Abstract
This chapter develops a new conceptualisation of coercion. Rather than concentrating first and foremost on the action that the coerced performs and whether or not this is something he really wants to do, it is argued that we should focus on how the coerced relates to the way he is brought to do that action. The lack of assent that is crucial to coercion should be understood in terms of a negative moral judgment made by the coerced person on the way the coercer brings him to perform a specific action, a moral objection the coercer refuses to abide by. Crucial to this definition is that it refers to a subjective moral judgment, without presupposing that this judgment must be valid. It is shown that this way of explicating the subjugation of the will of one person to that of another makes it possible to combine many of the benefits of both moralised and non-moralised accounts, while avoiding the drawbacks of either. After the definition of coercion is developed, its most important implications are discussed. The chapter closes with the application of the developed definition of coercion to two prominent issues in the literature on coercion: the way being coerced affects a person’s moral responsibility for the action he performed, and the purported coerciveness of the law.
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- 1.
This formulation is expressly Kantian, and the Kantian point of view is obviously not without its critics. However, the basic idea of respect for the individual that underlies this formulation is one that is often shared by Kantians and non-Kantians alike.
- 2.
I should add though that the fact that the coerced is aware of both what the coercer wants him to do and the inducements she employs to get him to do so, does not preclude the possibility that he remains in the dark with respect to other aspects of the situation. The coercer’s deeper reasons for wanting him to perform the specific action may, for instance be unknown to him, as may be the full extent of the consequences of his doing X. Similarly, it is possible that the incentives the coercer provides are, unbeknownst to the coerced, mere bluffs, on which she is either unable or unwilling to follow through.
- 3.
This leaves open the possibility that without A’s interference B would have been in another situation in which he might have done X. However, if we leave out those aspects of B’s present situation that have been brought about by A, then we cannot account for B’s doing X (without adding new elements or alternative motivations).
- 4.
An INUS condition is a condition that is ‘an insufficient but necessary part of a condition that is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the result’ Mackie (1999, 414). The example Mackie gives is a short-circuit that is said to have caused a fire to break out in a house. The short-circuit is not a necessary condition of the fire, for other things could have set fire to the house as well. Nor is it sufficient, for if there had not been flammable materials nearby, the fire would not have broken out even if the short-circuit had occurred. Moreover, if there had been a working sprinkler installation at the right spot, even the flammable materials and the short-circuit together would not have lead to the house being set on fire. Nonetheless, the short-circuit is an essential factor contributing to the fire, for without it the present conditions would not have led to the fire breaking out (see Mackie 1999, 413–414).
- 5.
Except, of course, for hedonistic moral egoists.
- 6.
I shall not address the particular case where B judges A to have acted morally correctly only because A herself was coerced by a third party.
- 7.
The way I use ‘deliberately ’ here does not imply she needs to have actual knowledge of B’s objections, or that it is her explicit goal to subjugate B’s will. It merely indicates that she is willing to do so if that is needed to ensure B’s compliance.
- 8.
It should be noted that the distinction between being coerced and being forced also applies to physical coercion. Though all cases of physical coercion imply that the coerced was forced to do as he did (after all, physical coercion means it is physically impossible for the coerced not to do what he is coerced to do), the converse does not hold. A situation where things are deliberately arranged in such a way that it becomes physically impossible for a person to do anything other than what he is intended to do, only amounts to physical coercion if the person whose physical freedom is thus restricted also judges this curtailment of his physical freedom to be illegitimate (see footnote 17, p. 45 for an example).
- 9.
It is worth mentioning that the statement ‘you are morally right to coerce me’ is self-contradictory in my account of coercion. The statement ‘you are morally right to force me’ is not self-contradictory, nor are the statements ‘you will be morally right to coerce me’ or ‘you were morally right to coerce me’. For instance, suppose person B is addicted to some narcotic substance and his friend A locks him in a room to beat this addiction. Then it is quite possible that B objects to this treatment, regarding A as acting morally reprehensibly while he is locked in the room, but would afterwards (when he has cooled down and sees things more clearly) agree not only that what A did was not morally wrong in itself, but even that this was a case of justified coercion.
- 10.
Of course, in practice it may be very hard to determine if this is really the case, as B may hide the fact that he feels this way, or be dishonest about it in order to achieve certain responses from others. Nonetheless, whether B really regards himself as wronged is a purely empirical issue.
- 11.
An important difference between Zimmerman’s account and mine is that his refers to the preferences of the coerced, whereas mine relies on the coerced’s moral judgment. Though there may be persons to whom virtually any interference will be offensive, so that my account implies that virtually any kind of interference could be coercive if maintained (see also p. 93), it is not the case, as in Alexander’s criticism of Zimmerman, that almost any kind of interference is necessarily coercive. Many kinds of interference will usually not be considered wrongful by the persons whom it affects, though most people can generally imagine feasible situations, preferable to the ones they are presently in.
- 12.
There is one remote possibility by which the reasonableness of the objections by the person on the receiving end of the interference may have some relevance to the matter whether or not it constitutes coercion. This is when his objections become so distorted that we may doubt whether his moral agency is still intact.
- 13.
Note that the definition is only satisfied when the coerced’s objections are sincere, for otherwise he would not really be considering himself wronged but only feigning.
- 14.
In fact, if the weak-willed person himself also judges that he should be able to resist such intrusions, the humiliation involved in his compliance is all the deeper for it.
- 15.
Some attention would probably have to be paid to the question of the degree to which physical coercion involves B doing something, however.
- 16.
In certain legal systems, for instance, the claim of coercion cannot be offered in defence of the murder of an uninvolved party. I take it that, strictly speaking, we should not take this to mean that the legal profession thinks a person cannot be coerced into performing a murder, but rather that it neither justifies nor excuses it (whether this is necessarily the case, however, is another issue, for there are certainly conceivable consequences with which one can threaten a person that are even worse than his killing an innocent) (see also Wertheimer 1987, 155–157).
- 17.
Speed bumps provide an interesting possible example of physical coercion, as they make it physically impossible for a person to traverse a particular stretch of road at certain speeds, even though the coerced still genuinely acts in accordance with the coercer’s intentions when he slows down. They also make clear why being physically forced to do something need not imply that one is also physically coerced to do it: a person who agrees with the placement of a speed bump is forced to pass over that section of road more slowly (he cannot pass it at a higher speed), but is not coerced by it.
- 18.
As appealing as the idea of a completely non-conscript army may be, the idea that the state may legitimately draft its citizens in true emergencies is not that controversial (though the question whether a particular situation constitutes such an emergency is likely to be much more so).
- 19.
Assuming the other conditions are met.
- 20.
E.g. the right to freedom of movement.
- 21.
The proposed conception of coercion also offers an interesting explanation why, for instance, certain orthodox socialists find (state) coercion much less problematic than, for example, most liberals, libertarians and republicans. To the latter groups, individuals matter because they are moral beings, and hence their individual morality is vitally important as well. To orthodox socialists, on the other hand, the people entertain a flawed notion of (bourgeois) morality due to their false consciousness anyway, so treating them in ways they deem wrongful to themselves is not considered particularly relevant (see for instance Lenin (1918) on the role of the vanguard during the dictatorship of the proletariat).
- 22.
Coercion may, for instance, result from paternalistic motives. It may even be successful in achieving its paternalistic goals, but that does not explain away the problematic nature of coercion even in those cases.
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van der Rijt, JW. (2011). Coercion and Moral Judgment. In: The Importance of Assent. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0766-5_3
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