["Pirate Flag in the Sky," by Petr Kratochvil, taken from PublicDomainPictures.Net; this image is in the public domain.]
This is a continuation of a previous post, "Criminality with Respect to the State." It, in turn, was a continuation of a previous post, "Classical Liberalism has Won the Debate."
Given that being criminal with respect to the state is simply the state of being at odds with the fiat of the state, whatever that may be, and given that government can and does impose fiat arbitrarily, it follows that criminality with respect to the state, is, in and of itself, entirely arbitrary. However, given that there are three potential ways to understand criminality (destructive social deviancy, wanton aggression against an innocent individual, and failure to comply with the fiat of the state), it is not sufficient to dismiss the issue as a matter of being a mere arbitrarily defined relationship of an individual to the whims of the state.
Hegel argues in his book, "Philosophy of History," that the state has an evolving relationship with the individual, and that, with respect to the first way of approaching criminality (social deviancy), it is a thing that evolves alongside the state. While a very cursory glance through history will confirm that social norms do change and that the state usually has, in the past, asserted itself in such a way as to support such changes, I take issue with the idea that the state has some sort of central role to play in that evolution. I can easily imagine (and there have been real examples) a state of affairs such that the social norms evolve, and the state simply separates itself from that process, allowing it to proceed peacefully, on its own terms, and in such a way that the society itself - sans the imposition of force - is able to shape itself in such a way as to support its evolving norm. This tends to be the exception in history, but it has happened, and it would seem to prove that there is no necessary relationship between social deviancy and criminality, because it is certainly not always the case that deviation from the social norm must result in the state forming a relationship of criminality with you.
So then, beyond criminality being understood as the state of being a scofflaw by some arbitrary measure, we are left with an investigation into the relationship between criminality and aggression. What is it to be aggressive, and at what point is it to be considered criminal? I think aggressiveness, in its most general sense, should be considered to be the state of being warlike in pursuit of some end. This does not mean that one is literally engaging in violence, necessarily (although that does get rolled up into this definition), but it does mean that, should someone compete or stand in the way of someone who is in a state of being aggressive, the aggressor will, with some energy, engage in some form of an adversarial relationship with them. Now, to be clear, adversarial-ness does not necessarily accompany aggression, but the potential for adversarial-ness does. An aggressive person is someone who energetically pursues his goals in such a way that if anyone is at odds with him in his pursuit of them, he will deal with them in an adversarial manner. In business, this results in a competitive - even potentially "cut-throat" - environment, where everyone is trying to achieve a superior level of success. I think most would agree that while this may be an unpleasant state of being for some, it does not rise to the level of being criminal. In a slum, this can result in an unaware visitor getting stabbed by a local and robbed of his cash so that the local can then use it to acquire his fix of choice. I think most would agree that this particular example of aggression is very clearly criminal. So what's the difference? Is it merely the fact that it involves physical violence? If so, is the act of hacking someone's bank account, not a criminal act? On the other hand, is leveraging violence to defend yourself from the aforementioned criminal mugger a criminal act? It seems clear that violence, per se, does not lie at the essence of criminality. What is it that those acts - about which there is a consensus about them being criminal - have in common?
There are certain types of acts that are consistently deemed criminal in most contexts across cultures when committed by unaffiliated individuals; these are murder, rape, theft, kidnapping, trespassing, and fraud. What do all of these things have in common? They involve an act of aggression against that which is within an individual's natural boundaries of responsibility; that is to say, they are violations of another person's consciousness.
This essay is continued here.
