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Introduction to the Five Principles of Defensive Ethics
Moral principles arise from the evaluative intelligence of living systems—the embodied capacity to distinguish conditions that sustain or endanger continued viability. [1] These principles function as orientations through which agency acquires moral direction. To see how they operate within interpersonal defense, we must articulate the core principles that structure this domain. Together they form the operational foundation of Defensive Ethics: a framework that translates the natural imperatives of survival, cooperation, and relational stability into reflective guidance for action under threat.
Scope. Defensive Ethics addresses a specific domain: direct interpersonal violence—circumstances in which one person intentionally threatens, destabilizes, or attacks another’s bodily integrity or capacity for agency. As established in The World As It Is, these conditions include coercive control, assault, sexual and domestic violence, abuse of authority, community aggression, and hate-motivated harm. [2] Such encounters are volatile and time-compressed, shaped by stress physiology—narrowed attention, heightened vigilance, sympathetic arousal, and rapid, often distorted threat appraisal. [3] Under these conditions, the ability to regulate perception, intention, judgment, and action becomes morally decisive.
Biological ground. Encounters involving threat activate defensive aggression, a conserved protective pattern across species. [4] Defensive behavior typically follows a graded sequence—withdrawal, signaling, boundary-setting, and, when required, the mobilization of force. [5] Human beings inherit these patterns but integrate them with reflection, transforming reactive defense into purposeful, restrained, and accountable protection. [6] Defensive Ethics emerges at this intersection of biological urgency and reflective self-regulation.
Framing the Framework. Defensive Ethics, as developed here, is not intended as a comprehensive system of moral reasoning or a full normative theory. It is a minimum framework designed for a specific domain: ethical action under conditions of direct interpersonal violence. Its purpose is to identify the orientations necessary to preserve agency, recognition, and relational stability when violence compresses deliberation and constrains choice. While the principles resonate with broader moral life, their function here is precise—clarifying the boundaries, permissions, and restraints that govern morally justified self-defence within the immediate dynamics of harm.
Relational ground. Defensive action never occurs in isolation. Agency depends on enabling conditions—bodily integrity, reliable environmental affordances, cognitive freedom, and social recognition—together constituting the Self–Other field, the relational structure within which moral life is enacted. [7] As developed earlier, moral agency is the capacity to regulate this field adaptively; self-defence is the operational backbone of such regulation, the process through which coherence is maintained amid disruption. [8] Threats that undermine safety, autonomy, or recognition therefore strike at the core conditions that make moral life possible. [9]
The stakes. Acute stress can impair executive function, shorten deliberative windows, and push cognition toward survival-driven heuristics. [10] In such states, reflection can collapse into reactivity. [11] Defensive Ethics asks how agents can preserve moral clarity, dynamic balance, and accountability at the very moment their cognitive and emotional capacities are strained. The task is not only to defend oneself, but to do so while preserving the architecture of moral life.
Focus and limits. The principles introduced here specify when protective action is justified, how it must be exercised, and what boundaries distinguish defense from violation. [12] Their function is ethical rather than juridical: they do not constitute a full legal doctrine of self-defense, nor do they exhaust the technical requirements of statutory or case-based analysis. Instead, they provide a proto-legal bridge—a formative framework from which prescriptive responsibilities, obligations, and natural rights can be derived and later formalized within legal doctrine. This approach delineates the moral architecture from which legal norms eventually crystallize, clarifying the orientations that underlie legitimate protective action even before they are codified in law. The framework does not extend to structural injustice, warfare, or metaphorical forms of distress. Its focus is the concrete, embodied circumstances in which a person’s agency is directly and intentionally endangered through violent force.
The five principles. Each principle names a stable orientation connecting the biological necessity of viability with the ethical requirement of right relation:
- Self-Preservation affirms the legitimacy of sustaining one’s life and agency under threat. [13]
- Equality recognizes that all persons share this standing and possess parallel claims to preservation. [14]
- Reciprocity calibrates interaction within the shared moral field, guiding proportionate response. [15]
- Coherence maintains alignment among perception, emotion, judgment, and action under stress. [16]
- Congruence ensures fidelity between moral intention, protective conduct, and foreseeable effects. [17]
These orientations are not rigid rules or successive stages. They articulate a multidimensional structure through which moral agents maintain integrity while responding adaptively to danger. Just as living systems preserve viability through coordinated processes, moral agents preserve ethical integrity by coordinating these principles. Coherence preserves internal and inter-principle order; Congruence ensures that action remains anchored to its justificatory foundation and foreseeable effects. [18]
Understanding these principles is essential not only for describing moral orientation under threat but also for grounding the prescriptive dimensions of moral life. Because each expresses a necessary condition for the preservation of agency—one’s own and others’—each carries normative force. [19] Self-Preservation establishes the foundational claim; Equality extends it symmetrically; Reciprocity translates it into expectations for conduct; Coherence stabilizes consistent judgment; Congruence verifies whether protective action remains consistently true to its purpose. Together, they form the basis from which responsibilities, obligations, and natural rights emerge. [20]
Why these five principles? Each principle arises from the structural analysis of autonomy, agency and the Self–Other field developed in Chapter Two and Three. Together they represent the full set of orientations required for moral integrity under threat. Self-Preservation protects the continuity of agency; Equality affirms parallel standing; Reciprocity regulates relational adjustment; Coherence stabilizes internal and inter-principle alignment; and Congruence secures fidelity between justification and action. None can be removed without leaving a critical dimension of moral life undefended, and none duplicates the work of another. Taken together, they form a complete and non-redundant architecture: jointly necessary and collectively sufficient for preserving moral orientation when the conditions of meaningful life come under strain.
The next articles in this series develop each principle in turn—tracing its biological roots, reflective development, and role in sustaining moral integrity within interpersonal defense—and together establish the conceptual architecture from which subsequent work will derive the prescriptive structures of responsibility, obligation, and natural right.
Article Series
Part I: Introduction to the Principles of Defensive Ethics
Part II: Self-Preservation as the Frist Principle of Defensive Ethics
Part III: Equality as the Second Principle of Defensive Ethics
Part IV: Reciprocity as the Third Principle of Defensive Ethics
Part V: Coherence as the Fourth Principle of Defensive Ethics
Part VI: Congruence as the Fifth Principle of Defensive Ethics
Part VII: Integrating the Principles of Defensive Ethics
Part VIII: From Viability to Value: The Emergence of Moral Meaning
This article is part of the multi-part series The Five Principles of Defensive Ethics, which examines how the natural imperatives of survival, cooperation, and restraint evolve into ethical principles that regulate action under threat. Each installment explores one principle—Self-Preservation, Equality, Reciprocity, Coherence, and Congruence—as a distinct yet interdependent expression of moral normativity: the living standards that govern proportion, restraint, and purpose in defensive conduct. Together, the series establishes the moral architecture from which we derive the prescriptive structures of responsibility, obligation, and natural right, showing how the defense of life, when ethically ordered, becomes a conscious affirmation of agency and value.
Legal and Safety Disclaimer
The material contained in this publication is provided solely for educational and informational purposes. It presents philosophical and ethical analysis of self-defence and interpersonal violence and does not constitute legal advice, tactical instruction, or professional guidance of any kind. Laws governing self-defence vary widely by jurisdiction, and specific legal outcomes depend on circumstances that cannot be anticipated here.
No material in this publication should be relied upon to make real-world decisions regarding the use of force, personal safety, or risk management. Before acting in any situation involving potential harm, you should consult qualified legal professionals, law-enforcement authorities, and relevant experts.
The authors and publishers disclaim all liability for any actions taken or not taken based on the content of this publication. Any reliance you place on the material is strictly at your own risk.
About The Author
Nathan is the Managing Director and Chief Instructor at Northern Sage Kung Fu Academy, and Chief Representative of Luo Guang Yu Seven Star Praying Mantis in Canada and China. With over 25 years of experience living in China, he is deeply committed to passing on traditional martial arts in its most sincere form. As part of his passion Nathan regularly writes on related topics of self-defense, combat, health, philosophy, ethics, personal cultivation, and leadership.
End Notes:
[1] Giovanna Colombetti, “Enactive Appraisal,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 4 (2014): 501–520.
[2] Nathan Wright, The World As It Is and the Realities of Violence (Northern Sage Kung Fu Academy, 2025), 15–19.
[3] Amy F. T. Arnsten, “Stress Weakens Prefrontal Networks,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16, no. 6 (2015): 410–422; Wright, The World As It Is and the Realities of Violence, 1–4.
[4] Robert J. Blanchard and D. Caroline Blanchard, “Defensive Behaviors and Threat Assessment in Animals and Humans,” Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 1 (2015): 123–129; Nathan Wright, Self-Defence as a Biological Imperative and the Natural Foundations of Human Autonomy (Northern Sage Kung Fu Academy, 2025), 5–9.
[5] Frans de Waal, “Mechanisms of Conflict Management in Primates,” Annual Review of Psychology 64 (2013): 381–405; Wright, Self-Defence as a Biological Imperative and the Natural Foundations of Human Autonomy, 6–8.
[6] Elizabeth A. Phelps and Joseph E. LeDoux, “Cognitive–Emotional Interactions in the Brain,” Neuron 76, no. 5 (2013): 910–920.
[7] J. Kiverstein and E. Rietveld, “Revisiting Affordances and Skilled Intentionality,” Synthese 195, no. 1 (2018): 491–510; Nathan Wright, The Natural Foundations of Agency and Self-Defence as the Operational Backbone of Moral Life (Northern Sage Kung Fu Academy, 2025), 12–14.
[8] Nathan Wright, The Natural Foundations of Agency and Self-Defence as the Operational Backbone of Moral Life (2025).
[9] Axel Honneth, “Recognition as the Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts,” European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 2 (2002): 153–164.
[10] Arnsten, “Stress Weakens Prefrontal Networks,” 410–422.
[11] Christian H. Vinkers et al., “Stress-Induced Impairment of Cognitive Performance,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 37, no. 9 (2013): 1842–1849; Wright, The Natural Foundations of Agency and Self-Defence as the Operational Backbone of Moral Life, 5–7.
[12] Helen Frowe, “Defensive Harm and Proportionality,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 41, no. 2 (2013): 135–164.
[13] Philippa Foot does this in books, but for journal article: Michael Thompson, “Life and Action Reconsidered,” Journal of Philosophy 107, no. 2 (2010): 121–139.
[14] Christine Korsgaard, “Self-Constitution and Agency,” Ethics 123, no. 1 (2013): 6–22.
[15] Stephen Darwall, “Morality, Authority, and Law,” Philosophical Review 119, no. 2 (2010): 207–244; see also Robert Sugden and Luigino Bruni, “Reconstructing Reciprocity,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 41, no. 1 (2013): 1–29.
[16] Wayne Christensen and Cliff Hooker, “Self-Directed Agency: Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Action,” Philosophy of Science 80, no. 2 (2013): 286–311.
[17] Peter Railton, “Moral Learning: Conceptual Foundations and the Problem of Congruence,” Ethics 127, no. 4 (2017): 727–765.
[18] Railton, “Moral Learning,” 727–765.
[19] Michael Thompson, “Life and Action Reconsidered,” Journal of Philosophy 107, no. 2 (2010): 121–139.
[20] Rainer Forst, “The Justification of Human Rights,” Ethics & International Affairs 24, no. 2 (2010): 29–38; Henry Shue, “Basic Rights Revisited,” Ethics & International Affairs 27, no. 1 (2013): 5–22; Pablo Gilabert, “Human Rights as Demands of Dignity,” Philosophical Quarterly 61, no. 243 (2011): 1–27.
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