Sentinel Philosophy: The Danger of Moral Exclusion

Professor Susan Opotow

The most dangerous thing that anyone can say to anybody else is that right and wrong no longer applies to them. People often claim that because of who someone is, or what they have done, or what they have said, they are no longer part of the same moral community as everyone else. This specific phenomenon is what Susan Opotow calls moral exclusion.

Opotow argues that in everyday life we tend to assume people exist within what she calls the scope of justice. Most people deserve respect and compassion, and they shouldn't be harmed. People can be pushed outside of this scope however. When they are excluded like this they are seen as undeserving of moral concern, and you can be as cruel as you like to those people.

For Opotow moral exclusion comes in three stages. The first stage is difference. We decide they aren't like us so we set them apart because they don't look, behave, or think like us. Second we moralize that difference. We start to say that being different in this or that way always makes a person bad. The third and most dangerous stage is the actual exclusion. We say that because they are bad the normal rules don't apply. They are placed beyond compassion, justice, and morality itself.

If somebody cheats on their partner it doesn't mean that they no longer matter as a human being. They are still part of the moral community. It is sometimes said that we should judge a civilization by how well it treats its criminals and its deviants. One of civilization's greatest achievements isn't about being kind to people that we love. It is believing that even the people we despise remain inside our moral circle.