The Ethical Undead

A Deontological Framework for the Contemporary Vampire

Disclaimer: This is a student midterm paper written for PHI2630, Contemporary Moral Philosophy, at the University of Florida.

Introduction

The contemporary, ethical vampire must weigh its survival instincts of drinking human blood against their rigid set of morals. Under a Kantian deontological framework, the vampire must accept that all humans have infinite moral value and must therefore not be treated as simple means to an end (Shafer-Landau, 2011). This creates an ethical dilemma for the immortal vampire because without consuming human blood, the condition is comparable to starving to death without actually dying (Stoker, 1993). This paper will argue that the contemporary vampire must adopt a strict deontological framework in order to be an ethical being. Consuming human blood without explicit, uncoerced consent is morally impermissable, even to alleviate intense, perpetual suffering.

Exposition

Before arguing that vampires must obtain explicit, uncoerced consent of humans in order to permissibly drink their blood, there are some traits and terms that must be defined.

As stated in the introduction, vampires are immortal beings that can only digest human blood (Stoker, 1993). Failing to drink human blood will not kill them, but it will inflict a state of agony equivalent to a human’s starvation (Stoker, 1993). Animal blood provides no sustenance or relief, and will not be considered as an alternative (Stoker, 1993). Limited drinking of human blood will not harm the human or kill them, though mental distress is a separate consideration (Stoker, 1993). Additionally, vampires are naturally consent-driven creatures and already require explicit, spoken consent to cross the threshold of a human’s property (Stoker, 1993). This is because it is assumed that bodily autonomy and integrity of moral agents are foundational rights.

Moral agents, as used in this paper to refer to humans and vampires alike, are beings capable of moral reasoning who understand right from wrong, choosing actions based on a set of ethical principles (Shafer-Landau, 2011). Moral patients are beings worthy of moral consideration who can be wronged, regardless of whether they can reason morally (Shafer-Landau, 2011). In this paper, humans, vampires and animals qualify as moral patients.

Reference and Argument

In “Puppies, pigs, and people: Eating meat and marginal cases,” Alistair Norcross argues against factory farming and meat-eating by humans, because animals are moral patients (Norcross, 2004). Torturing them for the mere gustatory pleasure of eating meat is morally impermissible (Norcross, 2004). If Norcross’ logic is applied to the vampire dilemma, we get: If it is wrong to torture a morally considered animal for human gustatory pleasure, it is infinitely worse for a vampire to torture a human for gustatory pleasure because Kant said that humans have infinite moral value (Norcross, 2004) (Shafer-Landau, 2011). Because the vampire will not die from blood deprivation, as the human will not die from meat-abstinence, a vampire’s feeding without consent reduces the human to a means to alleviate the vampire’s pain; This is a direct violation of the Kantian ethics.

The idea that vampires must obtain consent before feeding on human blood so that they avoid treating humans as means to an end, which is impermissible, can be written as follows:

1. All humans are moral patients with infinite moral value and must always be treated as ends to themselves, never as simple means to an end; And vampires are moral agents who are bound by moral duties, and because they are immortal, refraining from blood will not result in their death.
2. Consuming a human’s blood without their explicit, uncoerced consent treats that human as a simple means to alleviate the vampire’s physical suffering.
3. Therefore, it is morally impermissible for a vampire to consume human blood without explicit, uncoerced consent because that means that they are treating humans as simple means to alleviate the vampire’s physical suffering.

A Utilitarian Counterpoint

Is the deontological framework of necessary explicit, uncoerced consent by the human to the vampire morally rigid to the point of cruelty? Does it prioritize an abstract rule over actual, expected minimization of suffering? A strict utilitarian would say yes to both questions. Deontology takes intent into account and does not consider consequences, unlike utilitarianism which calculates the morality of an action based only on its consequences. Utilitarians would weigh the vampire’s perpetual, agonizing starvation against the temporary, minor discomfort of the human (Shafer-Landau, 2011). It is assumed that an action is morally correct, for a utilitarian, if it maximizes the greatest happiness for the greatest number (Shafer-Landau, 2011). In this perspective, it would seem that preventing an eternity of agonizing, starvation-esque pain for a moral agent heavily outweighs a minor, unnoticed violation against an individual.

To illustrate the utilitarian perspective that the long-lasting relief of a moral agent outweighs a temporary infraction against a moral patient, consider the “Sleep Thief”:

Consider a vampire who has consent to enter into the homes of a hundred different people, even though he has not yet obtained the consent of these hundred to drink their blood. With a painless, unnoticeable bite, the vampire extracts exactly one tablespoon of blood from each person. The humans never wake up, experience no health complications and wake up the next morning feeling completely normal. They are entirely unaware that anything had happened and that anyone had been in their home at all. The vampire, however, now feels healthier, more content and is no longer in tormenting, agonizing pain.

From the utilitarian’s point of view, the vampire’s actions are not only permissible, but morally mandatory (Shafer-Landau, 2011). The total human suffering is effectively zero, but the vampire’s wellbeing is significantly higher. If the vampire had only followed the deontological approach and had refused all one hundred of these people’s blood because he had not obtained consent, he is actively choosing to maximize the total amount of agony. This would be seen as a severe moral failure by the utilitarian.

A Deontological Defense to the Utilitarian Counterpoint

Though the idea of the Sleep Thief would minimize harm from the utilitarian’s perspective, the deontologist would still argue that their calculation is too short term.

The Sleep Thief, in the deontologist’s eyes, would be committing the morally impermissible act of treating the one hundred humans as a resource to be harvested from without their knowledge. This would reduce their infinite moral value, which is not allowed (Shafer-Landau, 2011). Even if the humans were to never discover the Sleep Thief’s activity, their autonomy has still been violated and they have still been treated as a means to an end.

If the maxim of “secretly harvesting blood without consent is acceptable if no one notices” were to be adopted by all vampires, society would collapse. There would be widespread paranoia, meaning no more social trust and eventually, severe psychological terror for humanity. Because bodily autonomy and integrity are foundational rights, the violation that the vampire has inflicted on the humans is now absolutely impermissible within deontology.

Another Utilitarian Counterpoint

If the utilitarian does not accept the deontologist’s Sleep Thief conclusion, suppose they present another counterargument, one of the Hospital Blood Bank:

Consider a hospital blood bank that consistently has a surplus of blood units. So much so, that many units are set to be incinerated because they have passed their expiration date for human medical use. This blood would not be going to the betterment of any community, group, cause or person now. Suppose that this was the vampire’s only chosen way of obtaining human blood.

The utilitarian would argue that no humans are harmed, even less so than in the Sleep Thief example, and the vampire avoids the agony of starvation here as well. The blood units would have been incinerated anyways, meaning that the hospital had truly no other use for it. The vampire, according to the utilitarian, has committed no moral sin.

Another Deontological Defense

While the Hospital Blood Bank example does minimize harm, it still fails to meet the requirement of consent. Even expired blood is institutional property, originally donated under the assumption that it would be used only for human medical care. Stealing it still treats the human donors and the hospital’s system as a means to an end. If everyone, everywhere stole medical resources for their own perceived benefit, that maxim fails the test of universalizability.

The Conclusion

It seems that for the ethical, contemporary deontological vampire, the only path forward is the Contractualist Solution:

If the vampire obtains explicit, uncoerced consent either by establishing a mutual agreement with a human donor (comparable to the principles behind threshold consent) or by setting up a legal process to purchase expired hospital blood. If this occurs, the human’s autonomy is respected, and the vampire’s agony is relieved without committing a moral wrong.

Without this consent or legal setup, it is expected that the vampire must endure his hunger. The modern vampire cannot use their suffering to justify violating human autonomy (Shafer-Landau, 2011). Because humans possess infinite moral value, and because the vampire’s condition is painful but not deadly, the vampire must adhere to deontology’s strict boundaries around moral agents and moral patients.

Just as a vampire requires consent to cross a physical threshold in order to enter a home, they must also require explicit, uncoerced consent to cross the bodily threshold of a human being. The ethical vampire must not be a predator, but a contractualist that survives only on human charity and formalized consent.