What if we don’t accept the starting assumption that non-consensual, unequal relationships are bad? I read the arguments against the social contract and democratic theories of the state, and I agree with the author that they are inadequate defenses for state authority, but that’s because they’re trying to construct the state starting from consensualist and egalitarian premises.
But consensualism and egalitarianism are false starting points! Relations which are both non-consensual and unequal are sometimes right and good, and my argument for this is that such relations are an ineradicable feature of physical reality. The prime example of this is the relation between parents and children, but many more examples may be found.
(Constructing an argument for the state beginning from the position of non-consensualism and inegalitarianism is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Relations which are both non-consensual and unequal are sometimes right and good, and my argument for this is that such relations are an ineradicable feature of physical reality.
It might be true that non-consensual relations are sometimes acceptable, but we should probably still have a presumption that they’re generally unacceptable, right? The right question to ask is why it’s permissible in this case, not just whether it’s sometimes permissible.
If I robbed you, and you complained, I think you’d find the defense, “But sometimes it is OK to steal from others” very unsatisfying. That defense completely omits the context, such as my motive or my circumstances. If instead I had told you that I was starving to death and robbing people was the only way I could eat, then you’d probably find my behavior much more reasonable.
I’m not trying to argue for a general inversion of the principle, ie. I’m not suggesting that non-consent is somehow automatically justified. Mostly I was observing the thing where two people on “opposite” sides of an issue nonetheless have major unstated premises in common, and without those premises the contention between them dissolves.
As I alluded to by saying “left as an exercise to the reader”, I don’t have a full explanation at the ready about the ethics of non-consensuality. Mostly I just wanted to bring the readers’ attention to the way in which consensualism is being assumed by the above, and that the argument fails hard in the cases where consensualism is rejected or simply doesn’t apply.
(If I were to make a general gesture towards the ethics of non-consent, I would start by talking about the phenomenon of dependency, where one party explicitly requires the cooperation of another party in order to live. Such dependency relations are by definition unequal, and in the natural world they are also often non-consensual, but despite these features they still place binding moral obligations on both parties.)
What if we don’t accept the starting assumption that non-consensual, unequal relationships are bad? I read the arguments against the social contract and democratic theories of the state, and I agree with the author that they are inadequate defenses for state authority, but that’s because they’re trying to construct the state starting from consensualist and egalitarian premises.
But consensualism and egalitarianism are false starting points! Relations which are both non-consensual and unequal are sometimes right and good, and my argument for this is that such relations are an ineradicable feature of physical reality. The prime example of this is the relation between parents and children, but many more examples may be found.
(Constructing an argument for the state beginning from the position of non-consensualism and inegalitarianism is left as an exercise for the reader.)
For what it’s worth, I would not be surprised if Huemer argued that children have no general obligation to obey their parents.
It might be true that non-consensual relations are sometimes acceptable, but we should probably still have a presumption that they’re generally unacceptable, right? The right question to ask is why it’s permissible in this case, not just whether it’s sometimes permissible.
If I robbed you, and you complained, I think you’d find the defense, “But sometimes it is OK to steal from others” very unsatisfying. That defense completely omits the context, such as my motive or my circumstances. If instead I had told you that I was starving to death and robbing people was the only way I could eat, then you’d probably find my behavior much more reasonable.
I’m not trying to argue for a general inversion of the principle, ie. I’m not suggesting that non-consent is somehow automatically justified. Mostly I was observing the thing where two people on “opposite” sides of an issue nonetheless have major unstated premises in common, and without those premises the contention between them dissolves.
As I alluded to by saying “left as an exercise to the reader”, I don’t have a full explanation at the ready about the ethics of non-consensuality. Mostly I just wanted to bring the readers’ attention to the way in which consensualism is being assumed by the above, and that the argument fails hard in the cases where consensualism is rejected or simply doesn’t apply.
(If I were to make a general gesture towards the ethics of non-consent, I would start by talking about the phenomenon of dependency, where one party explicitly requires the cooperation of another party in order to live. Such dependency relations are by definition unequal, and in the natural world they are also often non-consensual, but despite these features they still place binding moral obligations on both parties.)