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Show Chapter VI. The Problem of Moral Motivation 250 inflict harm on others, as sadistic. A sadistic person finds satisfaction, not merely in others' suffering - such a person would be more properly described as spiteful or schadenfroh; but rather in actively inflicting that suffering on others. A sadistic person takes satisfaction both in the other's suffering itself; and, just as important, in being the instrument of that suffering. Michael Slote argues that sadism, like other inherently vicious pleasures, such as drug addiction, as well as wealth and power, may be personal goods for the virtuous agent who has them, even if they violate the constraints of morality and therefore provide no reason for the virtuous agent to act.8 Against Slote's view, I contend that satisfying sadistic desires is always self-destructive, and at least as destructive as the experience of externally inflicted harm on its victims. Consider first the latter case. Through externally inflicted harm, its victims thereby accumulate experiences and memories of aggression directed against the self, and these experiences and memories in turn have a harmful conditioning effect on the integrity of the self. They disrupt the equilibrium and coherence of the self by disrupting the equilibrium and coherence of the external order the self experiences, and replacing it with affective images of aggressively inflicted pain, violence, or disorder. Just as we speak of the corruption of a text that is rendered unsound and tainted by external interpolations and emendations, we may speak similarly of the corruption of a self that is rendered unsound and tainted by the interpolation of external, destabilizing and disruptive experiences of aggression directed against it. The more numerous and familiar these corruptive experiences become, the more they vitiate the equation of well-being with stability and order, and the more they desensitize the self to the danger they represent to its stability and integrity. Aggression repeatedly directed against its victim habituates the victim's self to a condition of disintegrity, and so to a lack of interest in the self- or other-destructive consequences of its behavior. There is thus a continuum of damaging consequences to the self of externally inflicted harm - and a corresponding continuum of corrigibility - with simple insensitivity at one end, and pervasive and uncontrolled brutality at the other. Individuals who are brutalized by the violence or abuse they experience at others' hands are - by definition - more capable of inflicting similar violence or abuse on others in turn. Indeed, whenever one witnesses another person's brutality, whether physical or psychological, it can be useful to ask oneself where and from whom the other learned to behave that way. It would be a mistake to think of brutalization as a process requiring physical violence. The self can be brutalized in more subtle ways through verbal, emotional and psychological abuse and manipulation as well, which in turn may cause Michael Slote, Goods and Virtues (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), Chapter V. 8 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
