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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
The Bicentennial year is a fit time to recall an early contribution to ‘regional philosophy’. In the year 1879 Edward Kelly put forward this ingenious argument.
I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the police. A man that knows nothing about roguery would never enter the force and take an oath to arrest brother, sister, father, or mother if required and to have a case and conviction if possible. Any man knows it is possible to swear a lie. And if a policeman loses a conviction for the sake of [not] swearing a lie he has broken his oath. Therefore he is a perjurer either way.
At first glance, Kelly's example seems to fit right into present-day discussion of moral dilemmas, as follows. If the unfortunate policeman has taken an oath that obligates him to swear a he under certain circumstances, and if those circumstances arise, then he has no right course of action. Either he takes a second oath to tell the whole truth and nothing but, and then he breaks it by lying; or else he doesn't, and thereby breaks his first oath to do everything possible to secure a conviction. Kelly's conclusion also looks familiar: it is because of his previous wrongdoing that the policeman afterward has no right course of action. An honest man would never have taken the first oath.
I think this first glance is misleading.
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