Existing literature on harm reduction tends to automatically assume a ‘god’s-eye view’ of harm, where a (disinterested) observer finds that some harm is present and therefore needs reducing. Such literature tends to account for the intractability of disagreement and a fact of (reasonable) pluralism that it stems from. I agree with arguments by Dea and Weinstock that what we find constitutes or causes harm is not without controversy, and disagreement can be similarly found in how harm should be reduced. In this article, I will build on the arguments made by Dea and Weinstock on two fronts, and argue that harm articulation is a potentially fruitful tool for a deliberative participation in a democracy that is premised on the moral equality of citizens.
Firstly, I will argue that implicit within the literature on harm reduction, despite their ‘god’s-eye view’ characterisation of harm, is an understanding that what is ‘harmful’ is largely perspectival and socio-historically contingent. Therefore, we should adopt a context-dependent, bottom-up conception of harm that citizens can feed into, which can (with an ethos of non-marginalisation) be more tolerant of the multitude of (potential or otherwise) contexts that can surround people’s understanding of harms, both to themselves and others. Secondly, I will argue that harm articulation (on the social-relational level) is a promising epistemic bridge between some segments of the polity (communities) with distinct worldviews and contexts, where what values and beliefs one community finds reasonable is found unreasonable by the other. This can be achieved through our human capacity for sympathy, and the ability of narratives (on both a personal and communal level) to help us intersubjectively make meaning and facilitate cooperation between a plurality of individuals and communities by allowing (the reduction of) articulated harms to serve as justification.
However, this justification must be paired with a democracy that is grounded in the moral equality of citizens. Due to the perspectival aspect of particularised harm articulation, we must take seriously the equal consideration and respect due to persons of equal moral standing. To this end, citizens have a pro tanto duty of epistemic deference to the harms articulated by each other needs to exist so that these articulated harms can serve as justifications for political demands. This broadened justification accorded to citizens will allow for greater contestation due to the reduced possibility for dominant worldviews to naturalise into moral or factual ‘truth’, or the telos of society.
Therefore, if we are to take citizens’ moral equality seriously, we should expand the concept of harm reduction to accommodate particularised harm articulation, and allow harm articulation and harm reduction to serve as justification, for normative reasons. Additionally, the promise that harm articulation as justification holds for bridging epistemic gaps and facilitating cooperation gives us instrumental reasons to explore it as a viable means of deliberation.