Midterm Essay - Part 2/3

This is the Second Post of the Midterm Assignment; make sure you read all three before you start writing anything.

Duties and Rights: The Screams of Kitty Genovese

(Yes, I know that I brought this up. However, I was inspired by your discussions.)

In the following, I will first present the relevant facts of the case. (This is all that will be considered. Regardless of whether you know more about the case, regardless of whether you have studied the case in other classes or heard that the case has been “mythologized” beyond the actual occurrence, etc., the situation should be discussed as I describe it. In other words, please do not bother with disputations regarding whether or not she was able to yell after the initial or the second attack, how many people actually hear, etc. Not only are these points irrelevant to the question at hand, they also have no bearing on the horror of the event.) I will then ask you to respond in two parts to the incident. Pay attention to the wording of each part of the question. Note that the witnesses are the subject of the question, not Ms Genovese or her attacker.

A little after 3 AM, Ms Genovese drove home from work. She parked about a hundred feet from her apartment building door, and headed home. A man named Winston Moseley approached her, attacked her with a knife, and stabbed her several times in the back. After she screamed repeatedly (including such things as “Oh My God!” “He stabbed me!” and “Help me!”) a man in a nearby apartment yelled at the attacker to leave her be. Mr Moseley ran away, and Ms Genovese staggered to her building. However, she was unable to enter (due to a locked door and/or her physical state). The attacker returned around ten minutes later, stabbed her repeatedly, then raped her. She continued to resist and yell, according to witnesses and forensic reports. She was still alive when he left, over thirty minutes after the initial attack. Several minutes later, a man called the police to report that a woman had been attacked in front of his building. By the time police showed up and she was put in an ambulence, a full hour had passed since the initial attack. The knife wounds had punctured her lungs, however; over the course of the hour they slowly filled with blood. She died en route of asphyxiation.

Accounts vary as to how many individuals witnessed the attack, but at some time thirty-eight people admitted to observing (visually and/or aurally) a woman screaming for help and defending herself against a man attacking her with a knife. Regardless of how many people actually witnessed the incident (when one considers shame, one readily imagines that many more witnessed the event but would not admit it), given the close proximity of the residents in the Queens neighborhood, the late hour, and the protracted nature of the attack, one can say quite literally that it occurred within a few yards of a large number of individuals who did virtually nothing to help the woman. That is, not only did they make no physical or personal attempt to save her, but they also did not bother to call the authorities until after the noise had stopped. (Again, police records are unclear at best: it appears someone called, but said he thought it was a lovers' quarrel; another that he thought he saw a woman attacked, but the man was gone and she was walking away so it might be nothing, etc.)

The incident caused a national debate in socio-psychological as well as legal circles regarding (to use philosophical terms) positive and natural law. The question, which proceeds in two parts, is whether and how our four most recent philosophers would think about the case.

First, what would Kant and Hobbes have to say about the moral and legal concept of “duty to rescue.” In the United States, the idea that an individual (pace certain voluntary classifications, e.g., first responders) has a legal responsibility to attempt to rescue another individual from perceived or actual threats--up to and including death--has been repeatedly rejected by the courts. This was true at the time of the attack and is still true today. With this in mind, what would Kant and Hobbes say about those who witnessed the attacks? Did they have a duty--legal and/or moral, as citizens and/or as humans--to help Ms Genovese, either in their own person or by contacting the authorities? If the law were changed, i.e., if the legislature created and the judiciary upheld a duty to rescue, would Kant or Hobbes change their positions? Finally, would Kant and Hobbes agree with the absence of such a law? Would they agree with the implementation of such a law?

Second, given our nation's philosophical and political pedigree as the progeny of Locke and Rousseau, how can we see the witnesses' (lack of) response as a confirmation of both their philosophies? Using their own systems, show how Locke's justification for, and Rousseau's critique of, society could result in such a socio-psychological “diffusion of responsibility.” Although both thinkers describe societies which could lead to such an incident, would or could either thinker encourage or prescribe social-political changes that would preclude such an incident from recurring? I.e., do their systems condemn us to such a result, or does either thinker provide a justification and means by which this would not be an inevitability? (It is worth noting that ten years later a woman was beaten to death in an apartment on the same block, and again neighbors heard the entire affair but did not respond.)