Every person should respect every person as one who should actively seek happiness. This entails that one should respect oneself as one who should actively seek happiness, according to the principle of individuation; and that one should respect every other as one who should actively seek happiness, according to the principle of liberalization. One should actively seek happiness only because every person should be respected as one who should seek happiness, therefore one should neither define nor bring about one’s happiness in a way that does not respect other people as ones who should also actively seek happiness. Stated positively, one should bring about and define one’s happiness in a manner that respects other people as ones who should also actively seek happiness, according to the principle of collective individuation: every person should respect every person as one who should actively seek happiness.
As a preliminary clarification, we can understand happiness as the ongoing attainment of one’s needs and desires. Needs can be food, clothing, shelter, and companionship; while desires can be anything from travel to trying out a new food. For a preliminary clarification of respect, we can understand another person in terms of her body, property, and authority. Her body is quite simply that, her corporeality; her property is matter or energy that she has applied toward the ongoing attainment of happiness; her authority is her ability to create original literary or artistic works, to enter and exit relationships, and to give or refrain from consent. We respect another person by acknowledging that her body, property, and authority are meaningfully situated with respect to her ongoing attainment of happiness; that is, they are involved in her ongoing projects. Insofar as we legitimately interact with another person, we maintain her consent with regard to actions involving her body, property, and authority, just as we maintain mutual understanding of them. Rape is an example of the failure to respect another person’s body. Theft is an example of the failure to respect another person’s property. Forgery—such as “identity theft”—is an example of the failure to respect another person’s authority. In all three cases, an illegitimate disturbance of the person’s ongoing attainment of happiness takes place; and such a disturbance entails a failure to respect another as one who should actively seek happiness.
Illegitimate Disturbance
“If man’s goodness is to be possible, even as a past or future utopia, this goodness would require the innocence of a certain having.” --Paul Ricoeur
In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger suggests that our day-to-day activities do not normally involve explicit decisions. We go about our business, as it were, undisturbed. It is only when things break down that we reflect upon our projects and involvements. While there is little reason to deny the vividness of Heidegger’s existential analytic, it is perhaps a tragedy that within this work he did not adequately treat solicitude—the social aspect of human action. Heidegger provides the profound insight that “those entities towards which Dasein as Being-with comports itself do not have the kind of Being which belongs to equipment ready-to-hand; they are themselves Dasein” (Heidegger [1926] 1962, 157). Stated simply, we do not encounter people as merely instruments. However*,* Heidegger does not adequately address that some people do approach others—or, at least, their body, property, or authority—as merely instruments or equipment ready-to-hand, as in the instance of rape, theft, or forgery. (His sense of “leaping in” does not adequately reflect this.) At the same time, Being and Time does not elaborate a deep sense of respect for the meaningful involvements of the other. Heidegger does not address the sense in which the other’s body, property, and authority are not necessarily available or ready-to-hand. (His sense of “leaping ahead” does not adequately reflect this.) The term illegitimate disturbance, which does not appear in Heidegger’s work, refers to something inherently social. Nevertheless, it is perhaps best understood in terms of Heidegger’s existential analytic, as it derives from his treatment of disturbance. It is almost synonymous with violence.
In order to understand illegitimate disturbance, we engage in a simple thought experiment. We are in effect moving from the Moll Flanders model of the world to a variation on the more traditional Robinson Crusoe model of the world. Imagine the person Friday on a tropical island. Friday’s tribe was on a neighboring island, where they were wiped out by a tsunami, leaving him as the sole survivor. We assume that no other persons are on this island, no other persons have an interest in the island, and that he therefore does not encounter the ongoing activity of another person. Hence, he freely applies various means toward his chosen ends. For example, he builds a shrine to honor his ancestors. He builds a shelter presumably for himself. The sticks he uses for this shelter are meaningfully situated with respect to his ongoing project of having-shelter. He cooks a fish over a fire. For Friday, these means are available or ready-to-hand. Though there is little need for the notion of property within the context of a solitary individual, it nevertheless remains clear that various means are meaningfully situated toward Friday’s ends.
When we introduce Crusoe onto the island, he has various possibilities for interacting with these meaningfully situated items. Naturally, when Crusoe discovers human products on the island, and they appear recently used or well-maintained, he has reason to suspect that they may be meaningfully situated with respect to someone else’s ends—that they are available for another or ready-to-another’s hand. Insofar as Crusoe respects this situatedness, we have the rudiments of the notion of property. If Crusoe fails to respect this situatedness, then we have the rudiments of the notion of illegitimate disturbance. If Crusoe encounters, for example, the fish being cooked over a fire, we would consider it rude if he throws the fish onto the ground. If he comes upon the shelter, we would consider it violent if he demolished it. If he finds the shrine, we would consider it disrespectful if he destroyed it. This is because Crusoe has failed to respect that these items—indeed, the very area he has entered—are already meaningfully situated with respect to another person’s ends—in this case, Friday’s ends. Crusoe’s disregard has caused a breakdown within the meaning-context of Friday’s life. This, in turn, entails a failure to respect another person as one who should actively seek happiness.
Within the above example, we have emphasized illegitimate disturbance with respect to property, but it can also take place with respect to body and authority. For example, Crusoe could out-and-out rape Friday. This entails a failure to respect that Friday’s body is meaningfully involved in Friday’s ongoing pursuit of happiness. Likewise, we can imagine a situation where a third person arrives on the island. This third person first encounters Crusoe outside Friday’s encampment, and Crusoe proceeds to tell him that he can eat Friday’s food and sleep in Friday’s shelter, that Friday says, “It’s okay.” Nevertheless, Crusoe has lied. Friday did not give his consent. In this instance, Crusoe has failed to respect Friday’s authority; and he has failed to respect Friday as one who should actively seek happiness. When the third person proceeds to eat Friday’s food and sleep in Friday’s shelter, this again leads to a type of illegitimate disturbance.