Susanna Siegel

During the early years of the twenty-first century in the United States, the status of a long series of high-profile killings as self-defensive was publicly contested with collective fury, anguish, and sorrow. Such contestations raise conceptual questions about self-defensive and vigilante violence. How this conceptual boundary is drawn can carry grave social consequences. But why do these two categories so easily form a space of high-stakes contestation? I offer an analysis of vigilantism that clarifies its relationships with self-defense, shows how they can overlap, what makes them different, and why they are so easily contested.

Susanna Siegel é professora da Universidade de Harvard e autora de diversos livros e artigos sobre filosofia da percepção, epistemologia e filosofia da mente. O artigo aqui publicado apareceu originalmente revista Noûs, Vol. 46 (2012): 201-222, e foi traduzido por José Eduardo Porcher (UFRGS). Os direitos de publicação desta tradução foram cedidos graciosamente pela autora e pela editora John Wiley & Sons, Inc., às quais agradecemos. Revisado por Florencia Salaberry. Penetrabilidade cognitiva e…

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