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                 FUTILE RESISTANCE AS PROTEST
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                   Edmund Tweedy Flanigan
                           2023

NOTE:  [This paper will appear in  MIND. Please cite the published
      version.]

ABSTRACT: Acts of  futile resistance---harms  against an aggressor
which could not reasonably hope  to avert the threat the aggressor
poses---give rise to a puzzle: on the one hand, many such acts are
intuitively permissible, yet on the other, these acts fail to meet
the justificatory standards of defensive action.  The  most widely
accepted solution to  this puzzle  is  that victims in  such cases
permissibly defend  against  a  secondary threat  to  their honor,
dignity,  or  moral standing.   I argue that  this solution fails,
because futile resistance  is not plausibly regarded  as defensive
in the relevant sense. I propose instead that futile resistance is
justified as a form  of  protest, where protest is  analyzed as an
expression of rejection of victims' wrongs.  Such protest is just-
ified, I argue, when and because it is the fitting response to the
circumstances of futility.

## Introduction

Here is a classic puzzle in  defensive ethics: You (the victim) are
being threatened with  wrongful harm by me  (the attacker). Because
of  my  overwhelming strength,  you  could  not  hope to  avert  my
threatened harm  with a  defensive act of  your own.  Resistance is
futile.  Nevertheless, you  could  (say)  punch me  in  the gut  or
scratch  my face  as I  carry out  my attack.  You could,  that is,
engage in futile resistance. May you?

On  the one  hand,  there  is a  strong  intuition  that some  acts
of  futile   resistance  are  morally  permitted.   This  intuition
is   strongest  when   we   think  of   certain  important   cases.
Interpersonally,  think   of  rape  and  other   serious  assaults.
Collectively,  think of  invasions of  small countries  by powerful
aggressors, slave revolts, or ghetto uprisings. In many such cases,
victims  could  not hope  to  successfully  defend themselves.  Yet
surely victims  in such cases  may harm their attackers,  even when
these harms would be futile. On the other hand, according to widely
accepted principles  of defensive ethics,  these acts fail  to meet
the  justificatory  standards  of defensive  action.  According  to
the  effectiveness condition  (also called  the success  condition)
on  permissible  defense,  a  defensive act  must  effectively  (or
successfully) avert a threatened or  ongoing wrongful harm in order
to be permissible.  And according to the  necessity condition, only
those defensive acts  which are necessary to avert  a threatened or
ongoing wrongful harm are permissible.[1]  But if an act is futile,
it could  not be  effective, or  succeed. And if  an act  could not
succeed, it could  not be necessary. If it could  not be necessary,
it must be gratuitous. And how could gratuitous harm be justified?

This  is  the  puzzle  of intuitively  permissible  yet  apparently
gratuitous harm---in brief, the  puzzle of futile resistance. Since
both sides of the puzzle represent, in their own ways, foundational
commitments, we should  hesitate to choose between them.  But if we
do not choose, we must find a way to resolve the conflict instead.

Some simple solutions have been proposed. Among these are the ideas
that futile resistance might be  wrong but blameless, that it might
be justified as a deterrent, or  that it might be justified because
the harm it  imposes is deserved. These  simple solutions, however,
are  widely  thought  to  fail.[2]  We  might  instead  revise  the
effectiveness and necessity  principles so as to  make an exception
for  futile harms.  But  this  solution will  not  do either:  such
revised  principles would  be  ad  hoc; they  would  do nothing  to
explain why futile resistance is not gratuitous. A deeper solution,
it seems, is called for.

The most influential solution offered thus far was first set out by
Daniel Statman  (2008), who  proposes that  victims in  these cases
permissibly  defend  their  honor  against  their  attackers.  This
solution finds support  among a number of leading  theorists in the
defensive ethics literature. For instance,  it has been endorsed by
Jeff McMahan (2016)  (who prefers talk of defense  of dignity), and
it has been developed and defended by Helen Frowe (2014, 2016) (who
prefers talk  of defense of moral  standing). We can refer  to this
solution collectively as the status defense view.

While I think this solution points in the right direction, I do not
think it  succeeds. After describing  the view, I'll  offer several
novel objections  to it. These  objections undermine the  appeal of
the view  as a  solution to the  puzzle of  futile resistance---and
also thereby make  space for alternatives. My own  view, which I'll
then set out, is that acts of futile resistance are best understood
as a form of protest, where  protest is understood as an expression
of rejection of wrongdoing; and that such protest is justified when
and because it  is fitting. Forceful acts  of resistance, including
violence, may  be fitting when  lesser, non-violent acts  would not
be.  This solution  is attractive  because it  better captures  our
considered  reflections about  what we  do when  we engage  in acts
futile resistance, and because it  provides a better account of the
regulative principles of futile resistance.

## Defending Your Honor

I  should first  describe  the status  defense  view. According  to
Statman  (2008,  668),  when  you  are  threatened  by  a  wrongful
attacker,  you  'face  two  kinds  of threat':  not  only  are  you
threatened in  the straightforward and  primary sense that  you may
suffer  a wrongful  harm, you  are also  threatened in  the further
secondary sense that your attacker fails  to give you your due as a
member of the moral community.  Victims become, in their attackers'
eyes,  'just  items to  be  used,  mere objects',  even  'literally
debase[d]'---a way  of being treated that  Statman characterizes as
an attack upon victims' honor. This secondary assault, he suggests,
itself permits  a defensive response.  That is, even when  a victim
could not hope to defend herself  against a primary attack, she may
take defensive action  against this secondary threat  to her honor.
Acts of futile resistance thereby  become acts of effective defense
against this  other kind of  attack. As acts of  effective defense,
they  meet the  effectiveness (or  success) condition  on defensive
action, and they also thereby avoid the charge of gratuitousness.

This is the core of the  view. Beyond this, important nuances arise
depending on whether one takes honor to be the object of defense or
something  else, such  as dignity  or moral  standing; whether  the
threat to that thing is its loss  or some other sense of affront or
undermining; whether  the merited response is  that thing's defense
or (as Statman and others  also sometimes say) its (re)affirmation,
assertion,  or  vindication; as  well  as  the proper  relation  of
this  response to  the  principles  governing permissible  defense:
necessity, liability, and proportionality.

Despite the  view's wide  acceptance, relatively little  effort has
been put  into developing these details.  Among proponents, Frowe's
work has  gone the  furthest in this  direction. In  the criticisms
that follow,  therefore, I'll  principally challenge  Statman's and
Frowe's stated  views---as one  where they agree,  and individually
where they  differ. Because the  view is underdeveloped, it  may be
possible to develop  it in ways that meet the  various challenges I
describe. However, I doubt that this can be done consistently or in
a way that  makes the resulting view  attractive. Most importantly,
the challenges I raise point to deeper problems with the basic idea
that acts of futile resistance are acts of defense at all.[3]

## Against Defense

### Defense of what?

The  view that  acts of  futile resistance  are acts  of successful
defense immediately demands an answer  to the question, 'Defense of
what?', since  what makes  such cases  futile is  that they  do not
successfully  defend  life,  limb, or  property,  the  paradigmatic
objects of defense.[4] The status defense  view says that it is one
of those  things---honor, dignity, or standing---that  is defended.
But  since honor,  dignity,  and standing  are  things very  unlike
life, limb,  and property,  justification of  the extension  of the
principles of defensive ethics to those objects is needed.

I should acknowledge that we do often sensibly speak of defending a
person's honor or dignity (if less  so moral standing). But that we
can sensibly speak of defense of these things does not show that we
may act to defend them  in the relevant sense. Consider: defendants
defend themselves,  or are defended,  in courts of law;  players of
various games and sports defend their goals, championships, pieces,
and so on; indeed, I am presently defending a series of claims. Yet
in none  of these cases may  one engage in defensive  action in the
same way that  one may defend oneself against a  threat of physical
harm. This is because when we  ask whether one may violently defend
some  putative  object  of  defense,  we  are  not  asking  whether
a  permissible  act of  violence  could  be sensibly  described  as
a  defense  of that  thing;  we  are  asking, rather,  whether  the
principles of defensive ethics license  such an act, or whether the
object in  question is a  proper object of those  principles. Since
those principles  have been developed mainly  through consideration
of  cases of  defense  of  life and  limb,  they are  presumptively
limited to  those objects and  those substantially similar  to them
(such as property). The more different in kind a putative object of
defense is from those things, the  less readily we should apply the
principles of defensive ethics to  it. We cannot assume that simply
because  the language  of defense  applies that  the principles  of
defense do as  well. This is particularly true  for honor, dignity,
and standing,  since these things  are very unlike life,  limb, and
property.[5]

Now, the  familiar problem with Statman's  proposal---that honor is
what  is defended---is  that  honor  does not  seem  like the  kind
of  value  (if it  is  a  value)  whose protection  clearly  merits
defense, nor especially violent defense. A common claim, indeed, is
that  honor is  not  a moral  value at  all.[6]  Moreover, many  of
the  practices  that  honor  and  its  defense  have  been  central
to---dueling, honor  killing, retribution---are widely  regarded as
morally  unjustifiable.  Additionally,  since one's  honor  can  be
lost, a  perverse consequence  is that those  whose honor  has been
antecedently  lost  (those who  are  'without  honor') may  not  be
permitted to engage in futile resistance, as they will have nothing
to defend; and likewise, acts  of futile resistance which undermine
rather than defend one's  honor (pathetic resistance, perhaps) will
not be permitted, as they will fail to contribute to this defensive
aim. These are difficult consequences to bear.[7]

For  perhaps these  reasons,  McMahan prefers  to  talk of  defense
of  dignity,  and  Frowe  prefers  to  talk  of  defense  of  moral
standing. As  Statman anticipates, however, this  move carries with
it difficulties of its own (2008,  669). Dignity, and still more so
moral standing, are  thought to be things one cannot  lose, even if
they can  be affronted, undermined,  and so  on. But how  could one
have permission to  violently defend something one  cannot lose? If
defense  is not  loss preventive,  then  it must  have other  aims:
(re)affirmation, assertion,  vindication, and so on.  But again, it
is not  clear that  the principles of  defensive ethics  pertain to
achievement of  such aims. We  do not ordinarily think,  after all,
that I am  permitted to harm others in order  to affirm, assert, or
vindicate my beliefs. Why answer  differently in the case of status
values?

Similar  remarks  apply to  the  question  of  which acts  merit  a
defensive response. Even if it  is granted that honor, dignity, and
standing are proper objects of defense,  we need to know what kinds
of  attacks  on  them  may  be properly  defended  against.  It  is
not clear---and  again demands  argument---that having  one's honor
threatened with  affront, undermining,  and so on,  is the  kind of
threat whose prevention is governed  by the principles of defensive
ethics.[8]

Proponents of  the status  defense view  owe a  compelling argument
that  the  principles of  defensive  ethics  apply to  the  objects
and  modes of  defense  they propose  characterize  acts of  futile
resistance. Absent one, these challenges  count as a strike against
the view.

### Proportionality and additivity

The concern about  whether honor, dignity, and  standing are proper
objects  of  defense  is  compounded  by  implausible  implications
entailed if we so regard them, particularly with respect to matters
of proportionality in defense.

The  proportionality principle  in defensive  ethics requires  that
defensive acts be proportionate in  seriousness to that of the harm
being defended against. A defensive act is disproportionate if (and
because) it is  excessive with respect to the  attack it averts.[9]
On Statman's  view, what is being  defended is one's honor,  so the
proportionality  principle  straightforwardly  requires  that  acts
which defend  one's honor be  comparable in seriousness to  that of
the threat to  one's honor against which they defend.  This poses a
problem because, on  the one hand, threats to honor  (or dignity or
standing) are  in many  contexts not thought  to be  serious enough
to  license violent  harms  in response:  think  of grave  insults,
humiliating acts, and so on; yet  on the other hand, rape and other
serious assaults  intuitively license quite seriously  harmful acts
of resistance. The status defense view thus faces a dilemma. Either
such attacks  on honor  are much  more serious  than we  might have
thought, and so allow for much more serious responses, or else acts
of futile resistance must be  much less serious than we intuitively
want, in many cases, to permit.

Statman  takes the  view that  threats to  honor are  comparatively
minor, and so  his concern is with the implication  that defense of
one's  honor may  not  justify  the quite  serious  harms that  are
intuitively permitted  in cases of futile  resistance. His solution
to this  difficulty is to  suggest that while secondary  threats to
honor  in  the cases  we  are  concerned  with are  not  themselves
seriously harmful, they are  'parasitical' upon their quite serious
primary threats,  such that the standard  for proportionate defense
of honor is actually the seriousness of the primary threat---though
only  in cases  in  which  the primary  threat  cannot be  defended
against. That is,  whether an act of defense is  proportionate to a
threat to honor is determined, in futile resistance cases only, not
by the  seriousness of that  threat but  by the seriousness  of the
primary threat it accompanies---even  though the threat it responds
to  is the  threat to  honor. This  is, as  Statman (2008,  677-80)
admits, an 'oddity' that is unmotivated, but he takes the theory to
require such a move in order to match our intuitions about relevant
cases. While this may be a compelling move if we are convinced that
the status defense view is the right one, it is a strike against it
if we are not.

Frowe instead argues that threats to  (as she prefers to say) moral
standing may simply be quite serious, so that proportionate defense
against  them may  too be  quite  serious. For  Frowe (2016,  166),
secondary threats to standing scale in seriousness with the primary
threats  with which  they are  associated,  and they  add to  those
threats. This  offers a  plausible explanation  for why  threats to
standing are insufficient to merit violent defense in most ordinary
circumstances,  yet why  they  are  sufficient to  do  so in  these
serious  cases. It  also preserves  the proportionality  dependency
between defensive acts and the threats to which they respond.

However,  Frowe's  solution carries  difficulties  of  its own.  An
implication  of  Frowe's solution  is  that  primary and  secondary
threats are additive, in the  sense that the overall seriousness of
a threat is an additive function  of the seriousness of each of the
primary  and  secondary threats.  Thus,  what  is proportionate  in
response to an assault will almost  always be more serious than the
(primary)  assault itself,  since such  assaults will  typically be
attended by an  additional assault upon the  victim's standing. For
instance, when  I threaten  to punch  you, or  kill you,  I (often)
really threaten  to punch-plus-dishonor you,  or kill-plus-dishonor
you,  and the  proportionality of  your permitted  response depends
upon the  seriousness of that  compound attack. This  deserves more
careful consideration, since we normally think that the seriousness
of a permissible defensive act depends upon only the seriousness of
the primary threat to which it responds.[10]

Now,  as Frowe  points out,  if a  defender successfully  averts an
attack,  then she  may also  be thought  to successfully  avert the
attendant  threat  to her  standing,  since  that secondary  threat
(plausibly) depends on  the presence of the  primary threat.[11] In
cases  in which  a defender  cannot avert  the primary  threat, the
defensive harm she is able to muster will ex hypothesi be less than
what  would  be  proportionate  to the  primary  threat.  We  might
therefore  think that  in  all actual  cases,  defensive harms  are
subject to a practical maximum, commensurate in seriousness to that
of the primary threat, which renders the additivity challenge moot.

But this  is not so; we  can imagine cases in  which this practical
maximum is exceeded. Suppose an attacker wrongly threatens a victim
with  some quite  serious  assault  A, which  is  accompanied by  a
corresponding quite serious threat to the victim's honor h. Imagine
that the compound seriousness of these threats is comparable to the
seriousness  of death  (S_(A +  h) ~  S_(death)), though  S_(A) and
S_(h)  individually are  not. Now  imagine that  the victim's  only
options are to do nothing or to  kill her attacker. In such a case,
on Frowe's view, to kill me  would be a proportionate and, all else
equal, permitted defense against my mere assault.[12]

Note, importantly, that  this result is not  attributable merely to
the constrained  choice you face.  If it  were, we should  expect a
moral remainder with respect to  the gap between the seriousness of
my  assault and  the seriousness  of your  defensive act.  But this
cannot be, since your defensive act is proportionate to my compound
attack;  it is  justified, on  Frowe's view,  by the  principles of
defense.

This  amounts  to  a   serious  revisionism  about  proportionality
in  defense  quite  generally.  Most  ordinary  assaults  are  also
accompanied by  an attendant attack upon  victims' standing---cases
of futile  resistance are  not importantly different  from ordinary
defense cases  in this respect.  Frowe's view implies that  we have
been systematically underestimating the  seriousness of what are in
fact compound attacks in all  of these ordinary cases.[13] Yet this
does not seem  to be so: a proportionate defense  against (say) the
threat of a  broken arm is thought to be,  roughly, equivalent to a
broken arm in return---not a broken arm and then some in proportion
to the attendant threat to one's standing.[14]

Now,  this might  not be  troubling  if the  seriousness of  status
assaults were relatively minor, so  that the difference between the
seriousness of such  an assault and death were  not so significant.
But this too cannot be, since  the point of the status defense view
is  to  justify  quite  serious  harms  against  attackers.  (Frowe
herself suggests  that a  broken limb,  for instance,  is plausibly
proportionate to the status assault involved in rape.) Put in terms
of  the  case presented  above,  there  must be  significant  space
between S_(A) and S_(A + h).

Frowe's  revisionism  might ultimately  reflect  the  truth of  the
matter. Perhaps we should revise our proportionality judgments when
we  consider  the  many  attacks on  victims'  honor,  dignity,  or
standing  that  attend  assaults  on ordinary  defense  and  futile
resistance  cases  alike.  But   without  independent  grounds  for
thinking this is so, we  should hesitate to accept this implication
of her view. The status defense  view thus leaves Statman and Frowe
stuck on  alternative horns  of an  uncomfortable dilemma---between
accepting Frowe's  revisionist conclusion or Statman's  ad hoc one.
Put another way, we must choose between taking status threats to be
quite serious, in which case we must accept Frowe's proportionality
revisionism, or we must allow that  status threats are not quite so
serious,  in which  case they  will not  license harm  in cases  of
futile resistance. Neither option is a good one.

Much  of the  status  defense  view's appeal  lies,  I believe,  in
its  being the  best  solution  we have  to  the  puzzle of  futile
resistance.[15]  This is  compelling,  because we  need a  solution
to  this  puzzle. But  if  this  is  so,  the view's  appeal  would
be  importantly  undermined  by  the  availability  of  a  suitable
alternative. In the  remainder of this paper, I  shall outline such
an alternative.

## Protest

The alternative  view I wish to  propose is this: Those  engaged in
acts  of futile  resistance  are  not engaged  in  defense at  all;
instead, they are protesting their  treatment at the hands of their
attackers by expressing rejection of the wrong done to them. Futile
resistance is  a way of  saying 'no'---which in  some circumstances
may  be only  adequately said  with an  act: a  kick, a  scratch, a
punch, and so on.

The  idea  that  acts  of  futile  resistance  carry  an  important
expressive dimension is  not a wholly novel one. What  is new in my
proposal  is  the  claim  that these  expressions  of  protest  are
justified and  regulated by considerations  of fit, and that  it is
these  acts' fit  that  explains  why the  harms  they involve  are
permissible. Acts of futile resistance are justified, I claim, when
and  because  they  are  fitting  expressions  of  rejection  of  a
threatened wrong.

Before  discussing  the  features  of the  protest  view  (as  I'll
call  it),  however,  it  is   worth  pausing  to  motivate  it  as
an  independently  attractive  solution  to the  puzzle  of  futile
resistance.

### Expression

When  victims  resist  superior  attackers, what  are  they  doing?
Are  they defending  themselves,  or are  they  engaging in  futile
resistance? No  doubt in  many real-life cases,  the answer  is not
clear. What begins as an act of attempted defense may become an act
of futile resistance,  for it may only later become  clear that one
is hopelessly outmatched. Even when  this fact seems clear from the
start, one may feel nonetheless that  one ought to try, because one
might just succeed. David, after  all, slew Goliath. Moreover, some
acts may be both defensive  and futile: one may successfully defend
against a particular act (this  assault) while futilely resisting a
wider condition of which that act is partly constituent (slavery).

Yet  while real-life  resistance may  rarely be  clearly futile  or
defensive, we can  imagine clear cases of futile  resistance in the
abstract. We can also imagine  not knowing whether one's resistance
will  be  successful  or  futile while  committing  oneself  to  it
anyway---not because one might just  succeed, but assuming one will
not.  As  an  instance  of  the  latter  kind,  consider  Frederick
Douglass's famous recollection of his confrontation with the 'slave
breaker' Covey. Douglass reports that

 ...  the cowardly  tyrant  asked if  I 'meant  to  persist in  my
 resistance'. I told him 'I did  mean to resist, come what might';
 that I had been by him treated  like a brute, during the last six
 months; and  that I  should stand it  no longer.  (Douglass 1855,
 244, emphasis in the original)

Implied  in  Covey's question  is  the  threat of  reprisal  should
Douglass persist in his resistance,  as well as the certitude that,
eventually, Covey would win---Douglass was  after all a slave in an
entrenched  and brutal  system  of  chattel slavery.  Nevertheless,
Douglass  fought back.  As a  matter  of fact,  Covey's threat  was
empty, and Douglass successfully  defended himself: Covey failed to
beat Douglass on this occasion, and  he never harmed him again. But
this might not have been  the case, as Douglass acknowledges. Covey
might have punished,  persecuted, or even killed  him. Yet Douglass
planned to resist 'come  what might'---in defense or futility---and
his justification for this was that he had been gravely wronged and
that he would permit such wrongs 'no longer'.

Douglass's declaration to Covey is, beneath all else, a refusal. By
promising to fight  back, and then by doing so,  Douglass said 'no'
to Covey's treatment of him. This expression of rejection, in words
and deed,  was called for  regardless of the success  of Douglass's
resistance to Covey.

In  moments  of circumspection,  Statman  and  Frowe make  gestural
remarks that approach  this view. Both, that  is, characterize acts
of futile resistance as expressive acts which express refusal to an
attacker. Here is Statman:

 Concrete acts of resistance are needed in order to communicate to
 the  aggressor,  to ourselves,  and  to  an actual  or  potential
 audience that we are not just passive objects to be trodden upon.
 (Statman 2008, 669)

And Frowe:

 When we  think about what it  is that such [futile]  harms try to
 convey---a  refusal to  be passive,  a refusal  to be  complicit,
 a  means  of asserting  oneself  as  a  person worthy  of  better
 treatment---it seems that ... to manifest such an attitude ... is
 what  constitutes the  defense  of one's  moral standing.  (Frowe
 2016, 167)

Both  recognize,  that is,  the  important  expressive function  of
futile resistance, and both draw  a connection between that and the
purpose  they  take  it  to serve:  insistence  upon  one's  honor,
dignity, or standing.[16]

Crucially,  however,  these  considerations bear  no  philosophical
weight  in  the  accounts  Frowe   and  Statman  offer  about  what
justifies acts of  futile resistance. For them, it is  the right to
self-defense, rather than the importance of any expression of one's
humanity, that permits harms against one's attacker.[17]

Although  it  has gone  unremarked  upon  in the  defensive  ethics
literature,  this idea  echoes a  long tradition  of writing  about
protest  as a  form of  resistance to  the overwhelming  edifice of
racial  oppression, particularly  under circumstances  in which  it
cannot be defeated. Here are some  signal examples: W. E. B Du Bois
(1904,  523) writes  that 'whenever  we submit  to humiliation  and
oppression it  is because  of superior brute  force; and  even when
bending to the  inevitable we bend with  unabated protest'. Bernard
Boxill (1976, 62) writes that 'people do protest their wrongs, even
when it  is clear  that this  will bring  no respite  and, instead,
cause  them further  injury'  and  that such  protest  is not  only
justifiable but required.  For Thomas Hill (1979,  97), 'what makes
symbolic protest commendable'---that is,  protest when there is 'no
reasonable hope'  of averting an  injustice, or indeed  of bringing
about any  beneficial consequences---'is  not intended  results but
the underlying values expressed'.  And Tommie Shelby (2018, 272-73)
writes that 'symbolic  impure dissent can be a  valuable public act
of  protest  ...  But  its  value  is  easily  missed  if  we  fail
to  recognize  that  the  political morality  of  dissent  includes
noninstrumental elements that are purely expressive'.

What  unites  these  remarks  is  the  idea  that  protest  is  the
appropriate response  to wrongs  that can  be neither  accepted nor
defeated.  We should  take these  remarks seriously  when we  think
about the puzzle  of futile resistance. My suggestion  is that when
people engage in  futile resistance, they protest  their wrongs. To
protest one's wrongs is to  express rejection of one's treatment at
the hands  of another---to say 'no',  that one should 'stand  it no
longer'. This  is not defense.  It is,  rather, what one  does when
defense seems sure to fail.

### Fitting expression

If  an expressive  act of  protest is  not justified  as a  form of
defense, then  by what is  it justified? Other discussions  of this
idea have adopted the strategy of identifying a value that symbolic
protest realizes, then  arguing that the importance  of that value,
or the duty to realize it, is what justifies any harm involved.[18]
These strategies,  however, are vulnerable  to counter-productivity
objections as  well as to the  concern that they could  not capture
enough instances of intuitively permissible futile resistance.

By contrast,  I do not  claim that  protest is justified  in virtue
of  the value  it  realizes  or a  duty  it  satisfies. Instead,  I
propose  that protest,  understood as  an expression  of rejection,
is  justified  when and  because  it  is  the fitting  response  to
circumstances of futility.  In other words, it is  what is correct,
appropriate, proper,  apt, and called  for when facing a  threat of
wrongdoing one cannot overcome.

I take the fitting to be a basic normative category[19]---one which
is, in virtue  of this fact, not amenable to  deeper explanation or
analysis. However, like other  basic pieces of normative machinery,
it can  be helpfully described in  other terms. Much as  the reason
relation  is  commonly  described,  though  not  analyzed,  as  the
relation of counting in favor between  a fact and an action, we can
describe the fit relation as one of matching or suiting between two
objects. More  precisely, fit (of  the variety that is  of interest
here) is the relation that stands  between an object and a response
to that  object when,  as Howard (2018;  following Brandt  1946 and
others)  puts  it,  'the  object merits---or  is  worthy  of---that
response'. As I use the term, whenever we say that something is the
'fitting' response, we  can equivalently say that  it is 'correct',
'appropriate', and  other synonyms.  For example, gratitude  is the
correct response to kindness, and blame is the appropriate response
to what is blameworthy.

Fitting  responses   are,  normatively  speaking,  called   for  or
demanded,  and  so  yield  a  pro  tanto  reason  in  favor  of  so
responding. But  they also appear  to bear a  distinctive normative
status. This status is distinctive at least inasmuch as it seems to
be stronger  than mere permission  (one is not merely  permitted to
respond to a kindness with  gratitude) but also clearly weaker than
requirement, duty, or obligation (one  is not required to blame the
blameworthy). The fitting, in other words,  is not merely a form of
value, nor is it a form of duty.[20]

The   question   of  what   range   of   things  can   be   fitting
responses---(emotions?  attitudes?  acts?)---has  been  given  many
answers, and it remains  controversial how fitting responses relate
to moral  judgment and  to reasons for  action.[21] These  are deep
waters which,  however, can  be largely avoided  here. For  in many
contexts, particularly within the domain of interpersonal morality,
expression is itself understood to be directly subject to standards
of  appropriateness, or  fit.[22] In  response to  a kindness,  for
example, not merely the attitude of gratitude but its expression is
what is  called for. It is  appropriate to give thanks,  usually by
saying 'thank you'. To put the point another way, even if one feels
grateful---that is,  possesses the  emotion gratitude---to  fail to
express one's  thanks is  a way  of failing  to meet  the normative
standard to which gratitude is subject. This is the kind of claim I
make  when  I  claim  that  protest  is  the  fitting  response  to
the  circumstances  of futility.  Protest  is  expressive. Such  an
expression  is itself  called for,  I believe,  over and  above any
further  claims  we  might  make about  the  fitting  attitudes  or
emotions that may underly or be reflected in it.

Importantly, such  expression is not  limited to expression  in the
form of  speech. Just as  we can do things  with words, we  can say
things with  acts. Indeed,  engaging in expressive  acts can  be an
important way of adequately expressing oneself. In response to some
deep acts of kindness, for example, acts of thanks may be needed in
order  to  adequately  express  the depth  of  one's  gratitude---a
thoughtful gift or  a deep bow, say---because  merely saying 'thank
you' may not be enough. In this way, certain expressive acts may be
called for as a matter of adequacy,  which is to say as a dimension
of fit.

My claim is that justified acts of futile resistance are like this.
They  are expressive  acts that  are  fitting and  adequate to  the
circumstances they respond  to; and because they  are fitting, they
are,  normatively speaking,  called  for. When  Douglass stands  up
to  Covey's tyranny,  saying---with  his words  but  also with  his
fists---that he has been 'by him  treated like a brute' and that he
will  'stand  it  no  longer', he  correctly  responds  to  Covey's
treatment of him.  This response is what is adequate  to and called
for  in  the  circumstances.  This  is,  I  claim,  what  justifies
Douglass's decision to fight back, 'come what might'.

This idea is, I think, plausible enough on its own. In what remains
here,  however,  I  shall  attempt to  substantiate  it,  first  by
describing  and discussing  some  of the  necessary conditions  for
fitting protest,  then by making  some remarks about what  may make
acts of futile resistance fitting in these cases.

### Necessary conditions

To see what is distinctive about  the protest view, it will help to
compare it with the status defense view.

As  I have  said,  my  claim is  that  permissible  acts of  futile
resistance, understood as expressive acts of protest, are justified
when  and because  they are  fitting. By  contrast, the  principles
of  defensive  ethics require  that  defensive  acts be  necessary,
proportionate, and correctly directed  (i.e. meeting constraints of
liability).  While these  standards  are different,  there is  less
difference here than these formulations might initially suggest.

For one thing, an act of protest can likewise be fitting only if it
is proportionate  to what is  protested.[23] It would not  fit, for
example,  to  protest  some  social  slight  with  disproportionate
reprisal. For another, an act of  protest can be fitting only if it
is correctly  directed. It  would not fit  to protest  one's wrongs
against  one who  is  not liable  for them.[24]  In  this way,  the
protest view  includes corresponding principles  of proportionality
and liability as necessary conditions for fit.

Indeed, I take  expressive acts of protest to be  fitting only when
they are  directed by  the person  who protests  at the  person, or
collective,  who  is responsible  for  what  is protested  against.
Shouting into  the void is not  fitting protest, even if  it may be
other things (such as  cathartic or poetic).[25] Protesting against
wrongs committed by S (the police)  by directing one's protest at P
(one's fellow  citizens) is appropriate  only when the  latter bear
some liability for the wrongs committed by the former.[26]

The  matter of  necessity is  more complex.  Recall that  according
to  the  necessity  condition   on  defensive  action,  only  those
acts  which  are  necessary  to   avert  a  threatened  or  ongoing
wrongful harm---those  which represent the least  harmful effective
means---are permissible. There are, as I have suggested previously,
really two issues of independent concern  here. The first has to do
with the successful avoidance or mitigation of a wrongful threat or
attack. This  is simply about  the achievement of the  goal towards
which defensive action  is basically oriented. An  act which cannot
achieve S cannot be necessary to achieve S. The second issue has to
do with ensuring that the least  harmful means of defense is chosen
from among available effective alternatives; in other words, it has
to do  with the  avoidance of  gratuitous harm.  If two  acts could
achieve  S, then  necessity licenses  only the  act which  is least
harmful.

Notice that if this same standard  were applied directly to acts of
protest,  very little  would  be permitted.  This  is because  very
little is needed  to successfully express rejection of  a wrong. To
utter 'no',  for instance, will  often suffice. Even  raising one's
voice,  and a  fortiori most  expressive acts,  would therefore  be
gratuitous.

But this  train of thought  misunderstands necessity as  applied to
protest,  because it  misunderstands the  basic aim  of expression.
The  basic aim  of fitting  expression  is not  the achievement  of
successful expression.  Rather, it  is the achievement  of adequate
expression. As Anderson writes,

 The basic form of an expressive  norm is: act so as to adequately
 express attitude B toward Z. (Anderson 1995, 33)

When we say that it is fitting to express one's gratitude, not just
any  words of  thanks will  do; we  mean that  adequate thanks  are
demanded. Likewise, when  we say that an apology is  called for, we
mean that an  adequate expression of regret is called  for. In this
way,  for an  act  of protest  to  be fitting,  more  than what  is
strictly necessary to express rejection  will often be demanded. An
act  of protest  can be  fitting  only if  it adequately  expresses
rejection of the wrong in question.

This is  because adequacy is  in many contexts a  central dimension
of  fit.  Here  are  some  further  examples  of  what  I  have  in
mind.  Sympathetic members  of dominant  groups are  often said  to
inadequately protest  the treatment of subjugated  groups. The meek
are  sometimes  said  to  fail  to  adequately  protest  their  own
downtroddenness.  And again,  in  other contexts,  we  may fail  to
adequately express our thanks, our regret, our love, and many other
things besides. In  all of these cases, the charge  of a failure of
adequacy is  that one has  not done  enough to express  oneself, or
otherwise not done  so properly, where 'enough'  and 'properly' can
be analyzed  here only in terms  of fit between the  expression and
its object (between an act of protest and the thing protested).

In  this way,  the requirement  of  adequacy places  a lower  bound
on  fitting action,  whereas  necessity places  an  upper bound  on
defensive action. Adequacy  too, then, is a  necessary condition on
fittingness.

Now, if  adequacy sets a  lower bound  on fitting acts  of protest,
are  acts of  protest  which do  less than  this  (those which  are
inadequate) impermissible?  This may seem  perverse in many  of the
cases that  motivate the puzzle  of futile resistance.  Surely rape
victims  are  not required  to  protest  their wrongs  by  engaging
in  futile resistance,  and  surely the  politically oppressed  are
permitted  to  opt for  the  restrained  but strategically  optimal
course.

While  the protest  view  does imply  that  in such  circumstances,
adequate protest  is called  for, this falls  short of  the further
implication that milder forms of protest are impermissible.

For one thing, this is because  (as mentioned already) there is not
a straightforward  relationship between  the deontic  categories of
the permitted  and the required  and the normative category  of the
fitting. Fitting acts are more  than merely permitted, but they are
less than required. (It is called for, and of course permitted, but
not required that one praise the praiseworthy.)

For another  thing, victims  in the  circumstances of  futility may
have a prerogative  to do less than would  adequately protest their
wrongs. It is  often only victims themselves (if  anyone) who would
be  wronged by  such a  failure, so  they may  plausibly waive  any
complaint against  themselves for  not doing more.[27]  This answer
also squares with  the intuition that when  protesting on another's
behalf, one  really can fail to  do enough, since the  duty in such
cases is other-directed.

Furthermore, if  the adequacy condition  does partly ground  a duty
to  resist,  it is  surely  one  that  interacts  with and  may  be
overridden  by other  moral  and  prudential considerations.  Since
futile resistance  often carries  with it  risk of  further wrongs,
victims may permissibly choose not to protest their wrongs in order
to avoid compounding them.

A  related concern  is that  even if  it is  admitted that  violent
protest is  a fitting  response to wrongs  one cannot  overcome, it
mightn't be  the only fitting response.  King's Selma-to-Montgomery
marches,  for  example,  like  Gandhi's earlier  Salt  March,  were
powerful non-violent  expressions of protest against  conditions of
severe oppression. To use violence in such circumstances, according
to this objection, remains gratuitous.[28]

It is  worth emphasizing  that acts  of non-violent  resistance are
often extremely  costly to  those who participate  in them,  as the
histories  of Indian  independence  and the  American civil  rights
movement demonstrate. Many were severely  beaten or died in service
of these ends (see Miller 1937;  Eckelmann 2008). But the costs are
not only physical. As Gandhi  writes, non-violence is 'an intensely
active, ... inward force' that is 'rooted in internal strength' and
'must  be consciously  exercised' (Gandhi  1942, Volume  I:68); 'it
means  the pitting  of one's  whole soul  against the  will of  the
tyrant' (Gandhi [1920] 1999, 135).[29] In other words, the internal
strength  involved  in  non-violent  protest  is  another  kind  of
substantial cost, over and above the costs imposed by the attacker.
In this  way, non-violence is  often more costly or  difficult than
violent  resistance to  the  same wrong.  Victims  are not  morally
required to  bear these  costs in  order to  prevent harm  to their
attackers.

In some cases, however, non-violent  resistance might be no more or
less  costly to  victims than  violent  resistance, yet  it may  be
thought to do just as well as an apt expression of protest. In such
cases, why is violence not gratuitous?

The  answer,  I believe,  involves  complex  issues concerning  the
fittingness of  non-violent protest which  I can only  partly enter
into  here.  My  suggestion,  in brief,  is  that  non-violence  is
actually not  a fitting  response in  such cases.  As I  explain in
detail in the next section, I take the fittingness of protest to be
grounded  in  the way  that  it  correctly  responds to  the  moral
attitudes conveyed by  a wrongdoer, along lines  first suggested by
Strawson  (1962). The  justification  of  violent resistance  lies,
I  claim,  in  its  being  the  merited  reaction  in  such  cases.
Non-violent resistance, by contrast, is most often characterized as
a  way of  directing  a  gracious attitude  of  love towards  one's
attacker[30]---an  attitude that,  strictly speaking,  they do  not
merit. Indeed,  part of  the power  of non-violence  may be  in the
way  that it  'turns  the other  cheek' rather  than  does what  is
fitting.[31] If this is right,  then the availability of a gracious
response, like the availability of self-sacrificing responses, does
not render the fitting resort to violent resistance gratuitous.[32]

To say  that an act of  protest is fitting  is, on my view,  to say
that it is  proportionate, correctly directed, and  adequate to the
wrong  protested.  This  explains  why victims  engaged  in  futile
resistance may do more than say 'no' or 'stop' to their aggressors.
Sometimes, when a wrong is severe  enough, words may not be enough,
and  only  an  act---and  a  forceful  one  at  that---will  do  to
adequately protest it.  This also helps explain why  some feel they
must resist  even when  doing so  may make them  worse off.  On the
protest view  we can  also claim,  with Statman  and Frowe  as with
Boxill  and Hill,  that by  engaging in  futile resistance  victims
affirm their dignity,  while not also claiming that  these are acts
which defend one's dignity in  Statman's and Frowe's sense. This is
because, as Boxill  (1976, 61) writes, 'when a  person protests his
wrongs, he  expresses a  righteous and self-respecting  concern for
himself'.  One can,  that is,  affirm one's  dignity by  protesting
one's wrongs---without thereby engaging in self-defense.

### Fit-making

Since  my claim  is that  justified acts  of futile  resistance are
fitting acts  of protest,  a further question  is what  makes these
acts fitting. I'll explore one answer to this question now.

The question of  what makes the fitting fit turns  not only on this
question's most general  form (a question about  the metaphysics of
fit)  but  also substantially  on  questions  about the  nature  of
fit's objects.  Just as  we can  learn about  what makes  thanks or
blame fitting  by attending  to the nature  of gratitude  and moral
appraisal,  we can  attend  to basic  features  of the  interaction
between attacker and victim in  cases of futile resistance in order
to  discover what  may make  acts of  futile resistance  fitting in
those cases.

This strategy is supported by the observation that fit and the idea
of fitting  response appear closely  linked to a central  aspect of
interpersonal morality. To see what I  have in mind in saying this,
it will help to consider  the view presented in Strawson's 'Freedom
and Resentment' (1962).

Strawson's central notion  there is, famously, that  of a 'reactive
attitude', an attitude of moral appraisal---'resentment, gratitude,
forgiveness'  and so  on (194)---that  we take  towards someone  in
response to the attitudes their behavior manifests towards us. They
are reactions  which we  judge by whether  they are  appropriate or
inappropriate to the circumstances---or in other words by standards
of fit.[33]  Strawson claims, for  example, that resentment  is the
appropriate response  to 'contempt, indifference,  or malevolence',
gratitude  the appropriate  response  to  'goodwill, affection,  or
esteem',  and forgiveness  the appropriate  response to  contrition
(191).

These attitudes are also united in that they 'belong to involvement
or participation with others  in interpersonal human relationships'
(194) and centrally 'involve, or  express, a certain sort of demand
for  interpersonal  regard'  (201).  It  is  our  participation  in
interpersonal relationships  that makes  the normative  standard of
appropriateness and inappropriateness apply.  This is, if you like,
Strawson's claim about what makes the reactive attitudes fitting.

The  counterpart to  the  'participant attitude'  is what  Strawson
calls  the  'objective  attitude,'  the attitude  we  take  towards
towards  someone  or something  that  is  not morally  appraisable.
Strawson primarily  discusses occasions  on which we  might rightly
take the objective attitude towards  someone: when they are, due to
age or mental incapacity, not 'fully responsible agents' (193). But
if there are occasions on which one may rightly regard another with
the objective attitude,  there must also be occasions  on which one
might wrongly doing so.

The  cases  of  futile  resistance  we  have  been  discussing  are
plausibly of this  kind. That is, they may  be particularly serious
cases of wrongly taking the objective attitude towards someone who,
on the contrary, merits interpersonal regard. The harms involved in
rape,  slavery, and  other severe  wrongs  are bad  enough. But  to
act  in such  cases  so as  to  leave one's  victim  with only  one
prudentially  rational  option---submit---all  while  ignoring  the
clear and urgent claims she has  that you treat her differently, is
to commit an additional, very deep  wrong. It is to refuse, through
one's actions,  to regard her  as a  member of the  moral community
owed interpersonal regard.

This  expressed attitude  has a  fitting response,  as perhaps  all
directed  attitudes  do.  It  is,   I  believe,  rejection  of  the
attacker's refusal of regard.  When someone says (including through
their acts),  'you are not  owed interpersonal regard' or  'you are
not a co-member of the moral community', the fitting response is to
insist on the  truth that you are. There may,  in various cases, be
various  ways  of expressing  this  truth.[34]  As I  have  argued,
however,  in the  most  severe cases,  to  adequately reject  one's
subjection to  the circumstances  of futility may  require forceful
expression. Indeed,  one's words may  simply be inadequate,  and an
expressive act,  including perhaps a  violent act, may  be demanded
instead.

These reflections offer a further clue about the difference between
the  status  defense  view  and  the protest  view  that  is  worth
highlighting.

Strawson includes  among the  class of  circumstances in  which the
objective  attitude is  rightly  adopted towards  another those  in
which someone is  to be taken 'precautionary account  of' (194), or
in  which 'reasons  of policy  or self-protection'  (197) centrally
bear. The suggestion, I take it,  is that we might understand cases
of self-defense as  cases in which a victim  permissibly adopts the
objective attitude towards an attacker.  I think this suggestion is
correct; if  it is, I also  think it points to  something important
about what distinguishes defense from protest.

To adopt the  objective attitude towards people  is, Strawson says,
to treat them as something 'to  be managed or ... avoided' (194) or
'as creatures to be handled' (197). Importantly, this is compatible
with their  being seen as  objects of  moral concern and  indeed as
holders of rights,  as the archetypal examples of  children and the
mentally  infirm  demonstrate.  To  engage with  someone  from  the
standpoint  of  this attitude  is,  however,  to engage  with  them
instrumentally: they become, through  our acts, instruments of 'our
own  interest,  or  our  side's,  or  society's---or  even  theirs'
(ibid.).

Put differently,

 If your attitude towards someone is wholly objective, then though
 you may  fight him, you cannot  quarrel with him, and  though you
 may talk to him, even negotiate  with him, you cannot reason with
 him. (195)

In  this way,  for  example,  throwing a  grenade  to forestall  an
attacker is not fundamentally different  from throwing a grenade to
derail  a  runaway  railcar.  Though there  are  moral  constraints
governing  injury  to  humans  that  do  not  apply  to  damage  to
railcars, the attitude---objective  versus participant---adopted by
the  defender towards  the attacker  and the  railcar is  the same:
their (or  its) destruction is  not a form  of engagement, it  is a
means to the prevention of harm.

By contrast, protest, like expressions of blame and gratitude, is a
way  of interpersonally  engaging---talking, quarreling---with  the
person  to  whom the  protest  is  directed,  a  way of  making  an
interpersonal moral claim. This  contrast is telling, even granting
proponents of  the status defense  view their position.  If harming
someone is  a way to defend  one's dignity or standing,  then these
harms should be instruments to that end, and their ability to serve
this end should be what justifies them.  But if this is so, then it
cannot be claimed, as Statman  claims, that acts of resistance 'are
needed in order to communicate to the aggressor ... that we are not
just passive  objects to  be trodden upon';  nor, as  Frowe claims,
that to 'convey' refusal and  dignity through futile harms 'is what
constitutes the  defense of  one's moral standing'.  For expressing
these  things  through  one's  acts  of  resistance  is  a  way  of
expressing reactive  attitudes towards one's attacker,  or in other
words of taking up the participant attitude toward them. This is at
odds  with the  attitude  we  take towards  attackers  as means  to
defensive ends.  If defense involves taking  the objective attitude
towards one's  attacker, then these  forms of expression  cannot be
more than  incidentally related  to the defensive  justification of
acts of resistance.[35]

Statman and  Frowe might  reply that engaging  interpersonally with
one's attacker  by communicating one's  dignity to them is  how one
defends one's honor, or standing,  and that the distinction between
the  objective  and reactive  attitudes  does  not apply  here.  If
fitting expression  is defense,  however, and defense  is affirming
one's dignity,  then one wonders  whether defense as such  is doing
any real justificatory work at all,  or why we should appeal to it.
We  can instead  appeal  to  the appropriateness  of  this kind  of
expression directly.

## Conclusion

I have argued that victims engaged in acts of futile resistance are
engaged in  a form of  protest, including when their  protest takes
the form of  violent acts. I have also argued  that such protest is
justified  when (and  because) it  is the  fitting response  to the
circumstances of futility and the  wrongs involved therein. If I am
right, then  the solution to  the puzzle of futile  resistance lies
not in the ethics of defense but in the ethics of protest.

I have argued this point  narrowly---by claiming that the puzzle of
futile  resistance demands  a solution,  that extant  solutions are
inadequate,  and  that  the  protest  view  succeeds  where  others
fail---but it  points the way  toward larger conclusions.  The view
suggests  that  protest  generally, including  therefore  political
protest, is regulated by considerations  of fit. When we judge acts
of  protest, then,  it may  often  be wrong  to focus  on the  ends
achieved (or  achievable). It may also  be wrong to think,  as many
do, that violence is always to  be condemned. Rather, it may be the
only response adequate to the circumstances.[36]

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[1]  To be  'necessary'  in this  context is  to  be (roughly)  the
least  harmful  effective  means  of defense  rather  than,  as  it
might otherwise  seem, causally  necessary. See Oberman  (2020) and
Lazar  (2012)  on  defensive  necessity  generally.  Necessity  and
effectiveness are usually taken  to apply prospectively: an agent's
defensive act is justified if she reasonably believes the act to be
necessary  and  effective  (see  Uniacke 2014).  My  discussion  in
what  follows  is  agnostic  between  so-called  'internalism'  and
'externalism'  about liability  and  necessity  (see McMahan  2016;
Firth and Quong 2012; Frowe 2014, ch. 4; Oberman 2020, sec. 7).

[2]  Statman (2008),  666-667;  Frowe (2016),  159-161; though  see
Ferzan  (2018)  for  a  partial defense  of  a  desert-based  view.
Overland  (2011)   proposes  a  forfeiture-based  account   of  the
permissibility of  futile resistance. I'll not  rehearse objections
to forfeiture views  here except to note that the  claim 'S lacks a
right against  my PHI-ing'  is not  the same as  the claim  that my
PHI-ing  is  morally  justified.  My view  is  that  imposing  harm
requires  moral  justification  even  when someone  lacks  a  right
against  suffering it,  and  that not  just  any 'minor  subjective
benefit' (247)  enjoyed by the one  imposing the harm will  do. See
Benbaji  and Statman  (2021) for  detailed criticism  of Overland's
view.  See also  Oberman (2020,  456; citing  Draper 2015,  67) and
Quong  (2020, 6;  citing Fabre  2009),  for a  similar point  about
justification. See Renzo (2017) on forfeiture views generally.

[3] Additional  sustained challenges  for the status  defense view,
and for Frowe in particular, are  raised by Bowen (2016) and Ferzan
(2018). Bowen  pursues two principal  lines of objection:  (1) that
Frowe cannot avoid licensing  ex-post ('deferred') harms in defense
of a  victim's status, and  (2) that her view  has (to his  mind; I
am  less  sure)  intuitively  unacceptable  implications  regarding
permitted counter-defense.  Ferzan likewise believes Frowe  has not
successfully ruled out deferred  harming, and argues that necessary
refinements  to Frowe's  view---regarding the  mechanics and  moral
nature of  status attacks---point  to the  conclusion that  acts of
futile resistance are actually expressive rather than defensive---a
point Bowen also  notes, and a point with which  I of course agree.
The two objections I raise below for Statman and Frowe are distinct
from those raised by Bowen and Ferzan, and my elaboration of a view
that takes expression to be central to the justification of acts of
futile resistance goes substantially beyond the suggestions offered
by those authors.

[4] Discussions  of the  ethics of  defense often  explicitly limit
their objects to  these things. See Coons and Weber  (2016) and the
authors in that collection.

[5]  All this  is pace  Steinhoff (2015),  who appeals  to ordinary
language to justify a broad notion of defense as anything amounting
to resistance. He does  not, however, consider counterexamples such
as those mentioned here.

[6] Appiah (2010) says that honor  is not 'part of morality' but is
'allied' with it. Kumar and Campbell  (2016) analyze it as a 'moral
attitude' having to  do with respect that can 'hinder  or aid moral
progress'. Krause (2002) treats it as a political concept that sits
uneasily astride liberal values and likewise can be used in service
of moral or non-moral ends.

[7] Oberman (2020) raises an aligned concern for Statman's view: In
many more cases than Statman allows,  'there is no reason to assume
that a  victim's honor  needs defense' (451)  since anyone  with an
'ordinary sense  of self'  can be 'sufficiently  secure in  her own
standing that [an] Attacker cannot threaten it' (n. 16).

[8] Bowen (2016, 90-91)  makes a different burden-shifting argument
against the status defense view. Ferzan (2018, 691-92) also wonders
whether 'attacks on  honor' are 'just culpability  by another name'
and offers some considerations in favor of that conclusion.

[9] For more on proportionality,  see Uniacke (2011). Note that the
proportionality  principle  is  concerned only  with  excessiveness
which arises in virtue of the comparison between the seriousness of
the defensive  act and the  attack it  averts. A defensive  act can
also be excessive in virtue of being unnecessary to the achievement
of a defensive end. This is  of course the concern of the necessity
principle.

[10] Must Frowe take these threats  to be additive? After all, they
threaten quite  different objects. But ordinary  (physical) threats
do combine, and I can see no reason for denying that these threats,
as  proper  objects  of  defensive action,  combine  as  well.  The
challenge may be posed as  a dilemma: either these threats combine,
in which case Frowe faces  the proportionality objection I raise in
this section,  or the  threats do  not combine  in virtue  of their
different objects, in which case the  need for Frowe to explain why
these objects are  both proper objects of defensive  action is even
more acute. I thank a referee for pressing this point.

[11] Frowe  (2016, 167)  writes, 'If  ... the  moral standing-based
justification  for harming  supervenes  upon the  existence of  the
primary threat, this entails that once the primary, physical threat
is over,  the threat  to moral  standing (notice:  not the  harm to
moral standing)  is also  over'. Of  course, this  dependency claim
might be doubted  with respect to all relevant cases,  for it seems
plausible  that  one's  honor,  dignity, or  moral  standing  could
continue to be threatened even  when a corresponding primary threat
fails  or is  defeated. (See  Bowen 2016,  86-87, for  criticism of
Frowe's supervenience argument  in this vein; and  see Ferzan 2018,
692-93, for a  similar objection.) I shall argue  that Frowe's view
faces serious  objections whether or  not we grant  this dependency
claim.

[12] Intuitions  about proportionality  vary widely,  and assigning
precise  proportionality weights  to imagined  cases can  sometimes
seem ridiculous. To  help see the force of  the objection, however,
imagine the following case:

 An attacker, motivated  by feelings of hatred,  violently beats a
 helpless victim---a  physical attack commensurate  in seriousness
 to injury requiring long-term use  of a wheelchair. The manner of
 this  attack also  represents an  attack on  the victim's  status
 that  is  very  serious---40%  as bad  as  the  physical  assault
 itself---commensurate  in  seriousness to  significant  long-term
 pain.

Let's  stipulate  that neither  attack  alone  is proportionate  to
death,  but  that  taken  together they  are.  Frowe  is  committed
to  the view  that  while  neither attack  alone  is sufficient  to
license deadly defense, together  they are---such that were killing
possible,  it would  be permitted.  It is  difficult to  understand
this  commitment  other than  as  a  serious revision  to  ordinary
proportionality judgments.

[13] Alternatively,  Frowe might argue  that it is not  our overall
judgments about  proportionate force that  must be revised  but our
view of those judgments' components. We have not noticed, she might
say,  that in  many ordinary  cases, proportionality  depends on  a
compound of what would be proportionate in response to both primary
and  secondary (status)  threats. But  if this  were so,  we should
notice clear intuitive differences in what would be a proportionate
response  to  otherwise  similar   attacks  with  differing  status
components---being beaten by someone who rains down slurs and yells
'you  are a  cockroach!' versus  someone  who beats  you simply  in
order to  take your  money, for example.  But such  differences are
not  intuitively apparent  (to me,  anyway). Moreover,  rather than
being  a significant  revision to  proportionality judgments,  this
would  instead  be a  significant  discovery  about the  nature  of
proportionality. This  too would demand greater  justification than
Frowe  provides. My  thanks  to  a referee  for  encouraging me  to
clarify this point.

[14] To be clear, few  think that proportionality requires anything
like simple equivalence between the seriousness of a defensive harm
and the attack it responds to,  and that is not my suggestion here.
However, the thought that it requires, in light of various relevant
deontic considerations, a rough commensurability between the two is
common. (See e.g. Rodin (2011, 80); McMahan (2017, 131).)

Others hold the view that a  proportionate defense may be much more
serious  than  the  threat  it responds  to.  For  instance,  Quong
suggests at one  point that a defensive harm four  times as serious
as the  threat it averts could  be proportionate. His view  is that
proportionality is  determined by the  'stringency' of the  right a
threat would violate,  i.e. what it would take  to justify imposing
equivalent  harm  on  an  innocent  bystander  (Quong  2020,  109).
However, if  status threats  themselves violate  defensible rights,
then a version of the objection  I have made here will still arise.
(Frowe's own view of  what proportionality substantively permits is
far less permissive than Quong's (see Frowe 2016, 166-67).)

[15]  Frowe (2016,  162) says  as much:  'The moral  standing-based
justification  for harming  is  appealing because  it captures  our
sense that victims need not be  passive in the face of attacks that
they cannot avert'.

[16]  Ferzan  (2018,  693-94),   reflecting  on  Frowe,  makes  the
suggestion explicit:  'perhaps defending  honor is  more expressive
than defensive ... 'fighting back' has intrinsic expressive value'.
Similarly, Bowen (2016, 90), reflecting  on Statman, writes that 'I
think ...  there is expressive  value realised when  victims defend
themselves, even when  they know that this defence is  not going to
avert the  physical threat  they face'. Neither,  however, develops
the  proposal substantially  beyond  this suggestion.  (Nor, in  my
view,  do  we  need  to  appeal to  the  murky  idea  of  intrinsic
expressive value.)

[17]  Although it  may seem  tempting, the  two thoughts  cannot be
simply combined into  the view that expression of  status values is
defense and  that therefore the  right to self-defense  covers such
expression.  If defense  of  one's status  just is  ('constitutes')
manifestation of an attitude of  refusal, then no 'concrete acts of
resistance' would  be necessary to accomplish  this defense: merely
saying  'no'  would  be  enough.  Moreover, if  we  appeal  to  the
morality of expression in order  to explain why expressive acts are
permitted, we gain nothing by  adding that these acts 'constitute[]
the  defense of  one's moral  standing'; we  should instead  appeal
directly to the norms governing expression,  as I suggest we do. My
thanks to a referee for encouraging me to address this point.

[18] For  instance, Boxill  argues that protest  serves evidentiary
value, to oneself, of one's  own self-respect, and Hill argues that
protesting injustice satisfies a duty to dissociate from evil.

[19] See  Berker (2022);  Howard (2019).  It is  worth emphasizing,
however, that  my argument here  does not depend on  any particular
view about the relationship between the category of the fitting and
other basic normative categories or concepts.

[20] For  more on  this topic, see  again Berker  (2022, especially
sec. 4).

[21] D'Arms and Jacobson (2000) and Shoemaker (2017) make important
recent contributions  regarding this  question. On the  question of
whether acts  can be directly  fitting, Howard (2018, n.  2) offers
some brief remarks and historical references.

[22]  Elizabeth Anderson  is  an important  standard-bearer of  the
tradition that recognizes fit  applies directly to expression, even
if this is  taken to be ultimately in virtue  of the way expression
outwardly manifests fitting attitudes  (see Anderson 1995; Anderson
and Pildes 2000, 1506-8).

[23] That proportionality is a  necessary condition for fit is also
noted by (among others) D'Arms & Jacobson (2000, 74) and Srinivasan
(2018, 130).

Is the protest view is  vulnerable to the same additivity objection
leveled at the status defense view  in sec. 3.2? For when one could
successfully  defend oneself  (by doing  PHI), might  one not  also
permissibly  protest one's  wrongs  (by doing  PSI), thereby  doing
additional  permitted harm  to  one's aggressor  (PHI  + PSI)?  But
because  defense and  protest are  different kinds  of response  to
wrongdoing,  regulated  by  different  principles,  defensive  acts
and  acts of  protest  do not  straightforwardly  combine. (On  the
non-additive nature of fitingness facts, see also Maguire (2018).)

[24]  For example,  it  was  important that  the  actions taken  in
Detroit's Uprising of 1967 targeted  shops and buildings in Detroit
rather than just across the river in Windsor, Ontario.

[25]  If  fitting  protest  is   (as  I  have  suggested)  normally
directed at a  wrongdoer, what if the wrongdoer  refuses to listen,
or  communication  otherwise  fails?  Directed  expression  can  be
appropriate,  I believe,  even when  'robust' communication  is not
achieved. To  say something to  someone does not require  that they
listen, and  if they do  not listen, it is  not the same  as having
said something to no one, or as having said nothing. Indeed, it may
be that  what matters is just  that the target of  one's expression
could listen. Think  here of expressive theories  of punishment: if
an offender refuses to hear their punishment's insistence that they
have done wrong, it seems no less worth saying. But if the offender
could not  hear the message, then  what would be the  point? (I set
aside,  of course,  views on  which the  expressive aim  is to  say
something to the victim or to society.)

[26] One might also worry that  the protest view cannot account for
the apparent permissibility, in some  cases, of killing in protest.
If fitting protest must be directed, how could one express anything
to someone whom one kills? But the protest view does not (normally)
license killing. When one has the ability to kill, one also has the
ability  to  defend oneself.  Protest  is,  I have  suggested,  the
fitting response  to wrongs  one can  neither permit  nor overcome.
When threatened wrongs  can be overcome, expressive  acts no longer
seem clearly demanded.

Not all cases are like this, however. Suppose one is under the heel
of an oppressive machine that one cannot topple, but that one could
dismantle some  small part  of the machine  in protest,  perhaps by
killing one  of its  agents. Surely even  lethal resistance  may be
called for  in some such cases?  The answer depends on  whether one
can express something to someone whom one kills, or else (say) to a
collective agent of which they are  a part. It also depends, in the
latter  case,  on complex  questions  of  individual liability  for
collective wrongs.  If these conditions  are met, then  the protest
view might indeed  license killing. If not, then  killing could not
be fitting---but this strikes me as  a natural limit to the protest
view. I thank a referee for pressing this point.

[27] In some cases, victims may owe it to themselves to do more and
may be  open to criticism  for failing to  do so. Think  of charges
like 'I really should have stood up for myself'.

[28] I thank a referee for pressing this objection.

[29] King (1958, 90) makes  similar claims, e.g.: '[Nonviolence] is
ultimately the  way of the  strong man.  ... The method  is passive
physically, but strongly active spiritually'. See also King (1963).

[30]  See e.g.  King (1958,  ch.  6). King  there recasts  Gandhi's
metaphysical notion  of satyagraha using the  Christian language of
love, but the ideas are much the same.

[31]  If  non-violence  is  not   a  fitting  response  to  certain
wrongs---wrongs which,  on my  view, call for  forceful expressions
of  protest---is  it  (even  pro   tanto)  wrong  to  respond  with
non-violence? This too may seem deeply counterintuitive. My view is
that on  the contrary, in  such cases  it is permissible  to choose
non-violence for the same sort  of reason that it's permissible not
to blame even when blame is called for, or to let go of one's anger
even when anger is appropriate.  These are, as it were, permissible
acts of grace, and a general account of the moral dynamics of grace
will  explain  their  permissibility  in  these  cases.  (See  e.g.
Pettigrove (2012).)

[32] One  might also opt,  all things considered,  for non-violence
for  strategic reasons  (Sharp 1973),  for religious  reasons (e.g.
Gandhi 1951),  or as  a method  of moral  repair (Zheng  2021). But
these  are independent  considerations  which do  not  bear on  the
gratuitousness of violence as a fitting form of protest.

[33]  Strawson's  view is  a  locus  classicus  of modern  work  on
fittingness in the moral domain. Scanlon (1986, 2008), Smith (2012,
2015), and  Darwall (2006), among  others, all develop  Strawson in
this direction. Shoemaker (2017)  explicitly presents a fittingness
interpretation.

[34] It might  be thought that, even if rejection  of this attitude
is the fitting response to it, an inner attitude of rejection might
suffice.  As  argued  earlier,  however,  in  many  paradigm  cases
of  interpersonal  response, a  merely  fitting  attitude would  be
inadequate. When  one owes thanks or  apology, it is not  enough to
feel thankful or apologetic, one  must express one's feeling to the
person towards whom it is felt. To fail to say thank you, or sorry,
is in  an important way  to fail to  give thanks, or  apologize, at
all. Very serious wrongs are no  different in this respect. When we
say that  it is fitting  to insist on the  truth that you  are owed
interpersonal regard, this also means that  it is fitting to say so
to the  person who would  deny you it. My  thanks to a  referee for
pressing this point.

[35]  One might  take the  objective attitude  towards an  attacker
while also  trying to appeal  to them on  moral grounds, or  take a
not-fully-objective attitude towards them (as we do with children).
But the possibility  of mixed cases does not  undermine the general
point that  the basic orientation of  defense is (as we  might say)
'objective' whereas protest is 'participant oriented'.

[36] Many  people have helped me  with the ideas presented  in this
paper. I am especially grateful  to Selim Berker, James Brandt, and
two referees at  MIND for their helpful and  detailed comments. For
thoughtful discussion,  I am also grateful  to friends, colleagues,
teachers,  and audiences  at  Harvard University,  LMU Munich,  the
Central  European University,  to  Holly Dykstra,  and to  Lavender
McKittrick-Sweitzer and her social and political philosophy seminar
at Butler University.