Topics Justice

Question Some people say that "safety" is a very important thing and that the main function of the state is to promote (e.g., liberty and) safety. I think this makes no sense because one can only be safe from something, and one is never completely safe, only some of our goods are safe. So the important thing is not "safety", but whatever else is important. And it is not "safety" that the state should promote, but the keeping of our most important goods.

Accepted:
March 19, 2015

Comments

Great observations. "Safety" itself, in the abstract, does seem an odd goal or ideal for a state or person. You suggest the focus should be on "our most important goods" and suggest that the safety of those good (which might include personal integrity, opportunities to flourish in ways that persons choose freely, the freedom to raise families, the opportunities to pursue education, the arts, to engage in trade, and so on) is what is duly important. I might be wrong, but your observations suggest you are taking issue with libertarian accounts of the state, as libertarians argue for what might be called a minimal state --a state that governs the least possible (using the least amount of coercive power) compatible with the guarantee of basic rights. Those rights will, themselves, be pretty modest in number, but they usually include persons' rights to be free from violence and illegitimate coercion (e.g. illicit force and threats from other persons). Ironically, in order to truly secure even such basic rights might involve a fairly substantial role for the state.

If you are interested in history, Thomas Hobbes might be very interesting for you to study. At the base of his justification for the state (and here I am putting things so basically, an expert on Hobbes might have a heart attack) is the individual's entering into agreement with other individuals not to threaten each other with premature violent death. In other words, the basis motive for forming a society (or social contract) is safety. GIven such a starting point, however, Hobbes' state can look quite robust, when he is through with his analysis in his classic book Leviathan.

A modest PS: I think "safety" should not be underestimated as an important condition for the practice of philosophy itself. For a healthy philosophical exchange, I think one needs to secure (within some limits) the safety of airing quite radical viewpoints and to cultivate a willingness to entertain and argue about positions that might seem (on the surface, anyway) to be offensive and profoundly counter-cultural. I add "within some limits" as I believe there are some positions (e.g. to take an example from the day I am writing this when terrorists killed over 140 students in Kenya) that do not deserve sympathy. The killing of students under those conditions were (in my view) cases of murder. No lover of wisdom that is to say no philosopher can endorse mass killings of the innocent. That is where SAFETY comes in and should make it UNSAFE for those seeking to kill those whose safety we (all those who are committed to non-violence) must protect.

So, to summarize these later reflections I agree that SAFETY as an abstract idea needs to be subordinated to (or understood in terms of) important goods. One of those goods is the ability of students to flourish. Because of that good, we need to secure the safety of those students and this means making it unsafe for those who are threatening such students.