I’ve spent a lot of time studying ethics and trying to drill down into ethical philosophy to discover the simplest, consistent set of universal principles by which we, as human beings, can interact with each other peacefully. What I’ve discovered is there is, in fact, a universal ethic that governs all people.
This will, of course, seem counterintuitive to most people. For decades, the prevailing thought about ethics and morality is that there is no “right” answer; the best policy is to live and let live. Moreover, given that there are plenty of plain examples where individuals will harm other individuals for their own gain, it seems preposterous to propose any universal ethic. If something as simple as “don’t kill another person” isn’t sacrosanct, what is?
In many ways, that policy isn’t wrong, but it’s overly simplistic. By choosing to ignore the possibility that there are situations that are universally wrong, moral relativists have ceded ground to people that would love to have a seemingly ironclad excuse for their behavior; ground that need not be ceded.
While proposing that there is a universal ethic may seem counterintuitive, this is only true if viewed from the perspective of an individual affected by another individual. As stated before, it is entirely reasonable to believe that someone, someday, may kill you, which is the ultimate act of individual violation. However, one need not view ethics from the perspective of the affected individual to deduce a universal ethic. Instead, ethics can be viewed from the perspective of the person affecting another.
Take the murder example I just used. While it is readily apparent that the victim does not consent to being forcibly murdered (indeed, it is impossible to consent to a violation of consent), is the murderer any more apt to want someone else to violate his consent? We can all agree that murderers can do any number of despicable acts, but one thing they cannot do is engage in a logical impossibility. Just like the victim, the murderer also cannot consent to have his consent violated. The murderer is no more interested in having his life terminated, or truly to have his consent violated in any way, than his victim is. What is true for the murderer is true for the victim, and vice versa.
This same dynamic applies across all violations of property, whether external property or the property in one’s own body. Thus, we arrive at a simple, universal ethic: consent is the metric by which actions are judged to be right or wrong, and this judgment is independent of the actors engaged in the act. If consent is freely given (i.e., absent any coercion), an action cannot be said to be wrong. It may offend one’s sensibilities, elicit loathing and disdain, or be met with resounding scorn and derision from all the rest of the world, but it cannot be morally wrong.
This introduces a curious problem, though. If respecting the consent of an individual cannot be morally wrong, is violation of the consent of an individual always wrong? In the murder example, is it wrong to violate the consent of the murderer, even though he has already violated the consent of another? We’ve already established that it is logically impossible to consent to have one’s consent violated, so the logical conclusion is that having one’s consent violated is never right. Written more consistently with our first proposition, having one’s consent violated is always wrong. This apparent dilemma is answered through the application of estoppel. Put simply, estoppel is a legal and logical principle that states that, if an individual either explicitly or demonstrably holds a certain proposition to be true, he cannot then deny that proposition in light of the consequences of holding it. It is, essentially, the application of the law of non-contradiction to human action.
Let us apply that to the murder example. We know that violation of consent is always a moral wrong, as the opposite proposition (respecting consent) is never a moral wrong. However, let us examine the murderer’s actions. Based on his explicit demonstration, we can deduce that he rejects the proposition that violating the consent of an individual is always wrong. Since this proposition is universal, by definition, he must also reject that having his consent violated is always wrong, as well. Since he has held that proposition to be true by his actions, it is no longer immoral to violate his consent through the use of force to stop his actions or seek restitution from him in light of his crimes.
This may seem impossible, given that it is impossible to consent to having one's consent violated, but his demonstrable assertion of the opposite renders this argument moot. After all, if he holds that it is not immoral to violate the consent of an individual, how then can he, or anyone else for that matter, claim it is immoral to violate his consent? He has effectively consented to the same acts he has engaged in by asserting that it is not wrong to engage in them. Estoppel effectively answers and clears this conundrum.