After studying for five straight hours for my industrial organization exam, I figured I’d sit back, take a load off, and decompress by watching some Netflix before bed. The chosen show: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. As the reader probably predicted, the pilot was anything but relaxing.
The first episode begins with Jeffrey Dahmer being questioned by his neighbor about a foul odor—a negative externality of the most disturbing sort—emenating from his apartment. Unfortunately, the two were unable to successfully engage in Coasian bargaining as negotiation costs were too high. Fortunately, the state intervenes with its police powers to internalize this negative externality and the more significant rights-violations of his victims.
After considering the unspeakable horrors depicted in the show, my roommate and I considered how any human being could do the sorts of things Dahmer did. We ended up concluding that a normal person, someone with moral agency and a conscience, is simply physically incapable of the acts Jeffrey Dahmer perpetrated.
Human beings, as part of our very nature, reflexively empathize with those around us. This is why, even in a Hobbesian state of nature, it is inconceivable that one would torture or eat another human being simply for the thrill of it. Adam Smith describes identifies and describes this essential feature of human nature thusly:
That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without [sympathy].1
So how do we square Smith’s declaration that not even “the greatest ruffian” is altogether without sympathy with Jeffrey Dahmer? I posit that Jeffrey Dahmer is not a ruffian, per se.
A ruffian is a person with normal psychology, i.e., with a conscience, with sympathy, who chooses to do something morally impermissible. A ruffian, in short, is immoral. Dahmer, on the other hand, entirely lacks a conscience, sympathy, and so cannot be properly described as a moral agent. He is amoral.
Therefore, I posit that we must judge Jeffrey Dahmer as we would a wild beast. The title, then, is appropriate; from a moral lens, Jeffrey Dahmer is not a person to be judged but a monster to be caged.