Notes On Philosophy: The Permissibility Of Harm

I promised y'all something more than book reviews, so here you go: Not so long ago I heard someone say, in relation to aikido, that the goal of self-defense was to "Put your opponent in a very comfortable chair that they didn't expect to be in". At the time this struck me as wrong, not in the sense that it's a mis-representation of the principles of aikido, but rather that it's the wrong position to take regarding the aims of self-defense for both theoretical and practical reasons. Now I want to chase that idea to ground and examine it more closely.

The first question, then, is whether the "comfy chair" comment accurately describes the gist of aikido philsophy in this regard? Consider the following:

[T]he aikido student may and should concentrate upon the neutralization of the attacker's action, without seriuosly injuring the attacker himself. And all of the techniques in the aikido repertoire can be applied with eas and efficiency to achieve that aim.

... Only through neutralization of an aggressive action, rather than the aggressor himself, can harmony of existence be restored and improved upon through that reconciliation which is impossible if one or the other of the individuals involved is seriously injured or actually destroyed.¹

So yes, the ultimate aim of aikido is to neutralize any attack without doing damage to the attacker. That's certainly a noble and laudable attitude, but I feel that something is missing from the above formulation.

What, exactly, constitute's "self-defense"? Is the concept to be interpreted literally i.e. "I have defended myself, therefore I have engaged in self-defense"? Or is there also a concern with long-term outcomes, in which case the aim of self-defense is to increase a person's overall safety/security?

To make the distinction concrete consider, if you will, an idealized aikido practitioner and assailant. An encounter between these two will go something like this:

1. The assailant attacks
2. The defender neutralizes the attack.
3. The assailant attacks
4. The defender neutralizes the attack.
5. ...

The idealized defender, by design, does no harm to the attacker, leaving the attacker perpetually free to launch another attack; the idealized encounter never terminates. Furthermore ey has successfully defended emself, but hasn't reduced the threat to their wellbeing.

"Now wait a minute..." you're probably saying, "that's not how it works in real life". No, it's absolutely not; in the real world either the attacker gives up or has eir way with the defender. But the fact that an idealized confrontation has no terminating condition suggests to me that something is rotten in Denmark. This is compounded by the fact that, when I've asked various aikido practitioners about this particular issue, they've hemmed and hawed and generally said that it's a non-issue in real life.

This isn't an attack on aikido philosophy per se; the above observation applies equally well to any other art that espouses a doctrine of 'non-harm'. Rather, it is an attempt to illustrate the two different interpretations of 'self-defense' that I outlined above. The narrow interpretation is compatible with an ethic of 'non-harm' because it considers individual attacks in isolation. However, its questionable whether such an ethic is compatible with the broad interpretation, since the broad interpretation is concerned with the overall outcome of a confrontation.

It seems self-evident to me that a reasonable philosphy of self-defense should not require you to engage an attacker indefinitely but, clearly, thats not self-evident to aikido practitioners. The challenge is to formulate a theoretical justification for that proposition based on shared assumptions. So let's start with a fundamental shared assumption, the notion that one has a right to defend oneself at all.

What are the boundaries of the right to self-defense? You are entitled to defend yourself from immediate harm, that much everyone seems to agree upon. May you also defend yourself from undue infringement of your personal liberty? How about property... may you act to prevent theft? I'd answer both of those in the affirmative, but what Morihei Ueshiba would have to say is far from clear. Consider the following:

At that moment I was enlightened: the source of budo is God's love - the spirit of loving protection for all beings... Budo is not the felling of an opponent by force; nor is it a tool to lead the world to destruction with arms. True Budo is to accept the spirit of the universe, keep the peace of the world, correctly produce, protect and cultivate all beings in nature.²

Much of what I've read of Ueshiba's writing resembles the above, broad statements of principle but not a whole lot in the way of detail. You tell me, does the directive to "keep the peace of the world" extend to preventing theft? I know not nearly enough about the metaphysical basis of Aikido (a Japanese synthesis of Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism³) to make a pronouncement regarding where it might stand on the issue. Absent any compelling evidence one way or another we must put such questions aside.

Instead I will assert that the right of self-defense extends to preventing unjust infringements of your personal liberty; when they come to escort you to the gulag you are not expected to go quietly⁴. In Western philosphy this is not a particularly contentious proposition; liberty of person is widely considered to be a natural right⁵. The indefinite pattern of attack and neutralization described above is an unjust infringement on the personal liberty of the defender since ey are unable to pursue any other activities while so engaged. It follows from there that the defender may legitimately take action above and beyond mere neutralization of an attack to conclude the confrontation if necessary.

In such a situation the focus will shift from neutralizing the attack to neutralizing the attacker⁶. Let's return for a moment to our hypothetical attacker and defender; how does the outcome of the confrontation changes if we permit the defender to respond by systematically escalating the damage inflicted on the attacker? At some point, though we know not when, the efforts of the defender will be sufficient to terminate the encounter. Though we would hope that such an extreme response proves unnecessary, if the attacker does not cease their attacks the defender will eventually inflict enough damage to kill em, QED.

In summary: Absent the ability to do harm to an attacker there is no guarantee that a confrontation between two individuals will ever reach a conclusion. Under a natural law interpretation of individual rights this situation represents an unjustified infringement upon the defender's liberty which they need not tolerate. Thus the defender is permitted, if need be, to do harm to the attacker in order to bring the confrontation to a close.

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That's the theory... now let's talk about the real world.

The successful implementation of a "neutralization only" strategy is hard. You need to study for years before you have a reasonable chance of actually pulling it off. So what do you do in the interim if you need to defend yourself?

My gut tells me that a reasonable system of self-defence must make allowances for the skill level of the defender. This cuts both ways... skilled defenders should avoid using excessive force while, at the same time, beginners should have techniques at their disposal which give them a fighting chance in making it through an encounter. Failure to provide such techniques raises serious doubts about the practical efficacy of such a system. You may make protection of the individual subordinate to a particular theory of ethics, but what you end up with after doing so looks less like a system of self-defense and more like a religion/philosophy.

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1 A. Westbrook & O. Ratti, Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere, p. 362.
2 Wikipedia, "Morihei Ueshiba".
3 A. Westbrook & O. Ratti, Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere, p. 361.
4 Alternatively, someone who adheres strictly to Ueshiba's system of ethics may conclude that the persons doing the escorting pose no immediate threat to eir physical well-being; violence can be avoided simply by acquiescing to be led away. Though, taken to its logical extreme, this position seems to require that you allow people to rob you as well, since you're in no immediate danger if you simply surrender your wallet.
5 Wikipedia, "Natural Rights".
6 That is how aikido works in practice; the defender neutralizes each attack in the hope that the attacker will tire and/or become discouraged before doing any damage.