Topics Ethics

Question When a person's irresponsible behavior leads to the death of another person such as the case of drunk driving we naturally assign culpability to that person. Should a person who's irresponsible behavior leads to them being raped be held to a degree of moral culpabilty? To what degree if any?

Accepted:
April 14, 2011

Comments

Interesting questions. I suggest that the disanalogies of the two cases are quite significant. In the drunk driving case, the person drunk is (usually) the direct cause of the death. In the case of rape, the person being raped cannot be the direct cause of the harm. In most, if not all cases without a single exception, I assume most or all of us think that rape is so heinous that no behavior, however irresponsible, by the victim can lead us to blame him or her. While I stand by that judgment myself, perhaps one should concede that there can (in principle) be cases when, for example, a person initiates a "rape fantasy" or consents to an extreme sado-masochist event, and perhaps these make it more likely there will be an actual rape, but once a person says "no" I suggest that "no" means "no" and the guilt borne by the rapist is not at all mitigated by the prior consent. Moreover, the prior consent and circumstances are irrelevant in terms of the harm done to the victim, a harm that is also not mitigated by "irresponsible behavior."

Leaving aside the cases of drunk driving and rape, there is a broader point that is worthy of pursuit. Irresponsible behavior can indeed (as you suggest) come in degrees and severity can be measured in terms of amount of harm involved and what a rational person should think might happen as a result of the behavior. One of the best books on this is Joel Feinberg's Harm to Others. I highly recommend a close reading of that and Feinberg's other work.