Journeyman Philosopher

Continued from my last post…

There seem to be two distinctions of thought from your responses to my last question:

• Physical Self Defense is justifiable as it gives an attacker a taste of their own medicine.
• Physical Self Defense is unjustifiable as it is simply violent action and other means should be pursued in order to defuse the situation.

I’ve been thinking alot about this and I do believe both views are insightful. Sometimes it is most useful to teach someone a valuable lesson through their own language, and other times it is most useful to teach someone a lesson through a more external abstract act such as pacifism. The difficulty resides in knowing which is applicable in certain situations (I have experienced both situations, one in which it was safe to walk away and others in which if I tried I would have been seriously injured).

Despite this difficulty what I believe is key to both objections is that they believe that self defense is a useful tool (in its pacifist or action oriented form) if it is used to ‘teach someone a lesson and/or provide insight to the attacker’. Both of these are interchangeable I believe although one sounds more positive. From this point on we will move on with the idea that ‘teach someone a lesson’ and ‘provide insight to the attacker’ are both simply a different way to say ‘inspire positive change’.

What is it than to ‘inspire positive change’ in another? It is, I feel, intent to showcase to another person why you do disagree with their action and what you think a suitable means of action is. This isn’t to say that ‘I think your punch form is wrong, allow me to show you proper form’ but rather ‘I think you punching me is bad, I don’t want you to do this’. You aren’t just beating someone up or letting someone slap you because you want the situation to end, but rather you want that person to carry themselves differently after the situation at hand.

I think this concept really shows off well just how much intent is a factor in true self defense. If you base your actions whatever they are sincerely on the intent to ‘inspire positive change’ in another, I don’t think you can wrong. This is as the intent of the action is not to hurt but to give the attacker a positive realization, simply that hurting people is not nice, as such it seems to me as though self defense is justifiable.

Intent in general is a huge part of morality, I think it is fitting that it is necessary as well to make physical or mental self defense justifiable.

What do you think?