On Being A Murderer
We won’t be happy / ‘Till we kill each other. –Curve, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” Cuckoo
So I’m a bit late on explaining an affirmative position for Resolved: It is morally permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence, but I do finally have one. It goes like this:
Given the resolution “Resolved: It is morally permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence,” I could define all of the words individually but I think it’s more practical to simply read it as “Can a person who commits premeditated murder to exit an abusive relationship still be a good person?” I’m happy to supply pedantic definitions if necessary, but I think that sums up the topic nicely.
This is really kind of a grim topic. A typical round will have one side advocating for premeditated murder and the other side advocating for domestic violence. But I don’t think that’s an accurate set of readings at all, which brings me to
Resolutional Analysis: The deliberate use of deadly force is as implicit in the resolution as is the repeated domestic violence. If we say that domestic violence isn’t morally permissible, will it stop? No. If we say that premeditated murder isn’t morally permissible, will it stop? No. So the question of moral permissibility isn’t about the actions and the actors — they’re going to do what they’re going to do — but rather about how we might react to such actions and how they might alter our relationship with the people involved.
Coming from this point of view, dealing very directly with the people involved, I, like Dr. Jung, value individuals. When faced with such a bleak resolution, I turn to Dr. Jung’s assessment of the individual. He says: “I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being — that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal.” (The Undiscovered Self)
I can distinctly show my support for individuals through my adoption of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, specifically the second formulation: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”
Contention 1: My determination of the moral permissibility of an action has no impact on reality beyond my relationship with the individual who might take that action.
- Let’s rewind briefly to the resolutional analysis. The resolution postulates that there is domestic abuse and that premeditated murder is going to follow it. But the word “permissible” indicates that it hasn’t happened yet, in the same way that it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. Now what’s odd about “morally permissible” is that there’s no impact to it. Ending world hunger — by feeding people instead of cows — may be morally permissible but it seems unlikely to happen any time soon. Similarly, there’s a schism between my determination of whether or not premeditated murder may be morally permissible and whether or not it happens, just like there’s a schism between the abstract role of the abuse victim which turns suddenly to the role of murderer when they deliberately use deadly force as a response to repeated domestic abuse without actually changing who they are or how they relate to me.
- That was a strange jumble of moving and stationary parts, so I’m going to appeal to a higher authority for guidance on how to relate to this abuse victim that may suddenly become a murderer regardless of how I feel about murder. Saint Paul writes to the church in Corith in First Corinthians 10:23 (NIV) ““Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive.” Put another way, Saint Paul releases all moral prior restraints, instead imploring people to think rationally about what they’re doing because as responsible and rational people, we understand that time is going to move and bring consequences with it.
- Regardless of how I feel about moral permissibility of an act, actual and tangible consequences may follow. As Terry Pratchett elucidates: “No practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.” (Going Postal) So disavowing prior restraint is not an invitation to anarchy, but rather an invitation to personal responsibility. And if I consider a person being murdered as a possible consequence of their being an abusive sadist, and of a person’s being institutionalized as a possible consequence of their murdering an abusive sadist, reality continues to go on without my ineffectually denying anybody anything.
Overall the point here is that moral permissibility doesn’t cause actions or prevent consequences of the action, and to that end it would be wrong for me to judge another individual as immoral — and, by extension, inferior — for a course of action they’ve not even taken yet. As Kant explained to Constant, I would be denying the rationality of the other person and therefore denying the possibility of there being free rational action at all which undermines their ability to be an individual. But there’s more to this than merely that because
Contention 2: Relationships rife with abuse are not comprised of individuals, but rather symbiotes in sadomasochism.
- In Escape From Freedom (p 157), Erich Fromm talks about the ongoing abusive relationship as it is comprised of a sadist and a masochist. He says:
Psychologically, however, both tendencies are the outcomes of one basic need, springing from the inability to bear the isolation and weakness of one’s own self. I suggest calling the aim which is at the basis of both sadism and masochism: symbiosis. Symbiosis, in this psychological sense, means the union of on individual self with another self… in such a way as to make each lose the integrity of its own self and to make them completely dependent on each other. The sadistic person needs his object just as much as the masochistic needs his… In both cases the integrity of the individual self is lost.
So when we’re looking at a relationship with a prime feature of repeated domestic violence, Fromm’s telling us that we’ve got a symbiote, not two individuals — if they were actual individuals, they’d exit the relationship that provokes violence on one side and pain on the other. It is only through the destruction of the symbiote that individuals can emerge, ready to heal and to grow. Ideally I’d like multiple individuals to survive the relationship, but ultimately the dire calculus of the resolution says that if only one individual survives, then that’s the individual I should care about.
- Now some people might object to the destruction of the symbiote in any way that results in fewer living bodies. But this is really little more than an attempt to treat the surviving individual as a failed means of supporting reductionist and dehumanizing biopower. Guttering summarizes Foucault (in Foucault: A Very Short Introduction) on biopower thusly:
“The second level [of biopower] concerns the modern focus on a nation’s entire population as a resource that must be protected, supervised, and improved. Thus, capitalism requires universal medical care and education to ensure an adequate workforce; racist ideologies call for eugenic measures to protect the purity of the population ‘stock’; and military planners develop the concept of ‘total war’, as a battle between not just armies but entire populations.”
Biopower at this level is an abstraction of people, increasingly as a group or herd, no more personal than a counted nose, actively inviting violations of the categorical imperative. And yet this is exactly how the resolution invites us to act by suggesting we cast judgment on an action which reduced the quantity of living bodies but may well have increased the individuals in the world.
Overall the point here is that in as much as I care about individuals, actual or hypothetical, I’m not going to condemn or denigrate the actions they find necessary to establish their individuality. And while I would prefer it if the unhealthy symbiotic relationship of incomplete people could be ended without murder, I’m ultimately going to go with what the individual required. Second guessing their deliberate decision, bemoaning the loss of a sadist, talking about all of the alternatives I think they had: these would only serve to reduce the individual into a screen for my smug superiority to project my ego upon. And while it may be permissible, it’s not beneficial or constructive.
To summarize, my determination of the moral permissibility of somebody else’s actions only affects how I’m going to relate to them. It doesn’t effect what they’ve done or the consequences that follow from it. So, on a wholly moral framework, it becomes my responsibility to treat a survivor of a sadomasochistic symbiote that ended in murder with dignity according to their individual humanity, rather than as an irrational and immoral subhuman for engaging in activities I believe to be morally impermissible. And that’s why I have to accept that it might as well be morally permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence.
Now that seems like a hard case to run, so let’s clarify a couple of things:
- Did you just become complicit in genocide? Are you friends with Hitler? No, Hitler — who was extensively profiled as a sadomasochist by Fromm — is quite dead and so I don’t care about him as an individual per se anymore. I’m opposed to genocide hypothetically as a sadistic exercise of biopower, as well as being pragmatically devoid of benefit and utterly destructive, not constructive. But let’s take this one step further: Saint Paul, the guy perhaps as important to Christianity as Pope Peter and Jesus Christ together, got his theological start by torturing and murdering Christians. My point here is that I’m not going to bet against people who are still alive, still capable of becoming incredible individuals.
- But if you’re refraining from judgment, then doesn’t that avoid the question of permissibility and result in a negative ballot? Oddly enough, not in this case and the reason is we’re talking about creating a prior restraint. Remember that it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. But somebody asks me for permission to do something which they are capable of and I explicitly avoid denying it and then they go and do it, then I would be complicit in what they did — the permission becomes tacit in that I haven’t inhibited their capacity to do what they were going to do. So if we avoid the moral question by saying we’re not going to pass judgment then our complicity results in an affirmative ballot.