Socrates' harm thesis

Socrates famously held that a wrongdoer harms themselves more than they harm their victim.

This is a correct rule of thumb, but I doubt that it is true in general.

First, Socrates was probably thinking of the harm to self resulting from becoming a vicious person. But one can imagine cases where a wrongdoer does not become any more vicious, because they have already maxed out on the vice. I don’t know if such cases are real, though.

But here is a more realistic kind of case. It is said that often abusers were themselves abused. Thus it seems that by abusing another one may cause them to become an abuser. Suppose Alice physically abuses Bob and thereby causes Bob to become an abuser. Then Alice has produced three primary harms:

1. Bob’s physical suffering

2. Bob’s being an abuser, and

3. Alice’s being an abuser.

It seems, then, that Alice has harmed Bob worse than she has harmed herself. For she has harmed herself by turning herself into an abuser. But she has harmed Bob by both turning Bob into an abuser and making him suffer physically.

Objection 1: If Bob becomes an abuser because he was abused, then his responsibility for being an abuser is somewhat mitigated, and hence the moral harm to Bob is less than the moral harm to Alice.

Response: Maybe. But this objection fails if we further suppose that Alice herself was the victim of similar abuse, which mitigated her responsibility to exactly the same degree as Alice’s abuse of Bob mitigates Bob’s responsibility.

Objection 2: One does not cause another to become vicious: one at worst provides an occasion for them to choose to become vicious.

Response: Whether one causes another to become vicious or not is beside the point. One harms the other by putting them in circumstances where they are likely to be vicious. This is why corrupting the youth is so wicked, and why Jesus talks of millstones in connection with those who make others trip up.