Kant on Rape
January 1, 2008
naquashv
Kant on Rape
According to Immanuel Kant, it is better for a woman to die resisting rape than suffer the ‘dishonour’ of submitting to her attacker:
No matter what torments I have to suffer, I can live morally. I must suffer them all, including the torments of death, rather than commit a disgraceful action. The moment I can no longer live in honour but become unworthy of life by such an action, I can no longer live at all. Thus it is far better to die honoured and respected than to prolong one’s life … by a disgraceful act … If, for instance, a woman cannot preserve her life any longer except by surrendering her person to the will of another, she is bound to give up her life rather than dishonour humanity in her own person, which is what she would be doing in giving herself up as a thing to the will of another.1
Kant had earlier offered a case-study of a woman who killed herself out of shame after being raped:
Lucretia . . . killed herself, but on grounds of modesty and in a fury of vengeance. It is obviously our duty to preserve our honour, particularly in relation to the opposite sex . . . . [B]ut we must endeavour to save our honour only to this extent, that we ought not to surrender it for selfish and lustful purposes. To do what Lucretia did is to adopt a remedy which is not at our disposal; it would have been better had she defended her honour unto death.2
So, it was morally wrong for Lucretia to commit suicide after suffering a brutal assault; far better that she should have resisted to such an extent that her attacker was forced to kill her. Any woman who survives an attack should, in addition to the physical and emotional suffering she has already experienced, feel guilt in her own complicity (in that Kant regards death as a real and preferable option). In Kant’s view, she is party to the crime she has suffered. As Alan Soble notes in his article ‘Kant and Sexual Perversion’, “Kant is genuinely stubborn about the moral significance of such duties-to-self.”3 Perversely stubborn, I would say.
CITATIONS:
1. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1963), p. 156. Quoted in Alan Soble, ‘Kant and Sexual Perversion’, The Monist 86:1 (Jan. 2003), pp. 55-89. [Available at Soble’s website.]
2. ibid. p.149-50. [Also in Soble]
3. See Soble [link above]. The article is highly recommended.
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