The Ethics of Torture
Apr 11, 2010According to former Vice President Cheney, practices widely regarded as torture prevented further attack on America after 9/11.
Do Victims Have Obligations?
Sun Lee
18 January 2018
In this 20-minute podcast, Ashwini Vasanthakumar makes the rather provocative claim that victims have obligations too. While victims may not be responsible for being chosen as the unlucky targets of perpetrators or unfortunate circumstances, Vasanthakumar claims, once they escape their immediate ordeal, victims are in "epistemically privileged positions" in virtue of their experiences. Thus, they play an important role in restoring justice by holding perpetrators to account or informing bystanders and potential victims.
For example, a victim of torture may be the only person to know about the existence of such illegal activity, and thus has the obligation to inform officials about it in order to prevent further victims. Similarly, this claim suggests that victims of sex abuse, notwithstanding the emotional trauma and other unfavorable consequences associated with recounting the experience, have an obligation to report incidents.
Is this asking too much of victims who have already gone through horrible experiences?
Listen to the podcast here: http://www.philosophy247.org/podcasts/victim/
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Related Shows
The Ethics of Torture
Apr 11, 2010According to former Vice President Cheney, practices widely regarded as torture prevented further attack on America after 9/11.
Legal Ethics
Jan 21, 2007Lawyers are often thought to be hardly better than hired guns, who, in the words of Plato, are paid to "make the weaker argument the stronger" -- like the sophists of old.
Feminism
Oct 12, 2004Some feminists hold that there are specially feminine ways of knowing, and the current scientific research is flawed for not recognizing them.
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Feb 25, 2018With the recent #MeToo viral campaign, along with the wave of prominent male figures toppled for being serial sexual harassers or worse, the topic of misogyny has come into sharp focus.
Blog Archive
Why do some people have a strange desire to do weird things for no (good) reason? There's something fascinating about kids who eat laundry soap as part of a “challenge,” or people who deliberately... Read more
Making a better world would be a great thing—but do we need philosophers to help us do that? Famously (or infamously), not all philosophers have been such great people. So are they the folks we... Read more
In her time—the 4th century CE—Hypatia was one of the most famous philosophers in Alexandria, and indeed in the ancient world. She studied and taught mathematics,... Read more
Mexican philosophy is full of fascinating ideas, from Mexica ("Aztec") and Mayan thought to Sor Juana’s feminism and Emilio Uranga’s existentialism... Read more
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This week we're thinking about the British Liberal tradition and its relationship to colonialism and self-government. Classical Liberal thinkers, like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, held that... Read more
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Comments (1)
Harold G. Neuman
Wednesday, January 24, 2018 -- 11:44 AM
The victim/obligationsThe victim/obligations dichotomy (if dichotomy is the closest description we can muster) is difficult to assess. With so many victims coming forward now in the sexual harassment arena, we have trouble applying the obligation aspect of this matter. Perpetrators, almost universally, deny any guilt, while victims are more likely to be dismissed---especially when they accuse powerful people. When sexual harassment was pushed into the cold light of day in the 1970s and 80s, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidelines speaking to the issue, defining it in more-or-less certain terms. It caused barely an eddy in the flow of deceit and abuse. Now, more than 40 years later, no one even mentions the USEEOC, and powerful people thumb their noses at those whom they abuse and humiliate. Obligations are fine if the obligees are able to attain relief. That, regrettably, does not appear to be happening in any consistent way. Or am I missing something?