Necessity Has No Law: Objectivity and Subjectivity of Justice

Kant's Right of Necessity, the second case that is exempt from jurisprudence proper, is interesting to me. It sidesteps jurisprudence and brings common sense and natural instincts to the forefront in one go. Self-defense laws seem to be no-brainers, yet there is a rational and irrational side to them.

Kant talks about self-defense, giving the example of two men stranded, floating on a wooden plank. He explains how one man pushes the other off the plank (to drown) in order to save himself and float to safety. Survival instincts take over, and all laws are forgotten, as Kant notes, "no punishment threatened by the law could be greater than losing his life," and so the first man shoves of the other without thinking of legal repercussions, assuming he lives through the situation. The animal instincts of the first man drowns out (pun intended) his rational, moral inclinations. Instead of working together to find a way out of the situation, both men are thinking irrationally since they're in a life/death situation. So, the stronger takes the advantage (Plato, anyone?).

Kant then says, even if there were laws dictating such situations, it wouldn't produce the intended effect because "the threat of an evil that is still uncertain (being condemned to death by a judge) cannot outweigh the fear of an evil that is certain (being drowned)." But there are still moral repercussions to a situation. Unless you're a wacked-out sociopath, no one kills another person and just moves on, right? So even if there are no legal effects on the survivor, once his rationality comes back to him, won't he be in pain? Kant writes, "what he must judge for himself as unjust in itself will be treated with indulgence by the court."

Not only will the survivor not be punished in court, but he cannot be held responsible for his actions. For instance, he won't be put to death when he reaches home because he (essentially) killed a man in order to survive. Nowadays, this is true, too. We have laws such as the Castle Doctrine and the Stand-Your-Ground laws to counteract potential lawsuits on defenders.

In sum, I guess what's interesting to me is the objectivity of the idea of justice, yet the subjectivity of its implementation. We are given the extreme case of self-defense at its worst, the case is obviously subjective: one man does an injustice to another, the latter retaliates to offset the imbalance (Aristotle Book V, anyone?). Yet with a non-lifethreatening situation such as shoplifting, the laws are essentially universal (domestically). Is it because of the extremeness of the situation, those in which we assume instincts take over and reason flies out the window, that make otherwise punishable actions permissible? Even shoplifting can be a thinker if put into the same context: someone stealing food for her/his starving family. Objectively, the person stole food: illegal, wrong. period. Subjectively, to feed a starving family: weeellll....? If anything, it would be "understandable."

I dunno, just my thoughts on one section of the Kant reading.