| | "Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows." -- Said by the carnival barker at the Merry-Go-Round.
Jeff writes, We face life-and-death situations all the time and if we are unable to surmount them and die, we do not call that a sacrifice. If you are caught on a mountainside during an avalanche and cannot get out of the way, you are going to die - but that loss of life would not be sensibly classified as a sacrifice. It is just the unfortunate byproduct of these circumstances. Now, if only I had a jet pack, I could have flown to safety. But that option wasn't available to me , so I die.
Now, take the person A/B/C example. B finds himself forced into a life-threatening position because of A's action. Unlike the avalanche situation, it appears that he does have one existential option to save himself, which is to kill C. However, as a rational egoist, B recognizes that C is not responsible for B's predicament and further recognizes that morally, he has no more right to C's life than A has to his. So he refuses to murder C. For the moral person, the option of killing C is just as inaccessible as the jet pack is to the person on the mountainside. Just to avoid confusion, let me reiterate my point: Yes, B has an existential option available, but that is precluded by the moral factor. Now it is true that B is likely going to die at the hands of A for failing to do his bidding, but the choice B makes is no more a sacrifice of his life than is that of the person on the mountain. Both deaths are tragic but unavoidable as neither had a valid option available to them. But, unlike the hiker on the mountainside, B did have a valid option available, namely to kill C in order to save his own life. You say that it wasn't a moral option, but that begs the question, because the question is, since it's an existential option, can it be chosen morally? To which the egoist would answer, yes. The hiker on the mountainside did the best he could for the purpose of self-preservation. He died, because there was nothing else he could do to sustain his life. He didn't willingly sacrifice his life when he could otherwise have preserved it. If he did have another option -- say a jet pack that would carry him to safety, but he was too proud to use it -- then he would be guilty of self-sacrifice.
The same is true for B if he refuses to kill C and dies at the hands of A. If life is a value, one must choose those options that promote one's survival when and if they are available. To say that sacrificing C is not morally available to B begs the question, because the egoist would argue that it is morally available, precisely because B ought to choose it in order to preserve his own life. In my formulation, there is an option that does not involve the sacrifice of oneself or of another, and that is the moral course which must be taken. But don't you see, it DOES involve the sacrifice of oneself, because one is choosing to die when one could have chosen to survive by sacrificing the other person. I understand that you believe that in a situation like A/B/C, conventional morality no longer applies. B, no longer constrained by any moral code whatsoever with respect to others - all of their rights having vanished in the context of the situation - is free to act in what you classify as his own best interest, including killing C if necessary for his survival. You quote Rand that "Morality ends where a gun begins." Rand may have had a perfectly valid point to make with that aphorism (offhand, I don't know the context), but I disagree with the sentiment as it applied to the situations we are discussing (even if it means disagreeing with Rand herself). My disagreement with your approach is three-fold.
I do not agree that morality ends with the initiation of force. Even under duress I hold that a person remains responsible for their actions and the choices that they make are therefore moral choices. I have not heard any convincing argument that morality does not apply, other than for this to be simply declared. There is a sense in which morality still applies under threat of force, and a sense in which it doesn't.
It still applies insofar as one has a choice to do the coercer's bidding or suffer the consequences. In the A/B/C example, Rand says that it doesn't make any moral difference which alternative B chooses -- to kill C in order to survive -- or refuse to kill C and be killed by A. The choice could be considered morally optional, depending on whether B finds himself incapable of killing C, because killing an innocent man is too horrible to contemplate, or whether he is capable of going through with it. It he's not capable of going through with it and prefers to die instead, because killing an innocent man is simply too painful, Rand would say that there is no moral breach, and if he is capable of going through with it, she would say that there is also no moral breach, because the alternative was to lose his own life and all other values along with it. That is certainly a legitimate way to view this kind of forced choice. However, if B does have the stomach to kill C, then I would argue that he ought to go through with it in order to preserve his own life.
But there is also a sense in which morality does not apply under threat of force, and that is the sense in which B is not morally responsible for murdering C if he is forced to do so by A, any more than a business that is forced by the Mafia to pay protection money is morally responsible for supporting organized crime. A person is not morally culpable for an action that he is forced to perform under threat of death or bodily harm, which is something that our legal system already recognizes. If an innocent person is forced by a criminal gang to rob a bank, he or she is not responsible for the crime. The criminal gang is. That, I think, is what Rand means in Galt's speech, when she says that "morality ends where a gun begins." I hold that the right to life resides with each person and that no action taken or situation experienced by a third party can have any bearing on that right. Therefore, there is no context where my predicament can eliminate another's rights and make it permissible for me to kill an innocent person. Even in the less serious case of breaking into a house and taking food, the homeowner's full property rights remain in effect. Otherwise, the turning in of oneself and making restitution required by Rand would not be necessary. Not true. Let me explain why. You are obliged to pay back the food or its monetary value, because once the emergency is past, you no longer need it to survive, and must therefore return it (along with any interest that it might have accrued). You have a moral right to it only insofar as it enables you to survive the emergency itself. You have in effect "borrowed" it for the duration of the emergency, but must repay it (with interest) once the emergency is past and you are capable of doing so. Certainly the same must be true in the more serious case of murder. And since no restitution is possible, no conceivable action against another's right to life could be considered. It's different in the case of murder, because although one's survival necessitated the murder, no restitution is possible in that case, unless of course the victim has surviving beneficiaries who deserve to be compensated, in which case, restitution is required. I do not think it is actually in B's "best interest" to kill C, because I argue that preservation of the "self" is what morality should be about and not just preservation of "life". And this is especially true if an act of sacrifice is involved. What do you mean, preservation of the "self"?? How does death preserve the self? Once you're dead, your "self" no longer exists!
- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer on 9/20, 11:48pm)
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