The Plaintiff would argue in the case of the rape victim, Mrs. Morgan, that based on the preceding case against Dupe the men are criminally liable for the crimes they directly took part in. In this case, the crime they took part in is forceful sexual intercourse despite the protest of Mrs. Morgan. Their belief that Mrs. Morgan was just pretending to protest has no impact on their guilt of acting the crime, and deserving legal penalty as a result. Mr. Morgan on the other hand may have more criminal suits coming against him for conspiring to commit the crime and eliciting others to aid him in those crimes. The prosecution would point out how the men know sex with a woman who protests it is a crime, and that is the act they did and it was their intention to follow through with it, even when consent was not only not given, but opposed. Unless they are mentally handicapped or mentally insane (meaning can’t distinguish facts of reality or reason reasonably), in which case they have still proven potentially harmful to society then they should be held criminally liable for their actions. If they are handicapped in either aforementioned way, they should be held liable, but put in mental care facilities rather than prison (without release, as these mental problems can not be solved, rehabilitated, and at best can only be medicated). The prosecution would use the above case of Slick and Duke to give precedent as to a case in which criminal acts done with blindness (willful or not) or stupidity as to intent, do not excuse them from the criminal liability of the crime, nor the reasonable response to the situation, knowing the act is a crime (ignorance of which is not an excuse). A reasonable person would stay a way from the situation altogether, or would ask the woman if this was indeed something she wanted done. If this ruined the kinky turn on for her, I guess they would have to find a more conventional sex partner.

The defense would be left only to respond by saying their clients either are indeed retarded, or are being misdiagnosed for their insanity by their respective psychiatrists. The defense might otherwise try to argue that this “reasonable” reasoning was not achieved because they were heavily intoxicated, and might have to point fingers at the bar. The defense could say that Mr. Morgan lied to these poor reasonable horny drunk men, eliciting a crime that would make him guilty for their duped actions.

The result in a courtroom based on laws as I believe they should be, is that Mr. Morgan would get the greatest punishment, for being the mind, the conspirator, and the instigator of the entire crime. The others would be convicted of rape despite the plea (since they admit that she did oppose their actions at any point), and held criminally liable. If their pleas could be proven that they were insane or retarded, they would be dealt with accordingly (still removed from society as potential threats). Being drunk at the time would be found to be as much of an excuse as it would be for driving drunk. Telling an officer you only drove drunk because you were drunk at the time and not of sound mind would be no excuse for committing the crime, even if the intent was to save someone’s life in the process. Finally, the judge would give the court some words of advice about being skeptical of stupid situations, and when in doubt one should choose the path for which one most likely will not find himself in trouble. He would also ask them to question how someone could desire to have something done to them that they do not desire (as rape is only such when undesired is expressed).

The self beyond the objectified, self-identified, and formed character within a literary construct is the self as a life-experiencing subject expressing an ontological, perhaps existential, claim through action that is reflective of both the context of a human existence –in light of historical background as well as the needs and desires of the organism- and that of one’s personal past of failures and achievements, and possible future with the potential to influence it as an authoritative agent of will. The self in action should be seen not as merely the narrative self, a pawn who has made a series of actions, but viewed in light of personal history, and the internal struggle of decision. Thus, the self is an amalgam or conglomerate of a list of deeds and the agent of deliberation in choosing to perform them.

Embodiment becomes an issue for self discovery because of questions about the cognitive self with respect to the bodily self. Many try to make this distinction, including Plato with the distinction of the trappings of the needs and desires of the body by which the soul is imprisoned in the bodily vessel. Aristotle spoke of the mind with reference to a pilot and his ship. Foucault spun the ideas that the mind is like an ever-watching prison warden who keeps the body in control, as well as the idea of the conscience being the prison warden of the soul. While many arguments have been made which give rise for the desire to understand the captain as separate from the ship, the captain is not a captain or at least captain of nothing where his ship is not involved. In other words, the self in action is only seen in action as a bodily self. The will, if not imposed through or by the body in some way, is for all practical and observed purposes effectively inert. The mind and body thought of as separate entities, are theoretical abstractions of the concrete self as a “praxis-oriented” whole –concerned not with the theory of customs or practices, but the motile, conscious, action of the self as self-defining and self actualizing through actions derived from decision.

More distinctions are made about the view of the “self in action” through the philosophies of the post modernists. Merleau-Ponty referred to just such a concept as “the lived body” contrasted with the body as studied in anatomy, physiology, and neurosciences. Marcel made a distinction between the body and the self which portrays the absurdity in just such an idea. He noted that, “my body is mine in so far as for me my body is not an object, but rather, I am my body.” To talk of one’s self as other than his body is to conceptually destroy one’s housing of existence. However, more to Marcel’s point, I believe, is that to think of one’s body as a possession such as a pilot would of his ship, is to separate the mind from the body, effectively annulling possession. When something has a body it is in or is a part of that body; a self entity could not speak of his body as other, as he could not have a body if it was other; it is not a “disposable possession that the self might or might not own.”

Sartre teams embodiment with action in an existential “engagement” with the “human situation.” Sartre claimed that, “the body…appears within the limits of the situation as a synthetic totality of life and action.” William James, known to many as the father of psychology, said that, “The world experienced (otherwise called the field of consciousness) comes at all times with our body as its center: center of vision, center of action, center of interest.” Bruce Wilshire presented us with metaphors of theater, where the embodiment and enactment of roles, actions, personas, masks, and costumes “inform the drama of everyday life.” Wilshire believed that one could better identify through the lens of the characters, and would be more effectively introspective. Through this self reflection one could deliberate one’s past performances, future plans of action, presentation of skills upon stage or in the play of life to better realize “achievement of self-identity.” Wilshire believed that a self is a human body “mimetically involved” with other like bodies, able to distinguish himself consciously from others in goals, aspirations, failures and achievements he can call his own. This theatrical metaphor is congruent with idea of life as a stage, and the previous idea of self in discourse as play relates to a narrative. The “joint achievement of bodily and narrative self-identity” is attained by the submergence of the self with others in a story of interactions between them, their situation as humans, their struggle with outside forces, and the constant internal struggle not to alienate one’s self (staying true to the identity they hope to establish).

Modern philosophy spent much of its time discerning the who that is in the statement, “I am”, asking little of the body as it was more easily deconstructed into physiological parts. There was an epistemological desire to rigidly discern the self as wholly apart from the “human” self, as this seemed to be an incidental baggage of the self that my be the same in all humans, and so might be considered separate. Though I am uncertain of the direction of Hume’s involvement here, it seems congruous with Schrag that such an attempt at further deconstructing identity apart from parts or partitioning the whole is a fallacious move. One’s identity is not separate from his identity as a human, nor is it separate from his identity as a physical manifestation (or body) the result of the “self-as-body” is lived concreteness, not an abstraction of identity but a description of identity as “observed.”

Concerning the deliberation of making a decision, and the constitution or will to act once a decision has be devised, Schrag states that there is a “moment of the inauguration of action, consummating the decision to do x or y.” He believes that act of deliberation and reactive constitution is always a response to prior action. This action carries with it a nature of some sort to stimulate certain options of response (an approaching vehicle at high speeds may stimulate very few responses considered natural or reasonable by the responder). The action acted upon the self affects the reaction of the self, as well as that reaction upon the previous action. Actions appear to be guided by other actions, and they respond to them. This is the case even with the involvement of the self. This involvement of the self relates to what Suzanne Kemmer calls “the middle voice.” The deliberation and constitution of action is where the identity of self lies. It is between autonomy and heteronomy; neither is it the slave to the forces of action put upon it, nor is it fully free to act without influence of the causal waves of interaction between multiple “free” agents.

Ricoeur speaks of the “prereflexive imputation of myself” wherein the self is being ascribed during the “throes of decision making.” An English rendition of his quote is that “I make up my mind in the act of deciding”, which seems can be taken in two ways. One is that much of our character is built in the moments of problem solving or moral dilemmas; some issues have not been concerns of ours until faced with the “moment of truth.” The second is that no matter the preconceived notions we have about “right action” or our responses to given situations, most of who we are is built in the small decisions we rarely think about. Long before “big issues” face us directly we have established our identity in the cumulative sum of our action and reaction at every level. Who we have become in our action or “decisions made” (passive or active) becomes the “who of action.”

According to Schrag, the who of action is implemented through the agency of enactment, as a source of empowerment (which may be over indulged by the evil aesthete of Kierkegaard, manifested in the philosophy of Nietzsche’s aesthetic implementation of will) to affect social change and cultural transformations. In the recognition of the self as an empowered entity to affect the world through action, he establishes for himself an announcement of self identity, creating his own narrative which he wishes to tell through his life. At this point of reflection, a self identity, through the enactment of the “who of action” shapes his hermeneutics and commutative praxes to establish “self-constancy” or “existential continuity”; according to Kierkegaard this “self-identity is an achievement that is won through the hard struggle of making choices.”

According to Judge William, the soul is “matured in the hour of decision”, and between the lines, all I can figure is that existential continuity is made in the necessity of our response of choice, and in fulfilling such a response. Somehow the actions which we make determine the decisions to which we will have to react in the future. Much like a liar finding himself caught up in more lies. No matter the choice, the “individual chooses himself as a concretion determined” in accord with whatever continuity he has chosen for himself or to which he has found himself reacting. The culmination of the descriptive and prescriptive notion of the “self as lived” is found in Kierkegaard’s revamping of the Cartesian principle into “I choose, therefore I am.”