If the only use of force that is moral is reactive, is it possible to have pro-active reactionary force?
Posted by Robbie53024 12 years, 3 months ago to Philosophy
Would Objectivists find pre-emptive use of force to prevent or reduce force about to be used against them, moral?
None of the people (or at least the vast majority of them) ever threatened force upon the crew of the Enola Gay, nor to the American people generally. They were merely inhabitants of a country the leaders of which had done so.
The justification of dropping the atomic bomb was that only by turning the will of the Japanese people through extreme devastation could the greater evil of continued war and eventual invasion of the Japanese island be averted.
It's not a perfect analogy.
If that's the case, how about a parent who is forcibly detaining their child who had tried to run away and the child asks for help? Do you use force on the parent to free the child?
A lot of this is really circumstantial but it's not like the objectivist response is crazy. If you see someone in immanent danger you can help them. You don't have to, and you shouldn't act irrationally but you can.
This goes back to the is ought gap. Which AR attempted to solve but I don't think she did.
A man lays dead in the street. A murder, accident, natural causes-the facts matter
Just a suggestion.
The Law of Gravity stands, but the actual path a object will take depends on its position, initial velocity, acceleration in an arc, etc
I cannot speak for the crew of the Enola Gay, but I can say that when I was a soldier I considered any aggressive act toward free men and women to be a personal attack on me.
While I accept your proposition as the interpretation of an aggressive act, I'm not so sure that a "true" Objectivist would see things that way (not to say you're not, I don't know what you consider yourself).
An Objectivist would weigh the loss of life of its soldiers against the initiation of attacking a rogue nation, looking first to other means, such as economic boycott which is consistent with Capitalism
If that's not what you think those statements mean, then please explain.
Does an immoral individual lose all rights?
How can it be moral in the collective but not moral in the individual (or vice versa)?
Plus, I have a personal issue with the term "outlaw," as laws are arbitrary and created by man, not derived as innate rights.
This is addressed in our novel, PoJ, btw...
How do you figure that I invoked some "social contract?"
Oops, I forgot that I need to write a review.
But more, Objectivist are free to form associations and contract with others to provide a stronger defense. There is no value from defensive force obtained either individually or association wise, other than the continuation of one's life or the free use of one's own property.
I don't think that knowing that another is going to strike you in the nose, requires an Objectivist to stand there and wait until he's been hit in the nose. That wouldn't make rational sense except in some progressive twisted martyr morality.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116260/
but now you are getting into theory of law.
A person living in a society gives up their right to be judge, jury and prosecutor. They can only act for immediate self-defense, based on Locke's Social Contract.