Hmm.
You can ask yourself - why a slap, rather than a sucker-punch, or a knife to the gullet?
It’s because you want to render them pathetic - explode the mystique. You’re not assaulting someone as much as you are reminding them, and their apparatuses, that they are human and friable and … vulnerable.
I’m going to assume that you are not a fan of pies to politician’s faces?
In the US, It depends, first, if you mean criminally or civilly (i.e. a tort); it can be both. For the tort of assault, you don’t even have to touch the other person, it has more to do with “intentionally placing the other person in apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact.” Usually, the actual harmful or offensive contact itself is a battery under tort law
Slapping someone is absolutely battery, depending on circumstances it could potentially also be considered assault. I will repeat myself again, i don’t give a fuck if someone is dumb enough to get physical with someone they hate, if you see Weinstein on the street by all means slap him. I’m not affected by your decisions.
Edit:
Let me go one further, what if you decide to not personally touch Weinstein but instead throw something as inoffensive as glitter. Are you liable for it? Likely.
Generally politicians that have been glitter bombed haven’t pressed charges because they want to avoid escalating the situation, but they’re within their right to do so.
If you’re looking for a thumbs up from internet people that slapping someone is ok then i’m not interested in furthering this conversation.
seeing as its arizona he was lucky it was punches, not bullets
I get the authoritarian mindset. I mean, it’s easier to say what it legal and what is not than it is to bother yourself with actually looking at the morality of an action. Right and wrong have little to do with legal and illegal but right and wrong are difficult and take thought while legal and illegal boils down to reading and accepting what you read as truth. Authoritarianism is easy so a lot of people have that mindset.
Not being an authoritarian myself, I have no problem with accepting that a shaming slap or a glitter bomb for Wenistein is a righteous act although it may be an illegal one. Obviously that’s not to say one shouldn’t slap Wenistein. Of course you should. If anyone deserves a slap it’s him.
Good thing he was not out with his drunk coach. Things may have got a little more out of hand than waving at a camera.
(Surely the guy is a sobriety coach, FFS?)
So I think Kant would probably agree that it’s right to put someone who has committed theft in prison as a punishment. So when the person then gets out of prison, they are a person who has committed theft and that means we ought to put them in prison, right? So back in they go.
Obviously that’s ridiculous. But if it’s ridiculous then we are admitting that Kant knew that sometimes it’s right to do something once and not do it again. Yes, it would probably be bad if Weinstein was slapped around every time he went out in public, in a similar way (but not for a similar reason) that it would be wrong to sentence a person over and over for the same crime. But is it wrong that he get slapped by a stranger just one time? That that slap end up on TMZ? That millions of people can watch it to get their own vicarious slap in?
So people become Kantian when they want to argue against something they disagree with. Suddenly instead of discussing whether that slap was okay in that context, we have to discuss whether any slap would be right in any relevantly similar context. But we don’t know what is relevantly similar so the argument in favour of slapping within the Kantian framework is impossible. They need only one counterexample to show that the slap was wrong, and they can pull it from any imagined alternative reality.
This isn’t a coincidence. The Categorical Imperative is a great tool to show that something is wrong. It can never really show anything is right. Kant himself went for a walk at 4:00 every afternoon. I would place a big bet that he honestly thought that everyone else should do so too. That’s the real Categorical Imperative - you need honestly-come-by insanity to justify anything.
Have you ever heard anyone use a “Everyone should always do that” argument in support of any action? Or is it always “What if everyone did that” to argue against doing something? No one uses Kantian reasoning when they want something to happen.
I think we should accept that “What if everyone did that?” is a dirty trick. It’s trying to shift to a totally uneven playing field where the outcome is predetermined. So, I agree the BBS isn’t full of Kantians, but it is full of people who have learned by experience that deploying Kantian reasoning is an effective strategy to win an argument if you are defending the status quo against change, or, more generally, if you want to condemn something.
And because of that there’s no way to tell whether a person deploying it is doing so because they genuinely disagree with violence or because they are reflexively defensive of people in power. All “What if everyone did this?” says is, “I’m against this,” not why; it precludes a discussion of why. Then other people assume they are making the argument in reflexive defense of power or because of misogyny (which I regard as fair because the majority of people on the internet defending Weinstein would be doing for those reasons [just to let you know whose side I’m on]), and then shortly after @orenwolf has an aneurysm.
Once you admit that Kantian reasoning about whether to imprison a thief has to take into account whether the thief has already been imprisoned for that crime, you also have to admit that any number of contextual factors might matter. That basically overrides Kant’s entire point.
And suddenly it makes sense that Philosophy is the malest, whitest of all academic disciplines.
So, back on the subject:
Harvey is going to slither away while we’re pondering the Kantian ethics of slapping him.
Among other reasons, because sometimes rumors are wrong.
An innocent guy died a few years ago, because some town vigilantes decided to take matters into their own hands and beat up a scumbag - but they had the wrong name and the wrong address.
Nice bit of anecdote there but this is about Harvey Weinstein. Conflating people attacking the wrong person with someone slapping the right one is pointless.
I thought the connection was pretty clear, but if I have to really break it down:
The question was “Why would we not get physical with them?”
The answer is: Sometimes rumors are wrong. So, along these lines I gave an example of something that happened when people got physical but the rumors were wrong.
So, the problem with people randomly slapping strangers is that sometimes rumors are wrong.
Can you see how that connects now?
So you think this man just randomly slapped Weinstein? Or perhaps, is it possible that he recognized the sleazebag, knew about the decades of rape and assault, and decided that he needed to be reminded that his power in hollywood means nothing. Or perhaps this man is simply the type to refuse to allow someone like Weinstein to go around unacausted.
Is it possible all the rumors about Weinstein are untrue? Sure. It’s possible. Is it probable? Not at all. The reason we have judges and courts is because we recognized long ago that each situation merits its own examination. Your attempting to suggest that since one act may be a wrongful one then we must operate under the assumption that all similar acts are similarly wrong. That’s simply not reasonable.
In real life, you have to make split second decisions. Weinstein is right in front of you, do you slap? I don’t want to judge anyone until I’ve been in their shoes.
I guess I have to break it down further.
Some guy who as far as we know had no contact with Weinstein or anyone harmed by Weinstein physically attacked him, based on what that attacking guy had heard.
If our society has as a general policy that people who have no previous contact with other people can physically attack those people based on rumors, then there will be a lot more attacks on people.
That makes it a statistical certainty that SOMEONE will be physically attacked who is INNOCENT.
Put another way, the problem I’m talking about isn’t the people who are guilty. The problem is that if this is done enough to a bunch of different people based on rumors, SOMEONE who IS INNOCENT will be attacked and hurt.
Do you get what I’m saying?
Okay, up to this point I thought you were making a general point that wasn’t related to the Weinstein case. He wasn’t slapped based on a rumour, he was slapped based on news. The idea that Weinstein didn’t do everything or nearly everything he’s accused of is unsustainable. The idea that he didn’t do 50 times what he is accused of is pretty absurd, actually. You don’t need to know him personally.
As I say in my lengthy reponse to @fuzzyfungus’ lengthy post above, no general principle is implied. One person slapping Harvey Weinstein does not a society of vigilantes make.
I don’t think people should violently attack one another, I don’t think people should jump to conclusions, I don’t think vigilante justice is a valid alternative to an actual functioning justice system. But there’s nuance in all things and all things have balancing considerations. As a general rule becoming violent based on rumours is very bad policy. Slapping Weinstein because you are genuinely moved to rage by seeing this well-known rapist just sit down at the restaurant you’re at like nothing happened? I’m on board with that.
That’s a hell of a conditional qualifier you have there. The thing is, no one is suggesting a general societal policy and the “rumors”, comedy routines, skits, and news reports of what Weinstein has done are entirely credible.
If we would like a world where someone who is credibly accused by multiple people, with witnesses, and whose acts are a public “secret” are handled in a civil manner then what we need to do is arrest them, hold them in jail, and then they can have their day in court. That’s the general policy of our society. However, if one has enough money and power they can sidestep the general policies of society and go to public restaurants when they please. They can even become president. However, since what we as a society expected to happen failed to take place, it is not understandable that in some cases the public will perceive the failure of societal norms and take action themselves when the people we have empowered to protect our society fail to do so?
Again, the problem isn’t Weinstein. The problem is the statistical certainty that if we allow anyone to do this to anyone, SOMEONE who is harmed will be innocent.
That guy who slapped Weinstein wasn’t responding to anything he himself knew to be true. He was responding to things he heard in the news. As far as being a reason to physically attack others, I consider that functionally equivalent to rumor.
But let’s call it news then. The same principle still applies. Some times news is wrong. Some times news gets names and addresses wrong. Also, even worse, some times people THINK something is news, and act on it. Such as Alex Jones’ Pizzagate crap that some doofus thought was real, and almost murdered innocent strangers in a DC pizza parlor.
SURE, you and I are (I hope) well aware of the difference between Alex Jones and his ilk and actual news. ALSO, we are well aware of the difference between slapping and machine gunning. THE POINT IS, if you multiply any behavior times the 350 million + in America, SOMEONE will go off the rails and do something unreasonable with awful consequences.
SO - If our society has as a general policy that people can physically attack strangers BASED ON NEWS, then there will be a lot more attacks on people. BECAUSE NEWS CAN ALSO BE WRONG, that makes it a statistical certainty that SOMEONE will be physically attacked who is INNOCENT.
I am personally sure Weinstein did all of the things he’s accused of, and more. I hope and expect he will face consequences from them.
I also think it’s a reasonable policy to NOT HAVE STRANGERS PHYSICALLY ATTACKING PEOPLE BASED ON THINGS THEY HEARD.
I’m actually responding to a general principle that was stated. If you scroll up, you can see the question I’m answering here:
I’m answering why we would not get physical with them.
That is actually what it seemed pretty clear you were suggesting here:
If you want to change that to "why would we not get physical with Weinstein, now you are asking a different question.
But if you keep meaning “why would we not get physical with any person who the news says is guilty”, you’re still basically asking the same question. Because it’s a question that moves beyond Weinstein.
Who’s being allowed to do anything here? And who are “we” that are allowing things? Are we here the ones who get to decide things? How new and exciting.
What is the statistical probability that left free Weinstein will rape again?
Here I made the mistake of overestimating the audience. I had (it now seems incorrectly) assumed that the appellation “them” would be viewed by a reasonable person as applying to men who through money and power are allowed to do harm to the innocent without serious repercussion beyond losing a job.
I refer you to my previous sentence.
If someone misunderstands you, maybe it’s not the audience’s fault.
In any case, if you agree with me that it’s not good general policy to have strangers physically attacking people based on what they have heard in the news, then I guess we don’t have much more to discuss on this point. I’m glad we agree. Cheers and best.
Which is why I said it was my mistake there mindfu.
