidation, there is little doubt that to say we acted
" freely " (in the philosopher's use, which is only faintly
related to the everyday use) is to say only that we acted not
un-freely, in one or another of the many heterogeneous ways
of so acting (under duress, or what not). Like "real",
" free " is only used to rule out the suggestion of some or all
of its recognised antitheses. As "truth " is not a name for
a characteristic of assertions, so freedom " is not a name
for a characteristic of actions, but the name of a dimension
in which actions are assessed. In examining all the ways in
which each action may not be " free ", i.e., the cases in
which it will not do to say simply " X did A", we may hope
to dispose of the problem of Freedom. Aristotle has often
been chidden for talking about excuses or pleas and overlooking " the real problem ": in my own case, it was when
I began to see the injustice of this charge that I first became
interested in excuses.
'

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

There is much to be said for the view that, philosophical

tradition apart, Responsibility would be a better candidate
for the role here assigned to Freedom. If ordinary language
is to be our guide, it is to evade responsibility, or full
responsibility, that we most often make excuses, and I have
used the word myself in this way above. But in fact
" responsibility " too seems not really apt in all cases: I do
not exactly evade responsibility when I plead clumsiness or
tactlessness, nor, often, when I plead that I only did it
unwillingly or reluctantly, and still less if I plead that I had
in the circumstances no choice: here I was constrained and
have an excuse (or justification), yet may accept responsibility. It may be, then, that at least two key terms,
Freedom and Responsibility, are needed: the relation
between them is not clear, and it may be hoped that the
investigation of excuses will contribute towards its clarification.2

So much, then, for ways in which the study of excuses

may throw light on ethics. But there are also reasons why
it is an attractive subject methodologically, at least if we
are to proceed from "ordinary language", that is, by
examining what we should say when, and so why and what
we should mean by it. Perhaps this method, at least as one
philosophical method, scarcely requires justification at
present-too
evidently, there is gold in them thar hills:
more opportune would be a warning about the care and
thoroughness needed if it is not to fall into disrepute. I
will, however, justify it very briefly.
First, words are our tools, and, as a minimum, we should
use clean tools: we should know what we mean and what
we do not, and we must forearm ourselves against the traps
2 Another well-flogged horse in
these same stakes is Blame. At least two
things seem confused together under this term. Sometimes when I blame X
for doing A, say for breaking the vase, it is a question simply or mainly of my
disapproval of A, breaking the vase, which unquestionably X did: but sometimes it is, rather, a question simply or mainly of how far I think X responsible
for A, which unquestionably was bad. Hence if somebody says he blames me
for something, I may answer by giving a justification,so that he will cease to
disapprove of what I did, or else by giving an excuse,so that he will cease to
hold me, at least entirely and in every way, responsible for doing it.

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

that language sets us. Secondly, words are not (except in

their own little corner) facts or things: we need therefore
to prise them off the world, to hold them apart from and
against it, so that we can realise their inadequacies and
arbitrarinesses, and can re-look at the world without blinkers.
Thirdly, and more hopefully, our common stock of words
embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing,
and the connexions they have found worth marking, in
the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to
be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up
to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle,
at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters,
than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs
of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method.
In view of the prevalence of the slogan " ordinary
language ", and of such names as " linguistic " or " analytic "
philosophy or "the analysis of language", one thing needs
specially emphasising to counter misunderstandings. When
we examine what we should say when, what words we
should use in what situations, we are looking again not
merely at words (or " meanings ", whatever they may be)
but also at the realities we use the words to talk about: we
are using a sharpened awareness of words to sharpen our
perception of, though not as the final arbiter of, the
phenomena.
For this reason I think it might be better to
use, for this way of doing philosophy, some less misleading
name than those given above-for
instance, " linguistic
phenomenology", only that is rather a mouthful.
Using, then, such a method, it is plainly preferable to
investigate a field where ordinary language is rich and
subtle, as it is in the pressingly practical matter of Excuses,
but certainly is not in the matter, say, of Time. At the
same time we should prefer a field which is not too much
trodden into bogs or tracks by traditional philosophy, for
in that case even " ordinary " language will often have
become infected with the jargon of extinct theories, and
our own prejudices too, as the upholders or imbibers of
theoretical views, will be too readily, and often insensibly,
engaged. Here too, Excuses form an admirable topic; we

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

can discuss at least clumsiness, or absence of mind, or

inconsiderateness, even spontaneousness, without remembering what Kant thought, and so progress by degrees even to
discussing deliberation without for once remembering
Aristotle or self-control without Plato. Granted that our
subject is, as already claimed for it, neighbouring, analogous
or germane in some way to some notorious centre of
philosophical trouble, then, with these two further requirements satisfied, we should be certain of what we are after:
a good site for field work in philosophy. Here at last we
should be able to unfreeze, to loosen up and get going on
agreeing about discoveries, however small, and on agreeing
about how to reach agreement.3 How much it is to be
wished that similar field work will soon be undertaken in,
say, aesthetics; if only we could forget for a while about the
beautiful and get down instead to the dainty and the
dumpy.
There are, I know, or are supposed to be, snags in
"linguistic " philosophy, which those not very familiar with
it find, sometimes not without glee or relief, daunting. But
with snags, as with nettles, the thing to do is to grasp
them-and
to climb above them. I will mention two
in particular, over which the study of excuses may help to
encourage us. The first is the snag of Loose (or Divergent
or Alternative) Usage; and the second the crux of the Last
Word. Do we all say the same, and only the same, things
in the same situations? Don't usages differ? And, Why
should what we all ordinarily say be the only or the best or
final way of putting it? Why should it even be true?
Well, people's usages do vary, and we do talk loosely,
and we do say different things apparently indifferently.
But first, not nearly as much as one would think. When
we come down to cases, it transpires in the very great
majority that what we had thought was our wanting to say
different things of and in the same situation was really not
so-we had simply imagined the situation slightly differently:
3 All of which was seen and claimed by Socrates, when he first betook himself
to the way of Words.

10

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

which is all too easy to do, because of course no situation

(and we are dealing with imagined situations) is ever
" completely " described. The more we imagine the
situation in detail, with a background of story-and it is
worth employing the most idiosyncratic or, sometimes,
boring means to stimulate and to discipline our wretched
imaginations-the
less we find we disagree about what we
should say.
Nevertheless, sometimes we do ultimately
disagree: sometimes we must allow a usage to be, though
appalling, yet actual; sometimes we should genuinely use
either or both of two different descriptions. But why should
this daunt us? All that is happening is entirely explicable.
If our usages disagree, then you use " X " where I use " Y",
or more probably (and more intriguingly) your conceptual
system is different from mine, though very likely it is at
least equally consistent and serviceable: in short, we can find
wly we disagree-you
choose to classify in one way, I in
another. If the usage is loose, we can understand the
temptation that leads to it, and the distinctions that it
blurs: if there are " alternative " descriptions, then the
situation can be described or can be " structured " in two
ways, or perhaps it is one where, for current purposes, the
two alternatives come down to the same. A disagreement
as to what we should say is not to be shied off, but to be
pounced upon: for the explanation of it can hardly fail to
be illuminating.
If we light on an electron that rotates
the wrong way, that is a discovery, a portent to be followed
up, not a reason for chucking physics: and by the same
token, a genuinely loose or eccentric talker is a rare specimen
to be prized.
As practice in learning to handle this bogey, in learning
the essential rubrics, we could scarcely hope for a more
promising exercise than the study of excuses. Here,
surely, is just the sort of situation where people will say
"almost anything", because they are so flurried, or so
anxious to get off. "It was a mistake", " It was an
accident "-how readily these can appear indifferent, and
even be used together. Yet, a story or two, and everybody
will not merely agree that they are completely different,

A PLEA

FOR EXCUSES.

11

but even discover for himself what the difference is and

what each means.4
Then, for the Last Word. Certainly ordinary language
has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing.
It embodies, indeed, something better than the metaphysics
of the Stone Age, namely, as was said, the inherited
experience and acumen of many generations of men. But
then, that acumen has been concentrated primarily upon
the practical business of life. If a distinction works well for
practical purposes in ordinary life (no mean feat, for even
ordinary life is full of hard cases), then there is sure to be
something in it, it will not mark nothing: yet this is likely
enough to be not the best way of arranging things if our
interests are more extensive or intellectual than the
ordinary. And again, that experience has been derived
only from the sources available to ordinary men throughout
most of civilised history: it has not been fed from the
resources of the microscope and its successors. And it must
be added too, that superstition and error and fantasy of
all kinds do become incorporated in ordinary language and
even sometimes stand up to the survival test (only, when
they do, why should we not detect it?). Certainly, then,
ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can
everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and
superseded. Only remember, it is thefirst word.5
For this problem too the field of Excuses is a fruitful one.
Here is matter both contentious and practically important
for everybody, so that ordinary language is on its toes:
yet also, on its back it has long had a bigger flea to bite it,
in the shape of the Law, and both again have lately attracted
4 You have a donkey, so have I, and they graze in the same field.
The day
comes when I conceive a dislike for mine. I go to shoot it, draw a bead on it,
fire: the brute falls in its tracks. I inspect the victim, and find to my horror
that it isyour donkey. I appear on your doorstep with the remains and saywhat? " I say, old sport, I'm awfully sorry, etc., I've shot your donkey
by accident" ? Or " by mistake" ? Then again, I go to shoot my donkey as
before, draw a bead on it, fire-but as I do so, the beasts move, and to my
horror yours falls. Again the scene on the doorstep-what do I say? " By
mistake " ? Or " by accident " ?
5 And forget, for once and for a while, that other curious question " Is it

true ? ".

May we ?

12

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

the attentions of yet another, and at least a healthily growing,

flea, in the shape of psychology. In the law a constant
stream of actual cases, more novel and more tortuous than
the mere imagination could contrive, are brought up for
decision-that is, formulae for docketing them must somehow
be found. Hence it is necessary first to be careful with, but
also to be brutal with, to torture, to fake and to override,
ordinary language: we cannot here evade or forget the whole
affair. (In ordinary life we dismiss the puzzles that crop
up about time, but we cannot do that indefinitely in
physics.) Psychology likewise produces novel cases, but it
also produces new methods for bringing phenomena under
observation and study: moreover, unlike the law, it has an
unbiased interest in the totality of them and is unpressed
for decision. Hence its own special and constant need to
supplement, to revise and to supersede the classifications of
both ordinary life and the law. We have, then, ample
material for practice in learning to handle the bogey of the
Last Word, however it should be handled.
Suppose, then, that we set out to investigate excuses,
what are the methods and resources initially available?
Our object is to imagine the varieties of situation in which
we make excuses, and to examine the expressions used in
making them. If we have a lively imagination, together
perhaps with an ample experience of dereliction, we shall
go far, only we need system: I do not know how many
of you keep a list of the kinds of fool you make of yourselves.
It is advisable to use systematic aids, of which there would
appear to be three at least. I list them here in order of
availability to the layman.
First we may use the dictionary-quite a concise one will
do, but the use must be thorough. Two methods suggest
themselves, both a little tedious, but repaying. One is to
read the book through, listing all the words that seem
relevant; this does not take as long as many suppose.
The other is to start with a widish selection of obviously
relevant terms, and to consult the dictionary under each:
it will be found that, in the explanations of the various
meanings of each, a surprising number of other terms occur,

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

13

which are germane though of course not often synonymous.

We then look up each of these, bringing in more for our
bag from the " definitions " given in each case; and when
we have continued for a little, it will generally be found
that the family circle begins to close, until ultimately it is
complete and we come only upon repetitions. This method
has the advantage of grouping the terms into convenient
clusters-but of course a good deal will depend upon the
comprehensiveness of our initial selection.
Working the dictionary, it is interesting to find that a
high percentage of the terms connected with excuses prove
to be adverbs,a type of word which has not enjoyed so large
a share of the philosophical limelight as the noun, substantive
or adjective, and the verb: this is natural because, as was
said, the tenor of so many excuses is that I did it but only
in a way, not just flatly like that-i.e.,
the verb needs
modifying. Besides adverbs, however, there are other words
of all kinds, including numerous abstract nouns, " misconception," " accident," " purpose" and the like, and a
few verbs too, which often hold key positions for the grouping
of excuses into classes at a high level (" couldn't help",
" didn't mean to ", "didn't realise ", or again " intend"
and " attempt "). In connexion with the nouns another
neglected class of words is prominent, namely, prepositions.
Not merely does it matter considerably which preposition,
often of several, is being used with a given substantive,
but further the prepositions deserve study on their own
account. For the question suggests itself, Why are the
nouns in one group governed by "under", in another by
"onn, in yet another by " by " or " through " or " from
or " for " or "with", and so on? It will be disappointing
if there prove to be no good reasons for such groupings.
Our second source-book will naturally be the law. This
will provide us with an immense miscellany of untoward
cases, and also with a useful list of recognised pleas, together
with a good deal of acute analysis of both. No one who
tries this resource will long be in doubt, I think, that the
common law, and in particular the law of tort, is the richest
storehouse; crime and contract contribute some special

14

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

additions of their own, but tort is altogether more comprehensive and more flexible. But even here, and still more
with so old and hardened a branch of the law as crime,
much caution is needed with the arguments of counsel and
the dicta or decisions of judges: acute though these are, it
has always to be remembered that, in legal cases(1) there is the overriding requirement that a
decision be reached, and a relatively black or white
or not guilty-for the plaintiff or for
decision-guilty
the defendant;
(2) there is the general requirement that the charge
or action and the pleadings be brought under one or
another of the heads and procedures that have come in
the course of history to be accepted by the Courts.
These, though fairly numerous, are still few and
stereotyped in comparison with the accusations and
defences of daily life. Moreover contentions of many
kinds are beneath the law, as too trivial, or outside it,
as too purely moral,-for example, inconsiderateness;
(3) there is the general requirement that we argue
from and abide by precedents. The value of this in
the law is unquestionable, but it can certainly lead to
distortions of ordinary beliefs and expressions.
For such reasons as these, obviously closely connected and
stemming from the nature and function of the law, practising
lawyers and jurists are by no means so careful as they might
be to give to our ordinary expressions their ordinary meanings
and applications. There is special pleading and evasion,
stretching and strait-jacketing, besides the invention of
technical terms, or technical senses for common terms.
Nevertheless, it is a perpetual and salutary surprise to
discover how much is to be learned from the law; and it
is to be added that if a distinction drawn is a sound one,
even though not yet recognised in law, a lawyer can be
relied upon to take note of it, for it may be dangerous not to
-if he does not, his opponent may.
Finally, the third source-book is psychology, with which
I include such studies as anthropology and animal behaviour.

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

15

Here I speak with even more trepidation than about the

Law. But this at least is clear, that some varieties of
behaviour, some ways of acting or explanations of the doing
of actions, are here noticed and classified which have not
been observed or named by ordinary men and hallowed by
ordinary language, though perhaps they often might have
been so if they had been of more practical importance.
There is real danger in contempt for the " jargon " of
psychology, at least when it sets out to supplement, and at
least sometimes when it sets out to supplant, the language of
ordinary life.
With these sources, and with the aid of the imagination,
it will go hard if we cannot arrive at the meanings of large
numbers of expressions and at the understanding and
classification of large numbers of " actions ". Then we shall
comprehend clearly much that, before, we only made use
of ad hoc. Definition, I would add, explanatory definition,
should stand high among our aims: it is not enough to show
how clever we are by showing how obscure everything is.
Clarity, too, I know, has been said to be not enough: but
perhaps it will be time to go into that when we are within
measurable distance of achieving clarity on some matter.
*

So much for the cackle. It remains to make a few

remarks, not, I am afraid, in any very coherent order, about
the types of significant result to be obtained and the more
general lessons to be learned from the study of Excuses.
(1) NJomodificationwithout aberration.-When it is stated
that X did A, there is a temptation to suppose that given
some, indeed perhaps any, expression modifying the verb
we shall be entitled to insert either it or its opposite or
negation in our statement: that is, we shall be entitled to
ask, typically, " Did X do A Mly or not Mly? " (e.g., " Did
X murder Y voluntarily or involuntarily? "), and to answer
one or the other. Or as a minimum it is supposed that if
X did A there must be at least one modifying expression that
we could, justifiably and informatively, insert with the verb.
In the great majority of cases of the use of the great majority

16

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

of verbs (" murder" perhaps is not one of the majority)

such suppositions are quite unjustified. The natural
economy of language dictates that for the standard case
covered by any normal verb,-not, perhaps, a verb of omen
such as " murder," but a verb like " eat " or " kick " or
" croquet "-no modifying expression is required or even
permissible. Only if we do the action named in some
special way or circumstances, different from those in which
such an act is naturally done (and of course both the normal
and the abnormal differ according to what verb in particular
is in question) is a modifying expression called for, or even
in order. I sit in my chair, in the usual way I am not in
a daze or influenced by threats or the like: here, it will
not do to say either that I sat in it intentionally or that I
did not sit in it intentionally,6 nor yet that I sat in it
automatically or from habit or what you will. It is bedtime,
I am alone, I yawn: but I do not yawn involuntarily
(or voluntarily !), nor yet deliberately.
To yawn in any
such peculiar way is just not to just yawn.
(2) Limitationof application. Expressions modifying verbs,
typically adverbs, have limited ranges of application. That
is, given any adverb of excuse, such as " unwittingly " or
" spontaneously " or "impulsively", it will not be found
that it makes good sense to attach it to any and every verb
of " action " in any and every context: indeed, it will often
apply only to a comparatively narrow range of such verbs.
Something in the lad's upturned face appealed to him, he
threw a brick at it-" spontaneously " ? The interest then
is to discover why some actions can be excused in a particular
way but not others, particularly perhaps the latter.7 This
will largely elucidate the meaning of the excuse, and at the
same time will illuminate the characteristics typical of the
group of " actions " it picks out: very often too it will throw
light on some detail of the machinery of " action " in general
(see (4)), or on our standards of acceptable conduct (see (5)).
6
Caveat or hedge: of course we can say " I did not sit in it ' intentionally'
as a way simply of repudiating the suggestion that I sat in it intentionally.
I For we are sometimes not so good at observing what we can't say as what
we can, yet the first is pretty regularly the more revealing.

17

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

It is speciallyimportantin the case of some of the terms

most favouredby philosophersor jurists to realisethat at
leastin ordinaryspeech(disregarding
back-seepage
ofjargon)
they arenot usedso universallyor so dichotomistically. For
example,take "voluntarily"and "involuntarily":we may
join the army or makea gift voluntarily,we may hiccough
or make a small gestureinvoluntarily,and the more we
considerfurtheractionswhich we might naturallybe said
to do in either of these ways, the more circumscribedand
unlikeeach other do the two classesbecome,until we even
doubt whetherthere is anyverb with which both adverbs
are equally in place. Perhapsthere are some such; but
at least sometimeswhen we may think we have found one
it is an illusion, an apparent exception that really does
provethe rule. I can perhaps" breaka cup " voluntarily,
if that is done, say, as an act of self-impoverishment:
and I
can perhapsbreakanotherinvoluntarily,if, say, I makean
involuntarymovementwhich breaksit. Here, plainly, the
two acts describedeach as " breakinga cup " are really
very different,and the one is similarto acts typical of the
"voluntary" class, the other to acts typical of the
"involuntary" class.
(3) The importance
of Negationsand Opposites.-"Voluntarily" and " involuntarily,"then, are not opposedin the
obvioussort of way that they are made to be in philosophy
orjurisprudence.The "opposite", or rather"opposites", of
" voluntarily" might be " underconstraint" of some sort,
duressor obligationor influence8:the oppositeof " involuntarily" might be " deliberately" or " on purpose" or the
like. Such divergencesin oppositesindicate that " voluntarily" and " involuntarily,"in spite of their apparent
connexion,are fish fromvery differentkettles. In general,
it will pay us to take nothing for granted or as obvious
about negationsand opposites. It does not pay to assume
that a wordmusthave an opposite,or one opposite,whether
it is a " positive" word like " wilfully" or a " negative"
8
But remember, when I sign a cheque in the normal way, I do not do so
either" voluntarily " or " under constraint."

18

PROF. J. L. AUSTIN.

word like " inadvertently." Rather, we should be asking

ourselvessuch questions as why there is no use for the adverb
" advertently." For above all it will not do to assume
that the "positive" word must be around to wear the
trousers; commonly enough the " negative " (looking) word
marks the (positive) abnormality, while the " positive "
word, if it exists, merely serves to rule out the suggestion of
that abnormality. It is natural enough, in view of what
was said in (1) above, for the " positive " word not to be
found at all in some cases. I do an act A1 (say, crush a
if, in the course of executing by means of
snail) inadvertently
of
my bodily parts some other act A2 (say, in
movements
walking down the public path) I fail to exercise such
meticulous supervision over the courses of those movements
as would have been needed to ensure that they did not
bring about the untoward event (here, the impact on the
snail).' By claiming that A1 was inadvertent we place it,
where we imply it belongs, on this special level, in a class
of incidental happenings which must occur in the doing of
any physical act. To lift the act out of this class, we need
and

possess the

expression

"

not . . . inadvertently ":

" advertently," if used for this purpose, would suggest that,

if the act was not done inadvertently, then it must have
been done noticing what I was doing, which is far from
necessarily the case (e.g., if I did it absent-mindedly), or
at least that there is somethingin common to the ways of
doing all acts not done inadvertently, which is not the case.
Again, there is no use for " advertently" at the samelevel
as " inadvertently ": in passing the butter I do not knock
over the cream-jug, though I do (inadvertently) knock over
the teacup-yet I do not by-pass the cream-jug advertently:
for at this level, below supervision in detail, anythingthat
9 Or analogously: I do an act A, (say, divulge my age, or imply you are a
liar), inadvertently if, in the course of executing by the use of some medium of
communication some other act A2 (say, reminiscing about my war service)
I fail to exercise such meticulous supervision over the choice and arrangement
of the signs as would have been needed to ensure that. . . . It is interesting
to note how such adverbs lead parallel lives, one in connexion with physical
actions (" doing ") and the other in connexion with acts of communication
(" saying "), or sometimes also in connexion with acts of " thinking"
(" inadvertently

assumed ").

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

19

we do is, if you like, inadvertent, though we only call it so,

and indeed only call it something we have done, if there is
something untoward about it.
A further point of interest in studying so-called
" negative " terms is the manner of their formation. Why
are the words in one group formed with un- or in-, those in
another with -less (" aimless," " reckless," " heedless," etc.),
and those in another with mis- (" mistake," " misconception," " misjudgment," etc.) ? Why carelessly but inattentively? Perhaps care and attention, so often linked, are
rather different. Here are remunerative exercises.
(4) The machineryof action.-Not merely do adverbial
expressions pick out classes of actions, they also pick out the
internal detail of the machinery of doing actions, or the
departments into which the business of doing actions is
organised. There is for example the stage at which we
have actually to carry out some action upon which we
embark-perhaps
we have to make certain bodily movements or to make a speech. In the course of actually doing
these things (getting weaving) we have to pay (some)
attention to what we are doing and to take (some) care to
guard against (likely) dangers: we may need to use
judgment or tact: we must exercise sufficient control over
our bodily parts: and so on. Inattention, carelessness,
errors of judgment, tactlessness, clumsiness, all these and
others are ills (with attendant excuses) which affect one
specific stage in the machinery of action, the executivestage,
the stage where we muf it. But there are many other
departments in the business too, each of which is to be
traced and mapped through its cluster of appropriate verbs
and adverbs. Obviously there are departments of intelligence and planning, of decision and resolve, and so on:
but I shall mention one in particular, too often overlooked,
where troubles and excuses abound. It happens to us, in
military life, to be in receipt of excellent intelligence, to be
also in self-conscious possession of excellent principles (the
five golden rules for winning victories), and yet to hit upon
a plan of action which leads to disaster. One way in which

20

PROF. J. L. AUSTIN.

this can happen is through failure at the stage of appreciation

of the situation, that is at the stage where we are required to
cast our excellent intelligence into such a form, under such
heads and with such weights attached, that our equally
excellent principles can be brought to bear on it properly,
in a way to yield the right answer.10So too in real, or rather
civilian, life, in moral or practical affairs, we can know the
facts and yet look at them mistakenly or perversely, or not
fully realise or appreciate something, or even be under a
total misconception. Many expressions of excuse indicate
failure at this particularly tricky stage: even thoughtlessness,
inconsiderateness, lack of imagination, are perhaps less
matters of failure in intelligence or planning than might be
supposed, and more matters of failure to appreciate the
situation. A course of E. M. Forster and we see things
differently: yet perhaps we know no more and are no
cleverer.
(5) Standardsof the unacceptable.-It is characteristic of
excuses to be " unacceptable ": given, I suppose, almost any
excuse, there will be cases of such a kind or of such gravity
that " we will not accept " it. It is interesting to detect
the standards and codes we thus invoke. The extent of the
supervision we exercise over the execution of any act can
never be quite unlimited, and usually is expected to fall
within fairly definite limits (" due care and attention ") in
the case of acts of some general kind, though of course we
set very different limits in different cases. We may plead
that we trod on the snail inadvertently: but not on a babyyou ought to look where you're putting your great feet.
Of course it was (really),if you like, inadvertence: but that
word constitutes a plea, which isn't going to be allowed,
because of standards. And if you try it on, you will be
subscribing to such dreadful standards that your last state
will be worse than your first. Or again, we set different
standards, and will accept different excuses, in the case of
10 We know all about how to do quadratics: we know all the needful facts
about pipes, cisterns, hours and plumbers: yet we reach the answer " 3i men."
We have failed to cast our facts correctly into mathematical form.

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

21

acts which are rule-governed, like spelling, and which we

are expected absolutely to get right, from those we set and
accept for less stereotyped actions: a wrong spelling may be
a slip, but hardly an accident, a winged beater may be an
accident, but hardly a slip.
dissociationand complication.-A belief in
(6) Combination,
opposites and dichotomies encourages, among other things,
a blindness to the combinations and dissociationsof adverbs
that are possible, even to such obvious facts as that we can
act at once on impulse and intentionally, or that we can
do an action intentionally yet for all that not deliberately,
still less on purpose. We walk along the cliff, and I feel
a sudden impulse to push you over, which I promptly do:
I acted on impulse, yet I certainly intended to push you
over, and may even have devised a little ruse to achieve it:
yet even then I did not act deliberately, for I did not (stop
to) ask myself whether to do it or not.
It is worth bearing in mind, too, the general rule that
we must not expect to find simple labels for complicated
cases. If a mistake results in an accident, it will not do
to ask whether " it," was an accident or a mistake, or to
demand some briefer description of " it." Here the natural
economy of language operates: if the words already available
for simple cases suffice in combination to describe a
complicated case, there will be need for special reasonsbefore
a special new word is invented for the complication. Besides,
however well-equipped our language, it can never be
forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call
for description: fact is richer than diction.
(7) Reginav. Finney.-Often the complexity and difficulty
of a case is considerable. I will quote the case of Reginav.
Finney :11

Shrewsbury Assizes. 1874.

12 Cox 625.

Prisoner was indicted for the manslaughter of Thomas

Watkins.
11A somewhat distressing favourite in the class that Hart used to conduct
with me in the years soon after the war. The italics are mine.

22

PROF.

J. L.

AUSTIN.

The Prisoner was an attendant at a lunatic asylum.

Being in charge of a lunatic, who was bathing, he turned on
hot water into the bath, and thereby scalded him to death.
The facts appeared to be truly set forth in the statement of
the prisoner made before the committing magistrate, as
follows: " I had bathed Watkins, and had loosed the bath
out. I intendedputtingin a clean bath,and asked Watkins if
he would get out. At this time myattentionwas drawnto the
next bath by the new attendant, who was asking me a
question; and my attentionwas takenfrom the bath where
Watkins was. I put my hand down to turn water on in the
bath where Thomas Watkins was. I did not intendto turn
the hot water,and I madea mistakein the tap. I did not know
whatI haddoneuntilI heard Thomas Watkins shout out; and
I did notfind my mistakeout till I saw the steam from the
water. You cannot get water in this bath when they are
drawing water at the other bath; but at other times it
shoots out like a water gun when the other baths are not in
use. . . ."
(It was proved that the lunatic had such possession of
his faculties as would enable him to understand what was
said to him, and to get out of the bath.)
A. roung (for Prisoner). The death resultedfrom accident.
There was no such culpablenegligenceon the part of the
prisoner as will support this indictment. A culpablemistake,
or some degree of culpablenegligence,causing death, will not
support a charge of manslaughter; unless the negligencebe
so gross as to be reckless. (R. v. ]Noakes.)
Lush, J. To render a person liable for neglectof duty
there must be such a degree of culpability as to amount to
gross negligenceon his part. If you accept the prisoner's
own statement, you find no such amount of negligenceas
would come within this definition. It is not every little trip
or mistakethat will make a man so liable. It was the duty
of the attendant not to let hot water into the bath while the
patient was therein. According to the prisoner's own
account, he did not believethat he was letting the hot water
in while the deceased remained there. The lunatic was,
we have heard, a man capable of getting out by himself and

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

23

of understanding what was said to him. He was told to

get out. A new attendant who had come on this day, was
at an adjoining bath and he took off the prisoner'sattention.
Now, if the prisoner, knowing that the man was in the bath,
had turned on the tap, and turned on the hot instead of the
cold water, I should have said there was gross negligence;
for he ought to have looked to see. But from his own
account he had told the deceased to get out, and thoughthe
hadgot out. If you think that indicates gross carelessness,
then
you should find the prisoner guilty of manslaughter. But
if you think it inadvertence
not amounting to culpabilityis
i.e., what properly termed an accident-then the prisoner
is not liable.
Verdict, Not guilty.
In this case there are two morals that I will point:
(8 if.) Both counsel and judge make very free use
of a large number of terms of excuse, using several as
though they were, and even stating them to be, indifferent or equivalent when they are not, and presenting
as alternatives those that are not.
( 11) It is constantly difficult to be sure what
act it is that counsel or judge is suggesting might be
qualified by what expression of excuse.
The learned judge's concluding direction is a paradigm of
these faults."2Finney, by contrast, stands out as an evident
master of the Queen's English. He is explicit as to each
of his acts and states, mental and physical: he uses different,
and the correct, adverbs in connexion with each: and he
makes no attempt to boil down.
(8) Small distinctions,and big too.-It should go without
saying that terms of excuse are not equivalent, and that it
12
Not but what he probably manages to convey his meaning somehow or
other. Judges seem to acquire a knack of conveying meaning, and even
carrying conviction, through the use of a pithy Anglo-Saxon which sometimes
has literally no meaning at all. Wishing to distinguish the case of shooting
at a post in the belief that it was an enemy, as not an " attempt," from the
case of picking an empty pocket in the belief that money was in it, which is
an " attempt," the judge explains that in shooting at the post " the man is
never on the thing at all."

24

PROF.

J. L.

AUSTIN.

matters which we use: we need to distinguish inadvertence

not merely from (save the mark) such things as mistake and
accident, but from such nearer neighbours as, say, aberration
and absence of mind. By imagining cases with vividness
and fullness we should be able to decide in which precise
terms to describe, say, Miss Plimsoll's action in writing,
so carefully, " DAIRY " on her fine new book: we should be
able to distinguish between sheer, mere, pure and simple
mistake or inadvertence. Yet unfortunately, at least when
in the grip of thought, we fail not merely at these stiffer
hurdles. We equate even-I have seen it done-" inadvertently " with " automatically ": as though to say I trod on
your toe inadvertently means to say I trod on it automatically.
Or we collapse succumbing to temptation into losing
control of ourselves, -a bad patch, this, for telescoping.13
All this is not so much a lesson from the study of excuses
as the very object of it.
(9) The exact phrase and its place in the sentence.-It is not
enough, either, to attend simply to the " key " word: notice
must,also be taken of the full and exact form of the expression
used. In considering mistakes, we have to consider seriatim
"by mistake", "owing to a mistake", "mistakenly", " it
was a mistake to", "to make a mistake in or over or about",
"to be mistaken about", and so on: in considering purpose,
we have to consider "'on ", "'with the'", "'for the" etc.,
besides "purposeful", "purposeless" and the like. These
varying expressions may function quite differently-and
usually do, or why should we burden ourselves with more
than one of them?
Care must be taken too to observe the precise position
of an adverbial expression in the sentence. This should of
13 Plato, I suppose, and after him Aristotle, fastened this confusion upon us,
as bad in its day and way as the later, grotesque, confusion of moral weakness
with weakness of will. I am very partial to ice cream, and a bombe is served
divided into segments corresponding one to one with the persons at High
Table: I am tempted to help myself to two segments and do so, thus succumbing
to temptation and even conceivably (but why necessarily?) going against my
principles. But do I lose control of myself? Do I raven, do I snatch the
morsels from the dish and wolf them down, impervious to the consternation of
my colleagues? Not a bit of it. We often succumb to temptation with calm
and even with finesse.

25

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

course indicate what verb it is being used to modify: but

more than that, the position can also affect the sense of the
expression, i.e., the way in which it modifies that verb.
Compare, for example:
a,
a2
b1
b2

He clumsily trod on the snail.

Clumsily he trod on the snail.
He trod clumsily on the snail.
He trod on the snail clumsily.

Here, in a, and a2 we describe his treading on the creature

at all as a piece of clumsiness, incidental, we imply, to his
performance of some other action: but with b, and b2 to
tread on it is, very likely, his aim or policy, what we
criticise is his execution of the feat.14 Many adverbs, though
far from all (not, e.g., " purposely ") are used in these two
typically different ways.
(10) The style of performance.-With some adverbs the
distinction between the two senses referred to in the last
paragraph is carried a stage further. " He ate hi; soup
deliberately " may mean, like " He deliberately ate his
soup," that his eating his soup was a deliberate act, one
perhaps that he thought would annoy somebody, as it
would more commonly if he deliberately ate my sour, and
which he decided to do: but it will often mean that he went
through the performance of eating his soup in a noteworthy
manner or style-pause after each mouthful, careful choice
of point of entry for the spoon, sucking of moustaches, and so
on. That is, it will mean that he ate with deliberation rather
than after deliberation. The style of the performance, slow
and unhurried, is understandably called " deliberate"
because each movement has the typical loot of a deliberate
act: but it is scarcely being said that the making of each
motion is a deliberate act or that he is "literally"
This case, then, is more extreme than that of
deliberating.
14 As a matter of fact, most of these
examples can be understood the other
way, especially if we allow ourselves inflexions of the voice, or commas, or
contexts. a2 might be a poetic inversion for b2: bl, perhaps with commas
round the " clumsily," might be used for a1: and so on. Still, the two senses
are clearly enough distinguishable.

26

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

" clumsily ", which does in both uses describe literally a

manner of performing.
It is worth watching out for this secondary use when
scrutinising any particular adverbial expression: when it
definitely does not exist, the reason is worth enquiring into.
Sometimes it is very hard to be sure whether it does exist
or does not: it does, one would think, with "carelessly",
it does not with "inadvertently", but does it or does it not
with " absent-mindedly " or " aimlessly "? In some cases
a word akin to but distinct from the primary adverb is
used for this special role of describing a style of performance:
we use " purposefully " in this way, but never " purposely".
(11) What modifies what ? The Judge in Regina v.
Finneydoes not make clear what event is being excused in
what way. " If you think that indicates gross carelessness,
then. . . . But if you think it inadvertence not amounting
to culpability-i.e., what is properly called an accidentthen...."
Apparently he means that Finney may have
turnedon the hot tap inadvertently15:does he mean also that
the tap may have been turned accidentally, or rather that
Watkinsmayhavebeenscaldedand killed accidentally? And
was the carelessnessin turning the tap or in thinking Watkins
had got out? Many disputes as to what excuse we should
properly use arise because we will not trouble to state
explicitly whatis being excused.
To do so is all the more vital because it is in principle
always open to us, along various lines, to describe or refer to
" what I did " in so many different ways. This is altogether
too large a theme to elaborate here. Apart from the more
general and obvious problems of the use of " tendentious "
descriptive terms, there are many special problems in the
15
What Finney says is different: he says he " made a mistake in the tap ".
This is the basic use of "mistake ", where we simply, and not necessarily
accountably, take the wrong one. Finney here attempts to account for his
mistake, by saying that his attention was distracted. But suppose the order is
" Right turn " and I turn left: no doubt the sergeant will insinuate that my
attention was distracted, or that I cannot distinguish my right from my left
-but it wasn't and I can, this was a simple, pure mistake. As often happens.
Neither I nor the sergeant will suggest that there was any accident, or any
inadvertence either. If Finney had turned the hot tap inadvertently, then it
would have been knocked, say, in reaching for the cold tap : -a different story.

27

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

particular case of " actions". Should we say, are we saying,

that he took her money, or that he robbed her? That he
knocked a ball into a hole, or that he sank a putt? That
he said "Done ", or that he accepted an offer? How far,
that is, are motives, intentions and conventions to be part
of the description of actions? And more especially here,
what is an or oneor the action ? For we can generally split
up what might be named as one action in several distinct
ways, into different stretchesor phasesor stages. Stages have
already been mentioned: we can dismantle the machinery
of the act, and describe (and excuse) separately the
intelligence, the appreciation, the planning, the decision, the
execution and so forth. Phases are rather different: we can
say that he painted a picture or fought a campaign, or else
we can say that first he laid on this stroke of paint and then
that, first he fought this action and then that. Stretches
are different again: a single term descriptive of what he did
may be made to cover either a smaller or a larger stretch of
events, those excluded by the narrower description being
then called " consequences " or " results

"

or " effects " or

the like of his act. So here we can describe Finney's act

eitheras turning on the hot tap, which he did by mistake,
with the result that Watkins was scalded, or as scalding
Watkins, which he did not do by mistake.
It is very evident that the problems of excuses and those
of the different descriptionsof actions are throughout bound
up with each other.
(12) Trailing cloudsof etymology.-It is these considerations
that bring us up so forcibly against some of the most difficult
words in the whole story of Excuses, such words as "result",
"effect " and " consequence", or again as " intention ",
purpose " and "motive". I will mention two points of
method which are, experience has convinced me, indispensable aids at these levels.
One is that a word never-well, hardly ever-shakes off
its etymology and its formation. In spite of all changes in
and extensions of and additions to its meanings, and indeed
rather pervading and governing these, there will still persist

28

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

the old idea. In an accidentsomething befalls: by mistake

you take the wrong one: in error you stray: when you act
deliberatelyyou act after weighing it up (not after thinking
out ways and means). It is worth asking ourselves whether
we know the etymology of " result " or of "spontaneously",
and worth remembering that " unwillingly " and " involuntarily " come from very different sources.
And the second point is connected with this. Going back
into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come
back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things
happen or are -done. These models may be fairly
sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with
" motive " or "impulse", but one of the commonest and
most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle
us through its very naturalness and simplicity. We take
some very simple action, like shoving a stone, usually as done
by and viewed by oneself, and use this, with the features
distinguishable in it, as our model in terms of which to talk
about other actions and events: and we continue to do so,
scarcely realising it, even when these other actions are pretty
remote and perhaps much more interesting to us in their
own right than the acts originally used in constructing the
model ever were, and even when the model is really
distorting the facts rather than helping us to observe them.
In primitive cases we may get to see clearly the differences
between, say, "results", " effects " and "consequences",
and yet discover that these differences are no longer clear,
and the terms themselves no longer of real service to us,
in the more complicated cases where we had been bandying
them about most freely. A model must be recognised for
what it is. " Causing ", I suppose, was a notion taken from
a man's own experience of doing simple actions, and by
primitive man every event was construed in terms of this
model: every event has a cause, that is, every event is an
action done by somebody if not by a man, then by a
quasi-man, a spirit. When, later, events which are not
actions are realised to be such, we still say that they must
be " caused," and the word snares us: we are struggling to
ascribe to it a new, unanthropomorphic meaning, yet

29

A PLEA FOR EXCUSES.

constantly, in searching for its analysis, we unearth and

incorporate the lineaments of the ancient model. As
happened even to Hume, and consequently to Kant.
Examining such a word historically, we may well find that
it has been extended to cases that have by now too tenuous
a relation to the model case, that it is a source of confusion
and superstition.
There is too another danger in words that invoke models,
half-forgotten or not. It must be remembered that there is
no necessity whatsoever that the various models used in
creating our vocabulary, primitive or recent, should all fit
together neatly as parts into one single, total model or
scheme of, for instance, the doing of actions. It is possible,
and indeed highly likely, that our assortment of models will
include some, or niany, that are overlapping, conflicting, or
more generally simply disparate.16
(13) In spite of the wide and acute observation of the
phenomena of action embodied in ordinary speech, modern
scientists have been able, it seems to me, to reveal its
inadequacy at numerous points, if only because they have
had access to more comprehensive data and have studied
them with more catholic and dispassionateinterest than the
ordinary man, or even the lawyer, has had occasion to do.
I will conclude with two examples.
Observation of animal behaviour shows that regularly,
when an animal is embarked on some recognisable pattern
of behaviour but meets in the course of it with an insuperable
obstacle, it will betake itself to energetic, but quite unrelated,
activity of some wild kind, such as standing on its head.
16
This is by way of a general warning in philosophy. It seems to be too
readily assumed that if we can only discover the true meanings of each of a
cluster of key terms, usually historic terms, that we use in some particular
field (as, for example, " right ", " good " and the rest in morals), then it must
without question transpire that each will fit into place in some single,
interlocking, consistent, conceptual scheme. Not only is there no reason to
assume this, but all historical probability is against it, especially in the case
of a language derived from such various civilisations as ours is. We may
cheerfully use, and with weight, terms which are not so much head-on
incompatible as simply disparate, which just don't fit in or even on. Just
as we cheerfully subscribe to, or have the grace to be torn between, simply
disparate ideals-why niust there be a conceivable amalgam, the Good Life
for Man ?

30

PROF.

J.

L. AUSTIN.

This phenomenon is called " displacement behaviour " and

is well identifiable. If now, in the light of this, we look
back at ordinary human life, we see that displacement
behaviour bulks quite large in it: yet we have apparently
no word, or at least no clear and simple word, for it. If,
when thwarted, we stand on our heads or wiggle our toes,
then we aren't exactly just standing on our heads, don't you
know, in the ordinary way, yet is there any convenient
abverbial expression we can insert to do the trick? "In
desperation " ?
Take, again, "compulsive" behaviour, however exactly
psychologists define it, compulsive washing for example.
There are of course hints in ordinary speech that we do
things in this way-"just feel I have to", " shouldn't feel
comfortable unless I did", and the like: but there is no
adverbial expression satisfactorily pre-empted for it, as
" compulsively " is. This is understandable enough, since
compulsive behaviour, like displacement behaviour, is not
in general going to be of great practical importance.
*

Here I leave and commend the subject to you.