Matthew Parris is in a bit of a mess about this in today's Times. He thinks that recourse to the phrase 'the right thing to do' when justifying some chosen course of action is now all the fashion. 'Politicians use it endlessly. Tony Blair cannot so much as blow his nose without reflecting that it's the right thing to do.' And Parris laments this (£). Apart from its not saying very much - 'we ought to because we ought to' - use of the phrase ratifies an appeal to mere impulse or emotion:
It implies that the best lodestar for any particular moral choice is to be sought in our own feelings, our natural and immediate reaction. When confronted with evil or misfortune and asked how to react, we are to consult an inner light. Let it shine. Just ask yourself what would be "the right thing to do".
If you (can) read the piece in full, you'll see that his philosophical argument arises out of current discussion of the Libyan intervention; but it's the philosophical argument I shall focus on here, and it's wide of the mark. These excerpts, together with the one above, give the essence of it:
I invite you to consider the limits of simple moral impulse as a sufficient justification for making a choice. The fashion for assuming that to discover how we should act we need only look within our own hearts has gone too far.
That very Blairite moral reflex, that our decisions can be justified on the ground that, at the time we took them, we genuinely felt that they were right, degrades moral reasoning and insults moral systems. Sofa-based justice, it is lazy, self-indulgent and shows a shallow grasp of society. It misses the importance of general rules. It downgrades history and experience. It disparages hesitation. It dishonours deliberation. It fans the flames of careless indignation, pandering to moods, to waves of easily generated public outrage, and moral panics. Atrocities are seldom hard to find.
.....What does "simply the right thing to do" invite us to brush aside? Two big considerations. First, that this may be inconsistent with other things that we do, or may be unable to do; second, that we may not know where it will lead.
First of all, it should be noted that to say one is acting in a certain way because one thinks it is the right thing to do isn't entirely vacuous. True, on its own it doesn't spell out why the speaker thinks the action in question is right; but it does say that it is being chosen for what are perceived to be moral reasons. This is different, for example, from 'because I can't think of anything else to do', and from 'just so', and from 'because she did it', and from 'because I've been told to', and from 'because it works'. And it's different, above all, from 'because I feel like it'. To see this, contrast 'I'm going to visit him in hospital because it's the right thing to do' with 'I'm going to visit him in hospital because I feel like it'. The first plainly implies that there are moral reasons of a general kind that can be adduced in support of the hospital visit. The second says no more than that the latter satisfies one's own inclination.
Nothing - absolutely nothing - that Parris suggests is in danger of being overlooked when one appeals to 'the right thing to do' need be overlooked or indeed should be overlooked: considerations beyond the individual's inner feelings ('our own hearts'); moral systems; society; general rules; history and experience; moral consistency; 'other things that we do, or may be unable to do'; imperfect knowledge about where a given course of action will lead - these are all proper and necessary topics for deliberation by anyone deciding on the right thing to do. The very act of calling something 'the right thing to do' appeals implicitly to one's ability to offer reasons in justification, and what could these reasons be apart from the sorts of consideration in the list of items I've just enumerated? We appeal to moral values, to general rules, to experience, to what's possible, to what we think most likely to happen, and so on. People don't generally back up claims about what they think is right (to do) by reference to how warm a feeling it gives them; they offer reasons of the very kind Parris says 'the right thing to do' obscures. Why, even Tony Blair does.