Whenever a shooting event, like the murder-suicide at UCLA, gains national notoriety, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over \u201cour\u201d alleged failure to deal adequately with issues of \u201cmental health.\u201d Tragically, it is the rarest of figures who dares to challenge this consensus. But challenge it we must, for as innocuous as the term sounds, \u201cmental health\u201d is fraught with philosophically problematic assumptions and implications.<\/p>\n
First, the sole <\/em>reason for concluding that, say, Maimak Sarkar, the UCLA gunman, is \u201cmentally ill\u201d is that he became a murderer. Yet this in turn logically implies that anyone <\/em>who murders is \u201cmentally ill.\u201d However, if the latter is true, then this means that such 20th<\/sup> century genocidal killers as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao; infamous mobsters like Al Capone, John Gotti, and James \u201cWhitey\u201d Bulger; those members of the KKK who terrorized and murdered blacks; homicidal inner city gangbangers; and members of ISIS are all \u201cmentally ill.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet these classes of killers are never described as \u201cmentally ill\u201d by those who can\u2019t resist labeling as such school shooters and the like. This is because the former belong to different political-moral templates: \u201cideology,\u201d \u201cracism,\u201d \u201cpower,\u201d \u201cgreed,\u201d \u201coppression,\u201d \u201cextremism,\u201d and the like.<\/p>\n Second, the only reason for regarding as \u201cill\u201d one who acts murderously or violently is the metaphysically dubious supposition that humans are, by nature, essentially good. <\/em>This is an article of faith, a normative theory that, unlike, say, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, flies in the face of the history of the human species. Indeed, this vision of humanity is so<\/em> counterfactual that we\u2019d be far more justified in endorsing the judgment of Dr. Sawyer, the miserable psychiatrist from Miracle on 34th<\/sup> Street, <\/em>that it is those who seek to do good <\/em>who are \u201cmentally ill\u201d (or \u201cmaniacal,\u201d as he put it).<\/p>\n Third, if murderers are \u201cmentally ill,\u201d then rapists, armed robbers, and violent-doers of all sorts must be as well. In all fairness, the \u201cmental health\u201d enthusiasts don\u2019t deny this. In fact, as far as they\u2019re concerned, \u201cmental illness\u201d extends well beyond violence to explain even those select thoughts and feelings that the \u201cexperts\u201d assure us are a function of bad health.<\/p>\n Fourth, as the late, prolific psychiatrist Thomas Szasz never tired of informing audiences, though the judgments of psychologists and psychiatrists are cloaked in medical terminology, this is just a veneer designed to mask moral <\/em>judgments. Yet the latter, even when they are negative, are consonant with human dignity, the dignity that derives from the uniquely human ability to make choices. <\/em><\/p>\n In stark contrast, to explain away a person\u2019s thoughts, feelings, and actions in terms of sickness <\/em>most definitely is <\/em>an attack against one\u2019s dignity as a person. In giving up the language of morality<\/em>\u2014a language that pertains uniquely to persons, to subjects or rational beings\u2014to explain human conduct in favor of the language of science<\/em>, an idiom the subject matter of which consists of objects, <\/em>human beings are reduced to things. Persons under the aspect of science, even if it is pseudo-science, are no longer persons<\/em> but animal bipeds<\/em>. They are no longer agents<\/em> or actors<\/em> exercising intelligence but fields<\/em> within which impersonal forces<\/em> or processes<\/em> operate.<\/p>\n Fifth, once human agency and, hence, human dignity has been pushed aside\u2014once it\u2019s been declared by the \u201cexperts\u201d that a person is \u201csick\u201d\u2014than there is no limit to the indignities that could be visited upon that person in the name of either \u201chealing\u201d him or, quite possibly, ending<\/em> his \u201csuffering.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the principle of reciprocity or proportionality\u2014a moral <\/em>concept\u2014places a line between the permissible and impermissible in distributing retributive justice. Yet this principle has no place within the contexts of \u201cmental illness\u201d and \u201ctreatment.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, since \u201cmental health\u201d and \u201cevil\u201d belong to two, entirely distinct universes of discourse, those who insist upon describing college campus, elementary school, and movie theater killers as \u201csick\u201d or \u201cmentally ill\u201d are no more justified in regarding them as \u201cevil\u201d than they would be if they described cancer patients as evil. Not only are such folks not evil; not unlike the victims of cancer, they deserve our pity, our compassion.<\/p>\n Conversely, if we insist that these murderers are<\/em> evil, then we must resist all attempts to label them \u201cmentally ill.\u201d<\/p>\n We can\u2019t have it both ways.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whenever a shooting event, like the murder-suicide at UCLA, gains national notoriety, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over \u201cour\u201d alleged failure to deal adequately with issues of \u201cmental health.\u201d Tragically, it is the rarest of figures who dares to challenge this consensus. But challenge it we must, for as innocuous as the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n