Discussion 1: Ethical Issues in Homeland Security
There are no overarching ethical standards or principles for homeland security despite the complex mix of ethical issues that arise in each of the homeland security mission areas. For example, to prevent terrorism, the government must consider the need for secrecy and confidentiality versus the need to share information among agencies or the public’s right to know. There also are ethical issues related to racial or ethnic profiling, awarding no-bid contracts in disaster relief or homeland security research and development projects, and proper treatment of suspects and persons detained as terrorists. However, as the homeland security system and the Department of Homeland Security are still relatively new in terms of government bureaucracy, ethical codes or standards have only gradually been applied in a piecemeal, incremental fashion. Therefore, until such time as a clear, comprehensive, and ethical code for homeland security emerges, it is important to understand the theoretical or philosophical models about the obligations and limitations of government to draw conclusions about the ethical implications, in practical terms, for a variety of homeland security scenarios and issues.
To prepare for this Discussion:
- Review the online article, “Philosophy and Disaster.” Reflect on the application of social contract theory and moral theory to the government’s role in disasters, and the quest for social justice. With the theoretical analysis in mind, consider ethical issues related to homeland security policies and practices(Please see attachment).
- Review the article, “Guiding Lights: Intelligence Oversight and Control for the Challenge of Terrorism.” Focus on ethical issues related to data mining and monitoring political activity and consider how they might be addressed. (Please see attachment)
- Reflect on the homeland security policies and practices you learned about thus far in the course. Consider ethical issues that might arise in the policies and practices and think about how you might address such issues.
- Select a homeland security policy or practice in which there are ethical issues concerning the policy or practice itself or how it is executed.
- Identify at least two ethical issues related to the policy or practice you selected.
- Think about how you would address the ethical issues you identified.
By Day 3
With these thoughts in mind:
Post by Day 3 a brief description of the homeland security policy or practice you selected and explain how it is executed. Then, explain at least two ethical issues related to the policy or practice. Finally, explain how you might address each ethical issue. Be specific.
Note: Include the policy or practice you selected in the first line of your post. You will be asked to respond to a colleague who chose a different policy or practice than the one you discussed.
Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources .
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Homeland Security Affairs
Volume II, Issue Article
Philosophy and Disaster
Naomi Zack∗
∗University of Oregon, nzack@uoregon.edu
Copyright c©2006 by the authors. Homeland Security Affairs is an academic journal avail-
able free of charge to individuals and institutions. Because the purpose of this publication
is the widest possible dissemination of knowledge, copies of this journal and the articles
contained herein may be printed or downloaded and redistributed for personal, research
or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. Any commercial use of
Homeland Security Affairs or the articles published herein is expressly prohibited with-
out the written consent of the copyright holder. The copyright of all articles published
in Homeland Security Affairs rests with the author(s) of the article. Homeland Security
Affairs is the online journal of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS).
http://www.hsaj.org/hsa
Philosophy and Disaster∗
Naomi Zack
Abstract
Philosophers have traditionally written from the perspective of ordinary people and
they are as vulnerable to fear as other members of the public. Academic philosophers can
contribute to the multi-disciplinary field of homeland security and disaster studies through
extensions of social contract theory from political philosophy, and applications of moral
systems. The idea of a state of nature is relevant to government’s role in disaster prepara-
tion, response and planning, because disasters often result in a second state of nature. All
three of the main ethical systems of virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism, are
relevant to disaster-related situations in ways that suggest the importance of being able
to combine all three. Both the applications of political philosophy and moral theory can
be augmented by John Rawls’s idea of distributive justice and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
idea of the common good. Finally, the inevitability of human mortality, as emphasized by
existentialist philosophers, can create a wider perspective on disaster.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Naomi Zack received her PhD in Philosophy from Columbia
University. She has taught at the University at Albany, SUNY, and is now Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Oregon. Zack’s book publications include: Bachelors of
Science: Seventeenth Century Identity, Then and Now (Temple University Press, 1996);
Philosophy of Science and Race(Routledge, 2002); Inclusive Feminism (Rowman and Lit-
tlefield 2005); Thinking About Race (2nd ed. Wadsworth, 2006). She has spoken widely
and published numerous articles on issues of race, gender and seventeenth century phi-
losophy. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on seventeenth century
philosophy, race, philosophy of science, feminism, ethics, moral theory, and political phi-
losophy. Her new course, Philosophy of Disaster and Emergency Response, is scheduled
for Spring 2007. Dr. Zack’s current research project is a monograph, “The Second State
of Nature: Government and Morality in Disaster.” Email
∗I thank Bradford Z. Mahon (Harvard University), for editorial advice on earlier drafts of
this paper. I am grateful to Christopher Bellavita (Executive Editor, Homeland Security
Affairs) for both editorial advice and encouragement. I am also grateful for the astute
comments and support from the two external reviewers for this journal.
Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a
sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.
Hamlet, 5.2, 217-20.
William Shakespeare
INTRODUCTION
The growing field of homeland security and disaster studies is practical. Its theories and models are
linked to specific problems and contingencies. Besides studies in public policy, law, law enforcement,
emergency response, and relevant applied sciences (both civilian and military), the academic side of this
subject might support investigations in sociology, psychology, anthropology and history, while literature
and journalism could help flesh out its human face. Art, music, architecture, theater, film and dance can
all reflect and shape the anticipation of disasters and our reactions to them. Academic philosophy, with
its focus on analysis, argumentation, and criticism of common sense (not to mention its pettifogging
obsession with the abstract and abstruse) hardly seems relevant.
But academic philosophy could make an important contribution to homeland security and disaster
studies while at the same time adding another relevant subject to its own “applied” subfields.1
Although philosophers are specialists in critical thinking, the perspective of philosophers tends to be
that of ordinary people who are neither government officials nor public policy planners. Much of the
professional literature on homeland security and disaster is written from the perspective of existing
leaders and officials, with the result that civilians or the public are often regarded as the passive objects
of actions taken by authorities to protect and assist them. And of course it is members of the public who
are potentially the most numerous victims of those events that are properly called “disasters.” The
innocence of the civilian public occasions the “terror” evoked by terrorism, and the public’s absorption
in daily routines sets it up as victims of catastrophe in earthquakes and floods. Despite the abstraction
and abstruseness of philosophical discourse, it should be understood that as civilians and members of
the public themselves, philosophers share the ordinary perspective on disaster. This is a wary and
sometimes fearful perspective.2 It comes from a sense of being unprepared and lacking the knowledge
and skill to either become prepared on one’s own or justify demands for official assistance.
In this paper I will suggest two dimensions through which contemporary academic philosophers
might develop a contribution to disaster studies, from the standpoint of the public: social contract
theory and moral theory. I will then conclude with brief suggestions about additional philosophical
approaches to disaster studies. I begin with several assumptions about disasters, and one caveat. Here
are the assumptions. A disaster is an event that harms or kills a significant number of people or
otherwise severely impairs or interrupts their daily lives in civil society. Disasters may be natural, or
the result of accidental or deliberate human action. Disasters include but are not limited to: fires,
floods, storms, earthquakes, chemical spills, leaks of or infiltration by toxic substances, terrorist attack
by conventional, nuclear or biological weapons, epidemics, pandemics, and mass failures in electronic
communications. Disasters always occasion surprise and shock; they are unwanted by those affected by
them, although not always unpredictable. In this sense, the effects of war on civilian populations may
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be disastrous, although wars have elements of agency, systematic planning, and the active involvement
of legitimate government, which distinguish them from disasters.
The caveat is that I cannot speak for all or even a few philosophers, because philosophers always
disagree. It is exactly disagreement among philosophers that sustains innovation in our discipline,
because it “furthers the discussion.” So my hope here is to introduce a new subject to philosophers and
at the same time suggest how philosophers might contribute to an existing discipline.
SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY AND THE SECOND STATE OF NATURE
The philosophical idea of a social contract at the foundation of civil society, or society under
government, dates back to John Locke and Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau in the eighteenth century and most recently, John Rawls during the second half of the
twentieth century.3 Hobbes and Locke are pertinent to the most general thought about disaster in
political philosophy, whereas Rousseau is relevant to public policy ideas concerning the ethics of
disaster preparation, prevention and response, and Rawls offers key insights that are useful for
considering social justice issues in disaster. The focus in this section will be on Locke and Hobbes.
The social contract is an explicit or implicit agreement among citizens which justifies the
formation of government and emphasizes the rights of citizens in their relationship to government.
Social contract theory posits those rights of citizens that are prior to and more fundamental than the
organization of society under government. Such rights are presumed in the United States’ Declaration
of Independence and protected by the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.
The ultimate justification for the existence of government according to social contract theory is that
government makes life better for those governed. Locke and Hobbes used the idea of a state of nature,
or a description of human life without government, to give a historical account of how government
came to be, and to explain the benefits of government. Both Hobbes and Locke assumed that there was
an original ungoverned condition of humankind in the state of nature. Locke thought humans were
cooperative and industrious in the state of nature, whereas Hobbes thought their lives were solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short.4
Both Locke and Hobbes implied that even if there never were a state of nature in human history,
positing it afforded political theorists an idea of human life without government, to which human life
with government could be compared and justified. That comparison and justification is the main theme
of social contract theory. Social contract theory requires that government not be accepted as inevitable
and beyond the control of those governed, but that its very existence requires the consent of those
governed. This consent constitutes a social contract that places specific obligations on government.
Because life was tolerable in a state of nature according to Locke, he had a minimal view of
government functions which were limited to: the protection of private property, the unbiased
settlement of disputes, punishment of criminals domestically, and protection from foreign enemies.5
Although Locke emphasized the importance of protecting private property, his notion of property was
robust, because it extended to life and liberty as well as material possessions (or what he called
“estate”).6 By contrast, Hobbes believed that the competitive and aggressive nature of human beings
required strong (what we would consider despotic) central authority, to enforce the peace.7 As a result,
Locke defined the social contract as an agreement between citizens and their rulers, whereas Hobbes
thought that the social contract was an agreement among citizens to give up their own rights to make
war on each other and, at the same time, make an irrevocable gift of those rights to an absolute ruler or
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Leviathan.8
Hobbes and Locke shared a strong conviction that the powers of government derived from the
powers and consent of those governed. Locke, insofar as he thought society could exist without
government, believed if government collapsed, its powers would revert to the people, but if society
collapsed, government would no longer exist.9 Hobbes thought the gift of power to government by
those who would be governed was irrevocable and there could not be anything resembling peaceful
and cooperative society without government.10 Both Locke and Hobbes were addressing the doctrine
of the divine right of kings in the seventeenth century and they spoke to the interests of a new
mercantile and capitalist economic group not previously represented in European governments.
Because rulers did not derive their right to rule from God, but from the people, according to both
Locke and Hobbes, social contract theory has been understood as a secular political theory. Still, this is
not to say that the most fundamental principles of government are independent of beliefs about Natural
Law, which consisted of God’s rules for men in the state of nature, or independent of moral intuitions
from other sources. Both Locke and Hobbes began with Natural Law in constructing their theories
about the role of government and its justification. The difference between them was that Locke thought
humankind obeyed the first principle of Natural Law, that they not harm one another, whereas Hobbes
thought humans were incapable of keeping the peace without government.11
Locke endured as the political philosopher for the foundation of American democracy in those
documents and legal traditions that both protect the rights of individuals and provide a method of
decision-making via majority rule. Locke held that citizens are entitled to representation in a legislative
body and that the decision of the majority is binding on all citizens.12 For example, no matter how
divided votes are along party lines, the winning candidates in American presidential elections become
presidents of those who voted for their opponents, as well as those who voted for them. However,
Hobbes’ view of the warlike and dangerous nature of human beings in conditions without government
seems to have provided the most prudent description of what can happen domestically when
government breaks down. Both thinkers remain highly relevant to thinking about disaster.
It is presently inconceivable, and probably beyond the scope of political theory, that any disaster
could result in the total and permanent failure of government as we know it.13 However, the temporary
dysfunction of government in responding to some disasters, and different abilities of citizens to prepare
for or effectively respond to disasters without functional government, raise fundamental political
questions that bring us back to Locke and Hobbes. At first, it may seem as though conditions under
which individual survival requires private measures are a return to a state of nature, however
temporarily. But this is not the literal case because present social and material structures have not only
removed us from an original condition, but made it very difficult to return to one in a short period of
time. The inability to self-subsist in the absence of government characterizes urban subcultures in the
U.S., such as parts of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and also rural communities in parts of the
world that have not yet fully industrialized. Many residents of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans
remained displaced and unable to return home months after Katrina and in the Kashmir district after
the 2005 Pakistan earthquake millions were homeless months later. Moreover, disasters that cause
great physical destruction leave victims without the most basic survival ingredients in their immediate
environments, rural or urban.
The destruction of an existing society’s material basis of human life does not return human beings
to an original state of nature, because it does not return them to conditions under which self-sufficient
survival is possible. It is not possible to “return” to some manner of “living off the land” after most
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modern disasters. However, the conditions of immediate environmental privation during the time
period in which government is not functioning normally to repair material conditions, qualify as a
second state of nature.
The question in terms of social contract theory is this: What does government owe citizens in
situations in which government is temporarily dysfunctional, that is, in the second state of nature? If
property is privately owned or owned by the local community, government does not owe restitution to
citizens who have lost their property or had it destroyed. But as part of government’s benevolence, it is
appropriate that it offer some compensation in those cases, much as a good neighbor might. The
material resources of government in democratic capitalistic countries are the results of taxation, so
such compensation amounts to some members of society helping other members who have sustained
losses through no fault of their own. However, there is a more fundamental issue raised by the inability
of citizens to systematically prepare for or take an active role in the response to disaster.
The material base of modern industrial society is a dynamic system kept in motion by exchanges
through commerce. Orderly private commerce indirectly depends on systems of government regulation
and oversight, while utilities such as power, transportation and clean water and air, as well as
protection and security, are more directly dependent on government oversight. These indirect and
direct dependencies on government have been broadly and deeply institutionalized in the very ways
that render even a temporary return to an original state of nature impossible. Even if a disaster did not
make it impossible to “live off the land” and the land itself were intact, a disaster can still make it
impossible for citizens to function normally in society without government, because their functioning
in society has come to require the functions of government. In addition to the first destruction and
disruption attending disasters, there is a second more profound breakdown in civil society which is
made worse by the dysfunction of government. For example, it is bad when people are killed but
worse when their remains cannot be removed; unfortunate when people are injured, but cause for
despair when medical treatment is unavailable. Such conditions are part of the disadvantages of life in
a second state of nature, when government function has been interrupted by disaster. And the inability
of civilians to create, in a short period of time, a useful social condition that will sustain their lives
entails that the second state of nature may more resemble a brutal Hobbesian condition than a peaceful,
cooperative and productive Lockean community.
The second state of nature in disasters is only a temporary condition without government. The
usual justifications for government are not put in question by it, but rather second states of nature
create conditions in which many citizens accept, and some actively welcome, unusually strong
expressions of government authority (for example, martial law). It has been demonstrated countless
times that private individuals, institutions and companies are unable to maintain effective long-term
preparations for disaster response, or to refrain from high-risk activities in terms of future disasters.
Social scientists and public policy experts refer to stages in disaster response that range from high
readiness to complacent ignorance as the time span after any particular disaster increases.14 Structures
washed away in floods may be replaced by more expensive ones which are just as vulnerable, brick
buildings may not be retro-fitted in the face of earthquake predictions, local emergency response
resources are at the mercy of fluctuating budgets, individuals may misplace, use up or fail to procure
emergencies supplies, and so forth.
However, the general failure in civilian disaster preparation does not in itself imply that
government must be the preparer or responder of last resort. Such a “last resort” role is not, strictly
speaking, an obligation of government. Any obligation of government concerning second states of
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nature would have to stem from the basic principles of social contract theory. The argument based on
social contract theory for the obligation of government to prepare for and respond to disaster would go
like this: Government has a continual obligation to benefit those governed by rendering them better off
than they would have been in the first state of nature. The temporary dysfunction of government in
disasters results in a second state of nature for those governed. Therefore, government has an extended
obligation to render citizens better off than they may be in a second state of nature. That is, government
is obligated to ensure adequate disaster preparation and planning, for all probable disasters, in precisely
those ways in which the public has demonstrated its inabilities. The scholarly foundations for such an
obligation would consist of new work in political science, political philosophy, and law.
A public policy analyst might comment here that sound legal and philosophical reasoning is all
well and good, but it does not tell us how government could fulfill new social contract theory
obligations, in addition to policies that are already in place. A partial answer to the question of the
usefulness of the kind of new political theory proposed is that a new theory may suggest new practices.
A view of emergency preparation as a fundamental obligation of government could motivate new
policies. It might, for example, lead to more encouragement of private companies to produce adequate
supplies, educational products, and services that are appropriate to modern disasters. A variety of
locale-specific disaster kits could be permanently on sale in supermarkets and chain stores.15
Standardized region-specific training courses could be required as curricula at all levels of the
educational system. The insurance industry could be extended to include disaster logistics insurance,
so that localities, institutions, campuses, and corporate and residential complexes register with
companies outside of their locales the kinds of information necessary for the co-ordination of
emergency and relief efforts. (Such distant “command centers” would be able to assess injuries and
damages, and locate and facilitate the delivery of appropriate supplies and services more quickly than
could be done from close but damaged centers.)16 Development of projects of this nature is within the
existing functions of the federal executive and legislature, through tax-cut incentives. (And because
they would be incentives to produce new goods and services, they would not represent a decrease in
existing revenues.)
MORAL THEORY AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN DISASTER
The ultimate test of political principles, including those principles underlying social contract theory, is
whether they are morally right. If political principles are not morally right then political life becomes a
matter of force, rhetoric, and coercion. Many of the functions of government also need to withstand a
moral test because moral matters are those issues and events in which human harm or well-being is at
stake. In the Western philosophical tradition, the intrinsic value of human beings is the basic intuition
that underlies all moral actions and moral reasoning. It amounts to the same thing whether human
beings are considered valuable because they have been created in God’s image, or whether the value of
human beings is a purely secular intuition, independent of religion; Government principles and actions
that result in harm to human beings or do not respect the value of human life require extensive
justification.
While morality is often associated with religion in contemporary culture, ever since Plato
philosophers have relied on a secular, rational definition of morality. As Plato recounts it, when
Socrates was on the way to his trial for “corrupting the youth of Athens” by asking questions of leaders
that revealed the ignorance of those leaders, he met Euthyphro. Euthyphro was on his way to prosecute
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his own father for the death of his servant and Socrates engaged him in a dialogue about moral
goodness. Euthyphro, who believed his action was just, said justice or goodness is what pleases God.
Socrates then asked Euthyphro whether something is morally good because God approves of it, or
whether God approves of it because it is morally good. This is a dilemma, because if one assents to the
first alternative, it becomes necessary to explain why God is a source of moral goodness while in the
second alternative, goodness is independent of God and must be defined. Socrates favored the second
alternative and since that time Western philosophers have been trying to pin down exactly what it is
that makes an action right, or a person good.17 The main result has been three systems of morality:
virtue or character ethics; deontology or duty ethics; and consequentialism or utilitarianism. Let’s take
them in turn.
Aristotle offered a comprehensive account of virtues in his Nichomachean Ethics, which has not
required much revision in over two thousand years. According to Aristotle, virtue is a rational activity
of the soul. It is neither determined nor precluded by nature, but requires both childhood training and
adult practice. There are many virtues or desirable traits of character, such as courage, benevolence,
generosity, righteous indignation. A virtue is a disposition to do the right thing in a concrete real-life
situation, and to do it for the right reasons, in the right way, and as a result of a well-developed trait of
character. A trait of character that is named by a virtue is created by acting in accordance with the
virtue. Thus, a person develops courage by performing courageous acts and part of what makes an
action courageous is that it is done by a courageous person. This is not a circular process because it is
assumed that individuals first begin to develop their characters while they are children, as the result of
training. Indeed, Aristotle thought that a society has to be virtuous to further virtues in individuals and
that the continued virtuousness of a society requires that virtuous individuals participate in its
government.18
Immanuel Kant began his moral theory with the insight that the only thing in the world good
without qualification is a good will, or benevolence. Kant developed deontology, or duty ethics, on the
basis of his idea of the categorical imperative. Kant offered two main formulations of the categorical
imperative. The first is: Act so that the generalization or maxim of your action can be willed by you to
be a general rule. (This formulation of the categorical imperative is not the same as The Golden Rule,
which requires only that one be willing to be a recipient of how one acts, and not that one wants
everyone to act the same way.) Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative is: Never treat
another human being as a means, but always treat others and oneself, as ends.19
Kant contrasted the categorical imperative with hypothetical imperatives that could be directives to
act in specific ways to achieve specific results. The categorical imperative admits of no exceptions
because it is the foundation for action by rational beings, each of which has intrinsic worth as an end,
and is a sovereign being with free will as a member of “the kingdom of ends.”20 Kant also developed
ideas of specific duties, such as truthfulness, integrity and generosity, which did not admit of
exceptions and were never relative. The biggest weakness of Kant’s system is that he offered no rules
for ranking duties or deciding which to fulfill when two or more duties conflict.
Consequentialism is the contemporary version of utilitarianism that was developed by Jeremy
Bentham and John Stuart Mill.21 Utilitarianism is the principle that the ultimate good is always the
greatest happiness of the greatest number of sentient beings, whereby everyone, including the moral
agent, counts for one unit and no one counts for more than one. Bentham did not distinguish between
happiness and pleasure, although Mill attempted to do so by distinguishing between higher pleasures,
such as friendship and the appreciation of art, and lower pleasures, which are mainly physical. Mill
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argued that higher pleasures are better, because they are more enduring and those individuals who have
tried both kinds of pleasure prefer the higher pleasures.22 Consequentialism is more abstract than
utilitarianism because its followers talk about maximizing consequences: an action is good if it has
good consequences, so when we maximize, we are increasing the good consequences. (However,
consequentialists often leave open what the good consequences are and in principle there could be a
version of consequentialism that is the opposite of utilitarianism in that it seeks to maximize human
misery and pain.)
Virtue ethics, duty ethics, and consequentialism are all relevant to disaster prevention and response.
There are always individuals who perform virtuous acts in disasters, that is, heroes. People have duties
in disasters; for example, parents must save their children. The consequences to human well-being are
primary factors in deciding what to do in disasters. In fact, most moral philosophers are already
familiar with thinking about disasters because they often use them as hypothetical situations in order to
show how their moral systems are superior, which is to say more consistent and comprehensive, to
those of their opponents. Deontologists often criticize consequentialists by describing situations in
which actions that maximize consequences are morally wrong. Examples have included the torture of
children to get information from hardened adult terrorists, and killing individuals so that others may
survive or to preserve the peace of communities.23 Consequentialists have responded in one of two
ways. Either they have tried to show that long-term thinking about consequences does not commit
them to committing morally repugnant acts, or else they have directly argued that morally repugnant
acts that maximize [human well-being] are not morally repugnant, precisely because they do
maximize.24
Some thinkers have claimed that the use of disaster scenarios does not provide valid examples for
moral reasoning because they are improbable and do not reflect the real choices and meanings that
most people experience in their lives.25 Such a generalization would seem to depend on the nature of
the times. In times such as our own, that seem to have more than their fair share of disasters, it is
important for philosophers to develop applications of their moral systems that are specifically relevant
to the extreme conditions of disasters. It may be difficult to determine whether individuals should be
held morally accountable for legal actions that result in harm to others during times of disaster, or what
such accountability would entail. But insofar as, and according to social contract theory, governments
are obligated to prepare for or respond to disasters, it is important to be able to refer to moral principles
that do or do not justify specific government actions.
It is important to engage in moral reasoning about new laws and the actions of officials in times of
disaster. Recent headlines of such actions undertaken in the Global War on Terrorism have provided
examples that are more extreme than even the bizarre scenarios cooked up by philosophers. There
have, for instance, been situations in which police or military officials immediately killed suspected
suicide bombers, because the detonation of a bomb would cause certain death and injury to the public
or their colleagues.26 When such suspects turn out to have been unarmed, questions about moral theory
arise. We know that the officials were acting in accordance with their duties or orders, which were in
fulfillment of a general government obligation to protect the public. If there is a moral assumption that
all human life is valuable, then killing a terrorist would be justified on consequentialist grounds,
because more people will remain alive if the terrorist is killed. However, if the suspected terrorist turns
out not to have been a terrorist, then killing him or her did not “maximize” good consequences,
because it resulted in the death of one innocent individual who would otherwise have remained alive.
Nonetheless, many would claim that shooting the suspected terrorist was, at the time of the shooting,
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justified on consequentialist grounds, because those who decided to shoot the suspect had sufficient
evidence that the lives of others were at stake. This leads to questions about what counts as sufficient
evidence in urgent situations and whether or not urgency itself may be reason to revise evidence
criteria.
It is interesting that even when consequentialism is the preferred moral system, it is not so much
actual consequences that determine moral worth, but what moral agents are justified in believing the
consequences of their action or non-action will be. Thus, even though extreme situations may seem to
call for consequentialist ethics, they may ultimately require virtue ethics because the right actions
depend on abilities to deliberate rationally about probable outcomes in situations of great stress. Such
skill in deliberation that leads to action is an example of the intellectual virtue of phronesis or practical
reasoning, in an Aristotelian sense. It requires training and would have to manifest itself consistently to
count as a trait of character, or a desirable professional skill.27
It has already been suggested that in disasters the practice of virtues is constrained by pre-existing
duties. And it seems to go without saying that in disaster preparation, prevention, and response, the
goal is to maximize human life. A task is thereby set for moral philosophers to develop new ways of
combining virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism, so that we can all lucidly evaluate the
morality of government actions in preventing and responding to disaster.
FURTHER PHILOSOPHICAL DIRECTIONS
The applicability of social contract theory and moral theory to disaster studies barely scratches the
surface of what the philosophical contribution might be. There are myriad specific ways in which
philosophers working in applied areas could contribute to existing applied fields. Philosophers of
science might take up the task of elucidating, for others in the humanities, studies by architects,
geologists and engineers that are relevant to disasters. Medical ethicists could examine policies for
triage, in all disasters, and isolation and triage in the advent of pandemics. Probability theorists might
take a look at what it means to say something like, “The probability of a major earthquake in Cascadia,
in the next fifty years, is five percent,” and similar predictions.28 Cultural critics who study the media
might evaluate the specific contribution made by media to the public’s response to disaster. This is a
small and vague list. In developing the political and moral focus of the first two sections of this paper,
it might be useful to now consider issues of social justice and finish up with a return to the
philosophically motivating theme of the ordinary person’s fear, via a brief discussion of existentialism
and disaster.
Social Justice
John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice begins with the premise that justice is the cardinal virtue of
societies. The classic definition of justice, going back to ancient philosophy is: Treat equals equally.
Rules, laws, and their applications are just if those who are already equal, in a relevant respect, receive
the same treatment. This idea of justice as fairness is expanded by Rawls in his analysis of the
foundations of a just society.29 Still, justice as fairness, which remains the classic definition after
Rawls, is not the full story according to those humanistic thinkers who have addressed issues of
inequality within society, particularly entrenched and inter-generational poverty, sexism, and racism.
Social critics who have ideals of equal opportunities and equal possession of at least the basic
necessities of life usually work with a concept of distributive justice, or some measure of sameness in
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the distribution of some goods. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights relies on a
conception of distributive justice in this sense.30
However, in contemporary politics, the two ideas of justice as fairness and distributive justice often
appear to be opposed. For instance, debates about the merits of social welfare programs and affirmative
action may turn on questions of whether justice requires that those who are treated fairly according to
the law, but nonetheless consistently end up disadvantaged, are entitled to some form of compensation.
The compensation is assumed to work as a form of distributive justice, with the goal of making all
citizens equally able to benefit from the formal equality guaranteed by the justice as fairness principle.
But not everyone agrees about the necessity for compensation or distributive justice.
It would be preferable if the subject of justice in relation to disaster prevention, preparation and
response, were not politically contentious and if there were a theoretical ground that could support
those humanitarian intuitions and sentiments which are broadly shared. That is, regardless of who is
exactly deserving of what, many believe that in situations of disaster, the primary and immediate goal
should be to alleviate everyone’s suffering and minimize all deaths. There are at least two
philosophical ways in which such a consensus could be served, the first suggested by Rawls and the
second by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In addressing the fundamental rules and institutions of a just society, Rawls does not believe that
government need make provision for equality of distribution, provided that any new set of rules or
institutions does not leave those who are less well off worse off than they were before.31 We could
accordingly suggest that in preparing for and responding to situations of disaster, those who are already
disadvantaged due to age, infirmity, poverty, or bias against them ought not, as a result of disaster, be
worse off relative to others than they were before. For example, if both middle-class and poor families
lose their houses, poor families are relatively worse off because they have fewer additional resources.
Thus, the compounded disadvantages of the black urban poor of New Orleans as a result of Hurricane
Katrina, which months later left many jobless, homeless, and without hope of future community, when
before they had some measure of all those things, would not be acceptable.32 If this application of
Rawls’s principle entails that those victims of disaster who are less well off would require greater per
capita compensation than others, it could be justified by something like Rousseau’s principle of the
common good. According to Rousseau, part of the function of government is to further what is good
for society as a whole, in ways that are not necessarily decided by majority rule, or that amount to the
greatest well-being of the greatest number.33 It could on those grounds be argued that society as a
whole is better off if there is amelioration of the conditions of a disadvantaged numerical minority that
is less well off relative to the majority, as the result of a disaster. The justification would be that a
society as a whole is morally diminished when the conditions of those who are already disadvantaged
deteriorate further. Such increased inequality might undermine assumptions of commonality based on
nationality or shared humanity, and radically divide groups at the cost of general social cohesiveness.
These applications to disaster conditions of principles developed by Rawls and Rousseau are
different from usual ideas of compensation because they require extra compensation in some cases, but
without dependence on either ideological ideals of a welfare state, or pure benevolence. If such
applications need justification beyond the justifications offered by social contract theory discussed
earlier, the new justifications would fall under the general rubric of humanitarian concerns.
Humanitarian concerns tend at present to be theoretically addressed by scholars of international affairs,
rather than political theorists or ethicists, but in the case of disasters they might be addressed by
political philosophers who are otherwise concerned with the normal conditions of life in relatively
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secure and affluent societies. This extension or application of political philosophy would be highly
relevant during times in which relatively secure and affluent societies face new dangers.
Existentialism
Finally, there is the existentialist dimension. Existentialism became famous during the middle of the
twentieth century, through the novels, plays, and philosophical work of Jean-Paul Sartre.34 It was
popularized as a gloomy, nihilistic outlook on life, generated by Frenchmen in smoke-filled cafes. But
as Sartre emphasized in “Existentialism is a Humanism,” the aim of existentialism was to provide a
realistic description of the universal human condition, with an emphasis on free choice. According to
Sartre, and in the tradition of Socrates (who counseled his followers to take care of their souls and
“practice dying”), what human beings are at any given time is the result of their past choices in life.
There is no pre-formed human nature, or “essence,” and what we become is the result of our own
projects; what we become is what we make of ourselves. We must continually make choices in our
existence and there is no way to evade that requirement or the responsibility it entails. However, we
are mortal beings and our eventual death is not something that we can avoid. But (and here one of
Sartre’s major influences, Martin Heidegger, is pertinent) most people live in the bad faith or
inauthenticity of pretending that death has nothing to do with them personally, as their own death, but
is rather always something that happens to other people.35
The relevance of existentialism to a philosophy of disaster is the fact of human mortality and the
tendency of members of the public in modern society to pretend that death is not something that
concerns them immediately and inevitably. With or without disasters, we will all surely die and, worse
than that, we are all subject to dying at any given moment. But even though the public seems to have a
robust acceptance of images of death and destruction in both entertainment and news reporting, this
does not mean that most ordinary people have come to terms with the basic facts about their own
mortality and vulnerability. A (perhaps universal) tendency to deny one’s own death can make it seem
as though any unusual threat to human life, from terrorist bombs, to earthquakes, to a flu virus that has
“crossed over” to our species from birds, is the only thing that can possibly kill us. Victims killed in a
disaster may be grieved as though they would have lived forever had they not been killed in that
disaster, as though they would not have eventually died from something else. The philosophical point
is that the horrific nature of death by disaster turns on a question of how we choose to die. The first
step is for individuals to acknowledge that they will inevitably die. The second step is to reflect on how
one would prefer to die. The third step is decide that one does not want to die in this or that disaster.
This decision can motivate an insistence that all reasonable steps be taken to minimize the loss of
human life in future disasters, steps that range from the informed actions of ordinary people to the
broadest policy decisions of their leaders.
CONCLUSION
I have offered a general sketch of how philosophers might contribute to the multi-disciplinary field of
homeland security and disaster studies, while at the same time extending political and moral
philosophy. Modern political philosophy in the West has proceeded from the idea of a state of nature,
as a standard of human life, according to which the very existence of government is justified. The
temporary dysfunction of government in some disasters may lead to a second state of nature that
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requires new thought about the social contract. Moral philosophers often treat virtue ethics, deontology
and consequentialism as contending ethical theories, but situations of disaster may require
combinations of all three systems. Similarly, thought about disaster can motivate combinations of
justice as fairness and distributive justice, in ways that are otherwise precluded in political debate. And
finally, the emphasis on human mortality developed by existentialists may require a distinction
between death by normal causes and death in disaster.
This sketch of a philosophical contribution and application is intended to be both general and open-
ended. Its purpose is to stimulate multi-disciplinary theoretical discussion.
1 Applied philosophy now includes: professional ethics, business ethics, medical ethics, philosophy of film and
other media, philosophy of sports, environmental philosophy, animal rights, philosophy of race, and philosophies of
science, law, international studies, policy, education, friendship, marriage, family, and contemporary social
controversies.
2 The fear of the public seems to be rationally based since 9-11. As this paper will stress, the issue is not only
destruction by disasters, but the inability of government to respond. Many have come to realize that there is good
reason to fear many things besides terrorism. But short of being empowered to help itself, the public now faces
castigation by pundits, for its very fear. See Linton Weeks, “Today’s Americans have everything to fear but fear itself,”
Washington Post, December 11, 2005, reprinted in Register Guard (Eugene, Oregon), December 11, 2005.
3 The texts referred to in this article are: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Edwin Curley ed. (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1994); John Locke, Second Treatise in Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett, ed. (New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 1991); John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard
University Press,1971); Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Maurice Cranston, ed. (New York, NY:
Penguin Classics, 1961), Book III.
4Locke, Second Treatise, chap. VII, VIII, IX.; Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII, 76.
5 Locke, Second Treatise, chap. VII and VIII.
6 Locke, Second Treatise, chap. V.
7 Hobbes, Leviathan, chap XVII, XVIII.
8 Locke, Second Treatise, chap. XIX.
9 Ibid.
10 Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. XXI-XXVI.
11 Ibid., chap. XIV, XV.
12 Locke, Second Treatise, chap. VIII, Sec. 95, 96, 97, pp. 330-332.
13 Human life without all forms of government as we know them would probably be a subject for anthropology,
rather than political theory.
14 In “Changing Homeland Security: The Issue-Attention Cycle,” Homeland Security Affairs, Vol. I, no. 1,
(Summer 2005) Article 1, http://www.hsaj.org, Christopher Bellavita discusses Anthony Downs’ 1972 article, “The
Issue-Attention Cycle,” Public Interest 28 (Summer 1972):38-50.
15 There is of course much information available on the components of disaster kits, which members of the
public are urged to assemble on their own (for instance, the comprehensive information available from FEMA at
www.fema.gov/library/emfdwtr.shtm ) but in a high-tech society with elaborate claims on consumers’ time and
attention, this “do-it-yourself” approach probably contributes to a general impression that individual disaster
preparation is unconventional and eccentric.
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16 Disaster logistics appear to be a bigger problem at this time than the existence of emergency supplies. Thus
far, military, private and corporate philanthropic efforts have been effective in ad hoc rescue missions abroad. See,
“Just in Time: In Year of Disasters, Experts Bring Order to Chaos of Relief,” Wall Street Journal, November 22,
2005.
17 Plato, “Euthyphro,” Lane Cooper trans. In Plato: Collected Dialogues, Edith Hamilton and Huntington
Cairns, trans. (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1961), 160-185.
18 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Terence Irwin, trans. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1985), Books II, III, IV.
19 Immanuel Kant, “Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Immanuel Kant: Ethical Philosophy, James
W. Ellington, trans. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994).
20 Ibid., 43.
21 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism and Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, reprinted in Alan Ryan ed., Utilitarianism and Other Essays: J.S. Mill and Jeremy Bentham (New York,
NY, London: Penguin Books, 1987).
22 Mill, “Bentham,” in ibid.,132-176; Mill, Utilitarianism, 276-283.
23 Perhaps the classic case of “lifeboat ethics” is John William Wallace’s report, “Seaman Homes and the
Longboat of William Brown,” in United States v. Homes (case no. 15,383) Circuit Court E. d. Pennsylvania, April
22, 1842, reprinted in Louis P. Pojman, ed. The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature (New
York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 229-30.
24 See Samuel Scheffler, ed. Consequentialism and its Critics (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988).
25 On a rejection of extreme situations for moral argument, see Ayn Rand, “The Ethics of Emergency,” reprinted
from The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, in Nina Rosenstand, ed. The Moral of the Story: An
Introduction to Ethics (Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 2006), 105-198.
26 Abby Goudnough, “Fretful Passenger, Turmoil on Jet and Fatal Shots,” New York Times, December 9, 2005.
27 For a contemporary discussion of how instant decisions by experts can reflect their extensive experience, see
Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York, Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 2005), especially. Chap. 6, about the shooting of Amadou Diallo, 189-244.
28 Residents of the Pacific Northwest have recently been informed that there is a 5% probability that a major
earthquake and related tsunami will strike the region within the next 50 years. Such information raises questions of
what the rational response should be to events that are unlikely at any given time but which represent great harm.
29 Rawls, Theory of Justice, Chapter I,. 3-53.
30 Article 25, (1) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948-1998) provides for
distributive justice, as follows:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his
family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to
security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood
in circumstances beyond his control. (www.un.org/Overview/rights.html)
31 What is paraphrased as the disadvantaged not ending up worse off is called “the difference principle” by
Rawls, which (again, roughly speaking) he describes as even the disadvantaged benefiting from inequalities in a just
system. See Theory of Justice, 60-80.
32 On the lasting effects of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Pakistan on the poor, see, respectively: Jodi
Wilgoren, “In 14 Weeks Since Storm, 14 Places Called Home,” New York Times, December 13, 2005; Manabu
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Kitagawa, “Asia: Winter threatens to compound horror of Pakistani Earthquake,” December 17, 2005 at
www.asahi.com.
33 Rousseau, Social Contract, Book II, 59-101.
34Sartre’s most comprehensive philosophical work is Being and Nothingness, Hazel Barnes trans. (New York,
NY: Philosophical Library, 1952).
35 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” Bernard Frectman, trans., reprinted in L. Nathan
Oaklander, ed. Existentialist Philosophy: An Introduction (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 310-319.
On Heidegger’s views about the denial of their death by individuals, see Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, John
Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans. (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1962), Division II, Chapter I, 279-311.
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