Morality of Life and Death

Morality is often presented as a list of commandments, imperatives, duties, requirements, rules. Among these we have the commandment not to kill—along with commandments not to steal, lie, betray, break promises, be ungrateful, etc. These are treated as much on a par; together they form a moral whole—a code, a system. In some presentations unity is imposed, as in utilitarianism and Kantianism. In particular, the prohibition against killing is regarded as just one duty among others (as in W.D. Ross’s catalogue of prima facie duties or obligations). Killing is not singled out for special treatment. But surely it stands out as special, not just one commandment among many. I want to suggest that morality should be bifurcated so as to record and respect the special character of the wrongness of killing. There is stealing and lying (etc.) on the one hand and killing on the other. These are distinct moral kinds, superficially similar but actually deeply different. We might speak of “normative dualism” as we speak of “substance dualism”. Let’s not lump everything together as if morality were a homogeneous domain. Some of morality is concerned with rules concerning the conduct of life, but some relates to the business of death. Some is about how to live with other people (also animals) and some is about the morality of ending life.

The most obvious point of difference is that killing is far more serious than other immoral acts—deserving of the greatest censure. Lying and stealing are wrong, but killing isn’t just wrong—it’s really seriously wrong. It sounds oddly understated to describe killing as the wrong thing to do. The word “wrong” is inadequate to express its moral badness (the word “bad” isn’t much better). Here we reach for words like “heinous”, “abominable”, “evil”, “wicked”—none of these apply to garden-variety cases of lying and stealing. Taking a life is in a class of its own. Life is “sacred”, we say, unlike property. We underrate its badness by classifying it along with other bad acts. The prohibition against killing is particularly strong, not easily overridden. Hence, the kind of severe punishment reserved for it alone.

Second, the other moral rules cluster around the notion of harm or unhappiness: lying and stealing make people suffer, cause unhappiness, reduce utility. They make the recipient worse off. But killing doesn’t make the victim unhappy—it makes the victim no more, not even capable of being unhappy. A broadly utilitarian account of the non-killing norms sounds reasonable, but we can’t explain the wrongness of killing by appeal to how the victim feels after being killed. The state of being dead is not an unhappy state. The killing itself may cause pain, but the result isn’t more future suffering. This makes killing a very special kind of wrong.

Third, it is not easy to say precisely what is bad about being dead, whereas it is easy to say what is bad about being stolen from or lied to. The badness of suffering is no mystery, but the badness of not being able to suffer (because dead) is perplexing. The sophistical murderer may contend that he has spared his victim future misery, and that is certainly true, since all human life has its quota of misery. It is common to say that the wrongness of killing consists in depriving the victim of future pleasures, and that is intelligible enough; but killing is much worse than, and quite different from, just preventing future pleasures—that could be achieved simply by moving the person to an unpleasant environment. Killing is really bad even if the victim’s life isn’t all that pleasurable. Taking a life is much worse than depriving a person of pleasure. But it is hard to say what this special badness amounts to—which is not to say that it amounts to nothing.

So, the prohibition against killing cannot be assimilated to the other prohibitions; it is sui generis. Killing is seriously bad, inexplicable in terms of utility, and somewhat mysterious as to the ground of its wrongness. I would also say that it is much more shocking than other misdeeds, even torture. It is nihilistic, extreme, inexcusable. Of course, there are contexts in which it is not wrong, such as self-defense (or other-defense), just as there are contexts in which stealing and lying are not wrong. But when killing is wrong, it is shockingly wrong. Slavery is no doubt very wrong, but genocide is shockingly wrong (think how feeble it sounds to describe genocide as “wrong”). It isn’t just one of those things one shouldn’t do; it is outside the range of normal human wrongdoing. We don’t say to our children, “Don’t tell lies, and while we’re at it don’t murder either!” That’s not something we feel we need to warn them against. We don’t say, “Don’t torment your sister, and don’t kill her either!”

One might reasonably insist that the injunction against killing is not a moral rule at all, not a piece of moral guidance or advice; it goes deeper than that. It is a self-evident moral truth recognized by every sane halfway decent person. It really doesn’t need a commandment to back it up. A natural response to “Thou shalt not kill!” is “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know”. You don’t need to be educated into that piece of moral knowledge, whereas the standard moral rules do require a bit of prodding and instruction. To describe the prohibition against murder as a “prima facie duty” sounds hopelessly inadequate and quaint, the result of trying to impose unity on a heterogeneous bunch of moral no-nos. You don’t owe it to people not to kill them, as you owe it to people not to lie to them, or not to steal from them, or not to be ungrateful for what they have done to benefit you.

I thus recommend that we have two lists of moral injunctions: one list contains all the standard injunctions, arranged alphabetically and printed in black ink; the other contains only the injunction against killing, written in italics and red ink. Then people will see that it is not just any old piece of moral sermonizing (perfectly justified as that may be) but a special moral principle deserving a position of its own. Metaethically, we should subscribe to moral dualism.[1]

[1] One wonders whether the traditional list reflects the fact that in the old days people didn’t really distinguish the wrongness of killing from other sorts of wrong act. Killing was far more commonplace and indiscriminate; it took centuries before we realized how bad it actually is. Now we see that it is a different kind of immoral act—it has a different “real essence”. But we persist with the outmoded list, as if killing were not much worse than telling the odd fib or stealing apples from an orchard (“scrumping”). As Ryle would say, it belongs in a different category.

Coach Colin Redux

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I arrived at the Biltmore tennis center for my daily practice and was confronted by a mob of high school students—not dressed in tennis gear. My first concern was whether this would interfere with my hitting session. As I parked my bicycle one of them, a boy, asked me if I was going to play tennis. Yes, I said. He then said he wanted to learn to play and would I help him. Sure, I replied, a little annoyed at having my own tennis interfered with. Instantly, a small crowd gathered, boys and girls, all eager to watch and be taught, about fifteen of them. Suddenly, I was placed in the teacher role. First, I gave them some verbal pointers, mainly about keeping the ball down; then I demonstrated, hitting the ball softly against the wall. They watched carefully, silently, then applauded, I’m not sure why. I commented on what they had seen and how I executed the stroke. Much bright-eyed nodding. Then I demonstrated some harder hitting to give them a sense of the real game—more applause (well-deserved, I thought). Then things got interesting: I asked for volunteers. First, a boy had a go—“Not terrible”, I remarked. They could all see how difficult it is to hit a tennis ball well, him especially. I coached him a bit. Then I took a second volunteer, making sure it was a girl (no sexist, me). She responded well to coaching and managed to hit the ball straight and fairly hard a couple of times—she was clearly thrilled. Then another girl stepped up, brimming with enthusiasm; but she kept missing the ball altogether and could hardly make it hit the wall when she did make contact. The kids were sympathetic and supportive. Suddenly, they announced they had to leave; their teacher beckoned. They were all smiles and thankyous. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I felt the joy of teaching again. I reflected: they knew nothing of me beyond what they picked up in those few minutes. Quite unlike what I would expect of a bunch of students being taught philosophy by me now. It was how things used to be. I carried on hitting.

Romantic Harassment

We hear a lot about sexual harassment these days, but not much about romantic harassment. Indeed, I just invented the phrase (and perhaps the concept). What is it? Suppose A falls in love with B and wants B to fall in love with him. He begins a series of efforts to secure this result—flowers, invitations to dinner, declarations of love. Trouble is, B doesn’t feel the same way. She feels uncomfortable about the whole thing, and wishes it would stop. Eventually A resorts to more aggressive measures: he starts threatening B with loss of job opportunities, online defamation. She feels harassed, stressed, and angry. That’s romantic harassment. Her harasser doesn’t want sex (he is insecure in that area), but he does want candlelit dinners, love letters, and affectionate gazes. He is behaving badly, all because of his love for B. You know, love can make people do crazy things, shameful things. It’s bad, definitely, but it doesn’t quite have the punch carried by the phrase “sexual harassment”. It doesn’t come with the counterpart phrase “romantic assault” (what would that be?), and we don’t hear talk of the “romantic predator”. It doesn’t sound as bad, and it doesn’t introduce the topic of sex. But it has the same structure as sexual harassment and can have the same consequences. It comes in degrees, clearly, and it is hard to imagine it as a criminal offense, or as career-ending; it is doubtful the newspapers would be much interested in covering it. The phrase “romantic misconduct” doesn’t have the same salacious zing as “sexual misconduct”—it’s not as juicy and titillating. You see, it isn’t sexual—and we know how people are about that.

Are there other forms of harassment that follow the same pattern? What about friendship harassment?  You badly want X to be your friend, but he doesn’t seem interested. You do everything you can to make X like you: you compliment him, give him presents, invite him for drinks. Trouble is, he’s just not that keen. He already has a lot of friends and he finds you, well, a bit boring. He finds your attentions annoying and wishes you would leave him alone. He even tells you he doesn’t want to be your friend, but you persist, hoping to win him over. You might even threaten him with a loss of professional assignments (you have that kind of power). None of this is good, though your motives are pure—you are sure (perhaps correctly) that you and X would be great friends. Again, it is hard to see how this kind of thing could excite much of a frenzy. It shouldn’t be illegal or career-ending; it should be handled in the usual quiet ways (see TV sit-coms that deal with the topic). If it escalates, sterner measures might become necessary, but in the normal course of events it isn’t likely to require the full weight of the law, or total ostracism. Why? Because there is no sexual element—and we know how people feel about that. The same goes for “chess harassment” or “table tennis harassment”: trying to find partners to engage with you in these activities. It would be possible to become quite harassing about these things—persistent, annoying, even threatening. People might start saying you are a serial chess harasser, a menace to society, and excluding you from social gatherings and paid employment—all very hysterical, but justified by your proclivity to pester people to play chess with you. You might even be accused of “grooming” people to play chess with you (giving them beautiful chess sets, etc.). The point is that this kind of unwanted interpersonal behavior is structurally just like sexual harassment and may have the same kinds of consequences, but it doesn’t excite the same kinds of censure and antipathy (“His unhealthy need for chess was his undoing”). One might begin to wonder if too much emphasis is being placed on the sexual in sexual harassment and not enough on the harassment part. That’s what’s really bad, not the fact that sex is the harasser’s aim. And what is the sex that is aimed for—does light kissing count? Many distinctions need to be made, not just brandishing the phrase “sexual harassment” like an all-purpose bludgeon. The question of degree of severity must not be ignored.

There is another area in which sex plays a considerable part—consensual sexual relations in work contexts. These are supposed not to occur, or if they do remedial measures must be adopted. People are required to report sexual relations to the authorities, and the same goes for romantic relations. The latter are generally understood to involve sex, or else the rule becomes far too inclusive (what is to count as “romantic”?). But this is not the only kind of relationship that raises analogous questions—friendship does too, or family connections. The purpose of such rules is to exclude bias in treatment and evaluation—for example, giving your lover an A he or she doesn’t deserve. That can certainly happen in such cases, though it is not a necessary truth; but it can also happen in other kinds of case too. You can be biased in favor of your friend or your niece—say, if they are a member of your class in animal husbandry. In fact, you can be biased in all sorts of ways, depending on your dispositions—by religion, nationality, clothing style, looks, eye color. The human mind is full of prejudices, stereotypes, likes and dislikes. Romantic entanglement is just one of these, and may not be the most powerful or insidious. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that sex is figuring too prominently in attempts to enforce impartiality. It is attitudes specifically to sex that underlie the policies adopted by various institutions. People can be fired from their jobs if they are found guilty of failing to report their romantic or sexual feelings in an instructional context, but when did you hear of this happening in the case of feelings of friendship or family connections? What is the missing ingredient? Sex, of course.

Here is a final case to consider: what we might call “negative sexual harassment” for want of a better term. Suppose a professor finds a particular student extremely repellent sexually: he just can’t bear the sight of her. Nevertheless, he has to deal with her: she sits in his class, comes to his office hours, chats with him in the hallway. Let’s suppose our professor is a happily married man who just happens for deep psychological reasons to experience extreme sexual negativity in certain cases (something to do with his mother, say). He just can’t help it. When this student accosts him (as he might say) he has to stand at least ten feet away from her, cannot look directly at her, and keeps the interaction as brief as possible. All this is obvious to her, and very distressing. She worries the professor is biased against her and will not give her fair grades. Actually, he is perfectly fair, but the appearances are certainly not encouraging. Should she complain? Should he be reprimanded, or even fired? He is guilty of harassment by sexual negativity, it may be said. The situation is delicate and needs to be handled carefully, but I doubt it would rise to the level of administrative discipline, dismissal, or the attention of the press. Why? Because it involves the marked absence of sex as a motive for the behavior that is causing the trouble—the professor is the opposite of sexually attracted to the student. Yet his behavior may occasion the very types of reaction occasioned by overt attraction—discomfort, anxiety, fear, etc. These are the things that really matter, not the psychological cause of the problematic behavior. We need to be less obsessed with the sexual motive and more concerned with the effects of the behavior. And the language in which we talk of these things matters, especially if it is incendiary and triggering to the contemporary psyche.[1]

[1] In case of any misunderstanding, let me make clear that I have no wish to underplay the seriousness of sexual harassment. It is obviously a very bad thing to do. Cases do vary, however.