Who said the exception proves the rule

Share this article: Link to facebook Link to linkedin Link to twitter. Sign up for our newsletter. Comments 2. Call me crazy but I believe the phrase should be "The exception that proofs the rule", as in 'puts it to the test to determine its legitimacy. The name of this site is almost proof of what I'm suggesting. Thanks for the suggestions, Brian. Unfortunately, "proof" isn't yet a verb that'd be "proofread" if we're talking about checking writing, or "prove," like in the phrase, for general testing.

But maybe if Proofed gets big enough, your version of the phrase will catch on! Upload a document Instant Quote. Instant Quote Need more help perfecting your writing? Proofed has the perfect editor! Get An Instant Quote. Get Started. How did this idiom come to be? If a sign on a concrete plaza at a school says the following: "No Skateboarding When School Is in Session," you can infer that you are allowed to skateboard at other times.

The rule that the exception proves is that skateboarding is generally allowed. If that were not a rule, why would exceptions be made at all? Why not just say "No Skateboarding"?

The fuller version of the Latin maxim is "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis. It can also appear with "firmat" "confirmat" and "figit" instead of "probat" exception establishes, confirms, and fixes the rule. When the phrase drifted from its original, legalistic meaning sometime in the seventeenth century, it was probably helped along by its similarity to sayings like "There's an exception to every rule.

This is the sense we use when we say things like "As a rule, I bring my lunch from home. It's just saying what I ordinarily do. Something that happens "as a rule" is assumed to have occasional exceptions. Richard Holton. Journal of Political Philosophy 18 4 Richard Holton Cambridge University. When pressed on what they mean by this though, things are often less than clear.

But this response—its frequent appearance even in some reference works notwithstanding1—makes no sense of the way in which the expression is used. To insist that the exception proves the rule is to insist that whilst this is an exception, the rule still stands; and furthermore, that, rather than undermining the rule, the exception serves to confirm it.

This second claim may seem paradoxical, but it should not, once it is realized that what does the confirming is not the exception itself, but rather the fact that we judge it to be an exception; and that what is confirmed is not the rule itself, but rather the fact that we judge it to be a rule. To treat something as an exception is not to treat it as a counterexample that refutes the existence of the rule.

Rather it is to treat it as special, and so to concede the rule from which it is excepted. The point comes clearly in the original probably 17th Century Latin form: Exceptio probat figit2 regulam in casibus non exceptis.

Exception i. Clearly this form of reasoning cannot apply when the rule that we are considering has the form of a simple universal generalization. Here there can be no exceptions, only counterexamples. So what we need, and what will be developed.. Political Ethics in Applied Ethics. Edit this record. Mark as duplicate. Find it on Scholar. Request removal from index. Revision history.