It does matter, because your argument is completely reliant on the idea that killing this person will save your life. It’s a false dilemma.
My entire argument rests on the fact that you are killing someone who stands in the way of you gaining your freedom. If this person doesn’t, then there is no reason why a slave who need to kill them.
Slavery is different because you have no choice in the matter. You have no say in where you live, what you work on, or even if you live. There is no ‘due process’. Even if you are well taken care of, it’s all at the whim of massa’ and his whip.
However, you still have the freedom to pursue other jobs, whereever you like. People don’t have the right to murder just because life is turning against them.
Although, a case could be made that if you economically enslave a large enough group of people, they will lash out at the ones they perceive are enslaving them. That’s why we have wars and revolutions.
All I speak on is American-brand chattel slavery.
If there is a soceity out there perpetuating a similar institution, then my reasoning still applies. False lifetime imprisonment is still false lifetime imprisonment. A hostage has the right to fight for themselves in such a situation, whether they’ve been a hostage their whole life or just for a few days. If killing isn’t necessary for them to escape, they shouldn’t. But they should be reluctant to use lethal force if that’s what it takes.
Really don’t see where I’m oversimplifying things.
You and a group of people are taken hostage, tortured incessantly out in the middle of nowhere for years and years. Despite this hell, one of your fellow captives develops a pathetic case of Stockholm Syndrome. An opportunity suddenly arises when every last one of ya’ll can escape. But that hostage threatens to rat you guys out if you make a move.
Are you saying you wouldn’t bop that guy on the head, damn whether it’s a fatal blow or not? Or would you say to yourself, “Gee, we can’t risk his life for the sake of ourselves. We should all just stay and be good little hostages. Another chance may come for us to escape.”
You may feel differently on the matter, and again–this is me putting on a persona that probably would not get played out in actuality–but I’d say, “No, let’s do what we have to do to Mr. Stockholm and get the hell out of here!” What we do may be mild or it could be severe, but that’s neither here nor there. Our lives are at stake and we have more than enough justification to leave by all means necessary than Mr. Stockholm has to live as a happy little hostage forever and ever.
To go back to slavery times, Harriet T. would carry a gun with her whenever she’d lead a group of slaves to the Underground Railroad. The gun wasn’t just for killing the oppressor, but for killing any slaves who decided to turn back. She never lost a slave (IIRC) during her missions, but let’s say there had been a case when a guy had lost his nerve and decided he wanted to go back to the plantation. If she had let him go and he had gotten caught by the night patrollers, the entire mission may have been put in danger, putting all of their lives at risk. Knowing this, would Harriet T. have been justified in killing the slave? I say yes. Yes, she would have.
The slaves no doubt all agreed with me, and that’s why she never had to kill anyone.
Has anyone seen my goalpost? It seems to have been moved.
I asked if it was morally justifiable for a slave to kill another slave if that gave him an opportunity to escape. That was all. Nowhere did I suggest that the other slave was doing anything to prevent the other slave from escaping or that the other slave was somehow part of the slaveholding system.
Personally, if I was being held in captivity but there was no immediate threat being made to me, I probably would feel justified in killing the person who was holding me captive if that was the only means I could escape by. I would avoid killing them if it was possible. And I don’t think I would be justified in killing some innocent third party just to free myself from captivity.
Yes, you did suggest that, otherwise why would killing the slave provide the opportunity?
Frederick Douglass also wrote about the fact that slavery would NEVER work without violence both ways because all men yearn to be free. The claim that most slaves didn’t try to escape is glib – there was constant brutality and cruelty to make them afraid to even try; it is a different thing to say they happily knew their lot.
Maybe the slave has a horse or a boat that you need to escape. Maybe he’s got some kind of movement pass you need. Maybe he’s someplace you need to move through so you have to kill him so he won’t be a witness.
None of these would mean that the other slave was doing anything against you. Except he has something you want. So all you need to do to justify killing him is to tell yourself that your life is worth more than his.
Little Nemo, I think it’s you who’s moving the goalposts. No one is this thread has been talking about killing whoever just happens to be in the vicinity, or stealing/robbing/killing to ease one’s way to freedom. Self-defense and self-preservation have been what I’ve been talking about, and I assume the other posters. What do you think we’ve been talking aout?
It would be utterly ridiculous to give a nod to a slave who kills another simply because that latter has access to a horse. However, it wouldn’t be ridiculous if that slave was actively preventing the runaway from escaping, because that would be a clear-cut instance of self-defense.
Care to give your opinion on this scenario?
So what does it mean for a homicide to be “morally justified”?
So, if I live in a society with slavery, and I know that a particular slave has adopted your view, I would be morally justified (using your words–I don’t know what those words mean) if I killed that slave, right?
I don’t know. But I was under the impression that determining the answer to that question was the entire point of this thread.
Did you read the question I asked? “Suppose a slave has an opportunity to escape but to use it he has to kill some random white stranger. Is he justified? Suppose his opportunity to escape required him to kill another slave? Is he justified then?” It seemed pretty straight forward and I made no mention of the random white stranger or the other slave doing anything to stop the escape attempt. That was something you and Der Trihs added to the scenario.
But now that you presumedly understand the question, do you wish to change your answer?
I get that. I’m trying to understand what people mean when they use terms like “morally justified.” Let’s say we decide that it is morally justified for a slave to kill his/her owner. What have we decided exactly?
Let me phrase it another way. If I say to you “there is a red ball in my living room,” then I have said something with some meaning to it (absent strange circumstances). I apparently believe that my living room contains a red ball. I think we all know what’s going on when I say that, there’s nothing too weird about it (again, absent strange circumstances).
But if I say to you “it is morally justified for a slave to kill his/her owner,” what am I saying now? What’s the meaning to my statement? What is the content of my communication?
I find that people don’t really think about these questions–of course they and everyone else (in their mind) knows what it means to say something is morally justified or not. But I don’t think we really do. I’ve tried to discuss this question in the abstract and gotten nowhere–I think it’s better discussed in a thread where several different posters apparently think it has some meaning.
Rand Rover, it comes down to your lack of understanding (or disagreement with) the fundamental position that there is such a thing as an objective morality. The OP pretty obviously is stipulating such a thing, and IMO it’s hijacking to turn it into a discussion of whether there is such a thing. Better to put that question in its own thread.
Obviously morality isn’t something that you can hammer into true or false, yes or no, black or white. I don’t really get what point you’re trying to make or what difficulty you’re having understanding. This question wasn’t posed in GQ, it was put in GD. We, as people, determine whether certain acts are moral or immoral, good or bad. Ultimately our conclusions are meaningless. Just like there’s no meaning when you conclude “torture is wrong” or “stealing is wrong”.
Do you go through your life devoid of any concept of morality? Do you base every single act you perform on whether something is legal? Because it’s certainly legal for me to tell my neighbor that she’s an ugly piece of shit, but I don’t. And not because I fear the social consequences, either. But because I don’t think that’s a nice thing to do. But what does it mean for something to be “nice”? I don’t know. Go start a different thread about the nature of morality if that’s what floats your boat. If you’re uninterested in or confused by moral debate I don’t see why you’re in here.
Edit: Beaten by Darkness.
Tell me what a “concept of morality” is and I’ll tell you whether I go through life with or without one. There are things that I do and things that I don’t do. But I don’t think it makes any sense for me to extend my feelings about things I do and don’t do to things other people should do or should not do.
I may be hijacking, I’ll grant that. I’m just trying to fight ignorance here, and there’s a lot of it on this point. Someone starts an OP like this and off people go, using terms as if they have meaning and as if everyone agrees on the meaning, when really nothing is being said and it’s just so much mental masturbation.
No. What you are doing is threadshitting and you will stop it.
We all recognize that you would like to assert that ethics and morality are meaningless. You have done so in previous threads and you are welcome to open one more thread to discuss that specific topic again, if youfeel you must.
You are not welcome to crash into every single thread that discusses morality and hijack it into your favorite sophomore thesis.
That topic is off limits in this thread and you will refrain from interrupting any more threads in this manner.
[ /Moderating ]
OK, topic dropped. Nice of you to get a cheap jab in there with your moderating, which I of course can’t respond to in this forum.
No. You would morally justified in helping him/her escape. If you feared white-lead reprisals from doing that, then just simply get/stay out of the slave’s way.
You try to stop/kill them? Then you are no longer even ‘an innocent bystander’ in my book; you even become a justifiable target (‘fair game’) for any anti-slaver wishing to make an example/statement.