Is Force Ever Justified? Why Consent Changes Everything

If you’re reading these words, you are almost certainly doing so because you chose to. What motivates you? Maybe you have a desire to liberate the oppressed. Or maybe your eyes have been opened to so much wrong in the world—and that attacks on human freedom are the underlying pattern.

Whatever the case, no one is holding a gun to your head.

Put in starker terms, the pattern is this: Too much of the world operates according to the threat of force. Those who see this pattern note that certain people consistently violate a moral principle. There are variations on what to call the principle, but the idea goes something like this:

This is usually referred to as the nonaggression principle (NAP).

There are various ways in which this principle can be justified, both philosophically and practically. For now, we might appeal to your intuition, because you might already recognize the principle as a natural aspect of life. Some part of you knows—and has known for as long as you can remember—that it is wrong to harm innocent people.

Since you were a child, you knew intuitively that there is a difference between the status of a person who hits first and the person who defends himself. “Hey, he STARTED it!” is a natural reaction among kids.

Hence, we distinguish between initiated, coercive force and any defensive or retaliatory force that may be used in response.

The NAP is an important and necessary first principle to guide our actions. But is it enough? Can it account for all situations? Does it provide a complete defense of individual rights and freedoms?

With deeper inquiry, two major questions arise:

What about things that don’t quite seem like force but that we know are wrong?

What about things that are clearly coercive but that aren’t wrong in certain circumstances?

1. Things that don’t quite seem like force but we still know are wrong

You don’t need a philosopher to tell you that theft is wrong—that this violated your rights. But was it force? The thief didn’t knock you down and take your bike. The thief didn’t even jump a fence or break a lock. He just stepped onto your driveway and stole your property. That isn’t force in the classic sense, which most people understand, yet it is still wrong.

Most of us also see trespass as a violation of some kind, and the thief clearly trespassed to get that bike. Yet, in this case, though, the trespass wasn’t violent.

We generally have the same understanding about fraud—using untruth to deprive someone of property. Fraud may be accomplished without the use of physical force, and yet we still consider it to be wrong.

The same moral awareness applies to grievous techniques such as brainwashing, extortion, and other forms of extreme manipulation in which people are compelled to do things they would not otherwise do. This can be accomplished without direct physical force, but we still see it as a violation because it deprives the victim of personal agency.

One workaround for these conundrums is to broaden the definition of what qualifies as force. We could define one’s property and personal agency as extensions of one’s existence as an individual being—of one’s ownership of oneself. Force, then, could include violations of property and self-ownership.

In a philosophical sense, we would be right to do so. But this still leaves us with a problem. When most people think of force, they think of physical force. Thus, we will always have to explain our broadened definition.

Alternatively, we could define “aggression” in the nonaggression principle to include this sort of non-physical force. But is this the best way?

2. Things that are forceful but that aren’t wrong in certain circumstances

A further conundrum (and ultimately the source of a potential answer) comes from our second question. What about things that are forceful, but are allowed so long as the target of the force says it’s okay? In other words, what if the person consents?
For example,

• With consent, it is competing in a martial arts tournament.
• Without consent, it is assault.
• With consent, it is leaving your bike for your friend to borrow.
• Without consent, it is theft.
• With consent, it is lovemaking.
• Without consent, it is rape.

Consent is central to the question of rights. Indeed, this analysis shows us that the question Was it consensual? is even more fundamental than Was force initiated?

It doesn’t take a philosophy degree to understand this. We all have an intuitive sense that consent is paramount.

When you engage in a consensual transaction with someone else, you don’t think much about the consent aspect. It is simply understood as a part of the transaction. We are agreeing to this.

When you are forced into a transaction with which you do not agree, the consent aspect is foremost in your mind, as in, Hey, I didn’t agree to this!

In other words, consent is a fundamental aspect of life and a natural part of your moral knowledge. So much so that it is organically understood in the first transaction and a source of moral outrage in the second.

We still have to define precisely what consent is and when it applies. We will also want to explore further where consent comes from and why it is so important. But we have the makings of a principle here.
Somehow, some way, consent matters.