What can a Kantian do in self-defense?

Question

For Kant, we are prohibited from using people as purely means. Unfortunately things like physically stopping someone from doing violence onto you just because you don't want to be wounded seems to very much be using them as a means and not an end.

If we are unable to literally escape* being submitted to unethical treatment, do we simply have to grin and bear it?

*In the "what if an ax murderer asks me where my friend is, shouldn't I lie then" the obvious solution is to just remain silent. I'm thinking of cases where there is no similar way out, e.g., you are trapped.

Answer 1

This is the scenario. As I was happily enjoying a meal at a downtown restaurant, I suddenly noticed that a person is falling onto me from the forth floor of the building. The restaurant is so crowded that I cannot get away from my seat (= I am trapped). Incidentally, I had a pulverizer and could use it to render the falling person into particles, thus saving my life. I am a Kantian, and avowed that I would never treat others as mere means. But using the pulverizer onto the person is treating him like a rock, i.e., as a mere means. On what moral ground, can I, a Kantian, use the pulverizer?

While Kant himself does not discuss this type of scenario (called self-defense under an innocent aggressor), a moral theory informed by the Kantian maxim (Never treat others as mere means) has been developed in the name of the doctrine of double effect (DDE). DDE states that it is morally permissible to cause a foreseen harm as a side effect of bringing about a good result, but it is morally impermissible to cause such a harm as a means to bringing about the same good end.

Applying DDE, my goal is to save my life from a falling object, which many believe is morally permissible. Pulverizing the object is the only means to achieve the goal. When I pulverize the object that is falling onto me. I can foresee that the action has the side effect of killing a person. But clearly, I did not intend to kill the person, His death is a mere foreseen side effect. I never used the person as a mere means for my survival. Thus, I am morally permitted to use the pulverizer.

Answer 2

"*In the "what if an ax murderer asks me where my friend is, shouldn't I lie then" the obvious solution is to just remain silent. I'm thinking of cases where there is no similar way out, e.g., you are trapped."

This is wrong. There's no "obvious solution", as though it were a logical exercise. Kant's point is you don't know, with certainty, if the guy is going to catch him. He says, maybe the guy will have already slipped away. And then your lie didn't help at all, might even harm the guy. One should read, here, the example Dostoevsky gives in the Idiot, about the injustice of State execution. Saying, the state is far more cruel, since in the case of a knife murderer (likely he thought of Kant), one, till the last, thinks of escape. Whereas, in the execution, the State's iron laws work evil like clockwork.

If you lie, then a judge is supposed to ask, did he really aim at not lying? It's a causuistry. You must faithfully interpret your duty into the situation.

In other words, not lying is a predelineation of the ought, it's what would happen in a perfect world, in the sense of if one ought to one can. If one ought to one can means that the way the world is, practically, in reality, need not always be. One might, through habit, bring about the world where one need never lie. He aims at a Utopia. But, he knows this is not Utopia. Kant's practicality is vastly effaced by the false reception of his thought currently on the market.

Thusly, rethink your question.

Also, be sure to remember "we are prohibited from using people as purely means" does not preclude "doing violence onto you just because you don't want to be wounded" which "seems to very much be using them as a means and not an end."

Since using someone simply as a means, is not the same as partially doing so. Otherwise one couldn't use a hatcheck girl to get one's hat.