ABSTRACT
This chapter is to assess the moral responsibility of the reluctant participants who were coerced to participate in the persecutions of other civilians. The first claim to be reviewed is the claim made by Harry Frankfurt that agents who are subject to duress as against genuine coercion are in principle free to resist the threat of punishment and thereby liable to moral responsibility. It will be argued that Frankfurt’s distinction between duress and coercion is not sound because in typical cases cunning coercers will apply further and stronger threats to those who dare to resist until they submit. The next claim to be considered is that the Cultural Revolution was comparable to a state of nature where everybody was potentially at war with everybody. In exercising one’s right to self-preservation in such a life and death situation, people may need to betray or even harm others. The position the chapter will defend is that though the coerced agents may have their responsibility excused, the wrong they committed in striving for survival may already lead to the corrosion of their character corrupted and thereby make it possible for responsibility to be attributed to them. The last claim to be defended is that if agents were serious about the commitments they made to friends, colleagues, and relatives, they should try to keep those commitments rather than trying to be released from them even under threatening circumstances. It is for this reason they may assume responsibility for the wrong committed under coercion.
