Self-Defense

Last week we worried about whether any facts about ownership or about our obligations to the dead should make us morally uncomfortable about doing what we need to do in order to protect ourselves from zombies. This week we’re going to worry about what can justify doing things to zombies or to the bodies of the dead to prevent them from becoming zombies, and the most obvious justification is self-defense. So for that, we will return to an important and influential article - again from the last forty years - published by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson.

Thomson, by Steve Pyke, in Philosophers

Caricature obviously based on Pyke photo, from her Wikipedia entry

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson was one of the leading moral philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, teaching for much of her career at MIT. She is most famous for her article “A Defense of Abortion”, which is still taught in introductory undergraduate ethics courses all around the world fifty years after it was published. But her paper “Self-Defense”, which we are reading, has been nearly as influential and important among contemporary philosophers. Thomson passed away just about three months ago, in November.

Thomson’s Theory of Self-Defense

In her article, Thomson is trying to figure out why it is okay to kill people in self-defense. Starting by arguing that it is, in fact, sometimes morally permissible to do so, she tries to give an explanation of why. Zombies, of course, are not people. But if there is some important value to respecting the dead or the wishes of the dead, then destroying zombies may also require some kind of justification. And many of you have already been thinking that this is clearly justified because your lives are at stake - in other words, that it is justified by something like self-defense. If that is right, then the true theory of self-defense might be expected to explain why.

One theory that Thomson considers but rejects says that you are allowed to kill someone in self-defense if they are a malicious threat to you. If that were the right explanation of why you are allowed to kill in self-defense, then that could explain why it is okay to destroy or dispose of zombies only if zombies are really malicious. Fortunately, however, Thomson rejects this explanation. Make sure that you try to understand why she rejects it.

Another theory that Thomson briefly considers and rejects says that you are allowed to kill someone whenever the alternative is that you would die. This would be the right sort of thing to justify destroying zombies, if the alternative is that you will die. And it is a thought that many of you have had about self-defense - that killing in self-defense is okay because the alternative is death. But Thomson also rejects this explanation. Again, make sure that you understand why she rejects it.

As you read, pay attention to Thomson’s style and what makes it different from the older texts that we have read. Do you prefer it? Or is it more difficult to read? Why?

TIOR options

In addition to taking on Thomson in your TIOR, you may also take on one of the views that she considers and rejects, but just make sure that you are not just parroting Thomson’s reasons for rejecting the other idea, and are offering your own reasons for disagreeing with it.