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Justice and Doing Good

by Tony M.

Much of the talk around here is about justice. Not surprising, a lot of what is wrong in this vale of tears is injustice. What has me scratching my head is that not only do liberals not seem to get that you don’t pursue justice in order to get some other thing, justice is itself that thing we pursue for its own sake, at least in part (it does not encompass the entire common good), but also some conservatives seem to not get it either.

Here is what I am seeing: people are asking whether punishing evil-doers is good, and if so, why. In the course of this, they seem to consider the notion that not all punishing is for purposes of remediation/rehabilitation, nor for deterrence of others, nor for simple restraint of the evil-doer himself (and thus safety for others). And then they go on to ask, of the remaining important purpose – retribution - what good does THAT serve.

And my response is, roughly: … ! … ?

What do you mean, “what good does that serve?” What good does pleasure serve? What good does joy serve? What good does friendship serve? The good CONSISTS in these, and in justice too.

“Oh,” say they, and then “but then why do you say that punishing evil-doers brings about a good? Isn’t it good to do good, and evil to do evil? Punishing is, apparently, doing evil. That’s the point, you do evil to someone in return for their doing evil.”

And if we pursue this issue, the problem appears to come around to basically not agreeing on what justice actually is. In my dictionary, justice is giving to each his due, (call this proposition J1). And by definition, what is due to an evil-doer is an evil.

If I have the essence of this matter right, retribution (i.e. imposing an evil as punishment for doing wrong) needs no more explanatory rationale than rewarding good behavior with a good does (call this truth J2). And I don’t think the latter, J2, can really be accounted for in more basic, closer-to-principle terms. It is a primary truth of the moral order: the “giving his due” to a person who does rightly consists of giving him good that is condign to his good acts. If you don’t “get” that, I am not sure there is a basis for it that shows that it is true, or shows why it is true that isn’t simply circular. Or complexly circular, but still circular nonetheless. Perhaps pointing to the fact that “the good” is convertible with “the true” and with being helps, but at best it doesn’t actually prove the point, all it does it show the conformity of the truth J2 with the rest of the moral foundation of the universe, it doesn’t set up a deductive reach into a conclusion of J2.

And, I think, the obverse statement that an evil-doer is due an evil (call this J3) is equally immediate a truth. Maybe, just possibly, the negative form “comes from” the positive form J2 in some sense, but that’s not my impression. It seems to me that J2 and J3 stand alongside each other as coordinate truths, and each conforms to the other but neither is primary with respect to the other. And here is support that they are co-equal in standing:

[I]t becomes evident that the property of merit can be found only in works that are positively good, whilst bad works, whether they benefit or injure a third party, contain nothing but demerit (demeritum) and consequently deserve punishment. Thus the good workman certainly deserves the reward of his labour, and the thief deserves the punishment of his crime. From this it naturally follows that merit and reward, demerit and punishment, bear to each other the relation of deed and return; they are correlative terms of which one postulates the other. Reward is due to merit, and the reward is in proportion to the merit. [Catholic Encyclopedia]

But what of the position that this mis-aligns what is right and good, that evil is not “due” anyone? First of all, is there anyone who actually holds this opinion? Yes, here is a fine example, putting the matter as clearly and forthrightly as we could wish:

In defending some desert-based justifications, I will be departing from positions I have taken in earlier work…First, because I identified moral desert with the idea, which I regard as morally repugnant, that it is good that people who have done wrong should suffer, I was inclined to reject the idea of desert altogether. Second, interpreting and commenting on Rawls’ views on distributive justice, I endorsed the idea that the only sense of desert relevant to questions of distributive is what I called institutional desert – the sense in which a person deserves a form of treatment if a justified institution specifies that he or she should be treated in that way. I expressed skepticism about the desert in a “pre-institutional” sense that is independent of what particular institutions require and can serve as a basis for assessing whether institutions are just…It might be said that wrongdoers cannot complain of the hard treatment involved in punishment because these forms of treatment are deserved: given what a wrongdoer has done, these forms of treatment are appropriate, and even good things to occur, in part because wrongdoers have reason to dislike them. And, it might be added, this is so only if these wrongdoers could have avoided doing what they did. Such a claim seems to me to be quite false. It is never a good thing, morally speaking, for anyone to suffer, no matter what they have done, and this is so quite independent of whether those who might be made to suffer have free will or not.


I submit, this is another example of someone who has become a silly-clever. They have talked themselves right out of common sense, simple and ultimately TRUE notions, by way of overthinking, over-sophistication. Every 6-year-old knows that doing ill deserves receiving ill treatment. It is only by being “educated” out of this common sense that a person can come to think that their primitive, natural sense that doing evil is due hard treatment was in error. And this “educating” gets it wrong.

How does it go wrong? I guess this is the way it goes: if they are Christian, they note that Christ calls us to turn the other cheek, to forgive those who sin against us, to “do good to those who persecute you.” Thus, they argue, good should be done to everyone, evil should be done to nobody. If not Christian, they simply note that doing evil is evil, and it doesn’t matter that “to evildoers” gets in the middle of “doing evil” as a qualifier thereof.

Both of these arguments get it wrong. As regards the first, the Christian here mistakes mercy with justice. God forgives us out of mercy. We are called to be god-like and forgive others out of mercy also. This is not justice. That forgiving my persecutor is right for me, it does not mean he has a right to receive forgiveness. It is in fact impossible for the evildoer to have a “right” to mercy, mercy is inherently over and above what is rightfully his. Insofar as we owe forgiveness at all, it is to God that we owe it that we forgive His creature our persecutor. (We forgive for God’s sake, not for the sake of the merit of the evildoer. Illustratively: we are happy to meet and welcome a friend of our friend, not because this new acquaintance is _already_ our friend, but on account of our love for our own friend: we “owe” it to our friend to welcome his friends, we don’t owe it to this new person.)

For the second: there is an equivocation between different uses of evil. On the one hand, “an evil” in the sense of suffering an evil refers to something of the physical, emotional, or psychological, or social order. Suffering an evil means suffering something that opposes goods of the physical, emotional, psychological or social sorts: physical pain instead of pleasure, sadness instead of joy, anxiety instead of peace, or shame instead of honor. (For brevity I will refer to all of these as evils of the physical order even though we will keep in mind all of these). None of these are evils of the moral order. DOING EVIL in the sense of committing a wrong act (without the word “an”) best refers to doing something evil as of the moral order: doing an act contrary to rightness, to righteousness, to virtue, to holiness. A sin, an offense against right action. The obfuscating equivocation comes in not distinguishing between evils of the two orders, especially in the phrase “do evil” as in the sentence “Do evil to the evildoer.” The “evil” could be construed either as an evil act (an act wrong morally) or to do an act that causes an evil of the physical order.

So, one of the ways to arrive at this position that defies the common sense of 6-year-olds is to conflate two distinct senses of “do evil.” “Doing evil” of the physical order is not doing moral evil, and thus it is not simply true that “it is evil (morally wrong) to do (physical) evil to evildoers.” They just don’t mean the same thing. Parenthetically, this conflation makes it virtually impossible to make sense of the natural world as a place of good taken all together: all over creation, things which are events of physical good for one being are physical ills to another being: a lion eating a lamb is good for the lion, ill indeed for the lamb. Humans are not apart from this issue: my overcoming an infection means millions of bacteria dying. Even for humans acting with respect to other humans: my eating this food here means there is less food available for someone else.

More sophisticatedly, though, the highly educated sophist will object that no, what they really deny is the possibility that “to do an evil of the physical order” can be a morally good act, that intentionally acting precisely to cause (physical) ill to someone is morally evil, can never be a good action. My response to this is twofold: First, the argument from the authority of Scripture: throughout the Bible, we are told in perfectly clear terms that God will punish evildoers. (And this also works to answer the Christian proposer above.) From Genesis right through to Revelation, we are warned and shown God’s punishing evildoers. Though it is true that some of this punishing is medicinal, the punishment that God promises as everlasting fire cannot be explained away like that. No, if the Bible can be trusted, we are certain that God punishes evildoers with retributive hard treatment. And since everything that God does is upright, holy, it cannot in principle offend against right doing to do physical evils to evildoers.

Secondarily, perhaps by way of a less authority-based argument: The order of justice is the order of the universe (cf. St. Thomas, Prima Pars Q 21). It is impossible that a universe that harbors moral rightness, and thus justice in the form of returning (physical) good for good (action), would not also be oriented so as to harbor justice in the form of returning something as the opposite for evil action. Generally, those who argue against the notion that doing an evil of the physical order as response to wrongdoing can be a morally upright act must eventually discredit the real possibility of a moral aspect to the universe at all – all REAL evils eventually reduce to evils of the physical order. That is (so they imply) the very reason we credit evil actions to be evil “morally” is precisely because we credit them with causing evil of the physical order. And (much like the out-and-out materialists) they eventually deny the real distinction between the two.

It seems this position must deny natural law, and deny God as the author of the universe. For, if an action is disordered from the natural law even though it happens not to cause any evil in the physical order, it is wrong and (de)merits ill treatment anyway. If you set out to kill someone, but before you commit any overt public act of violence you get obstructed so that you simply cannot carry out the act you intend (you miss the train, for example), according to the natural law your act is worthy of being punished, even though nothing you did achieved any of the evil you set out to do. Whereas (say these objectors) there can be no reason whatsoever for you being treated hardly in this situation, since you caused no ill in actuality. More still, this position denies that God sees all your intentions and will reward them accordingly, whether you have the capacity to act on them outwardly or not. Condemning “even if you look with lust at a woman” would be, for them, an empty notion, devoid of real evil because it harbors nothing evil in the physical order (except accidental possibilities, such as that it MIGHT make you more prone to do something “evil” later).

It is not my purpose here to defend natural law, the moral reality in the universe, or God’s place in finally adjudicating and rewarding all. Of course they can be defended. My point here is that knowing that justice means doing good to those who merit it does not require a proof based on things more certain, more basic, more rooted than what we already know just by knowing “justice” and “doing good”. And the negative correlative is, also, an immediately grasped truth rather than a conclusion by argument from prior truths. And those who obfuscate these truths and convince themselves of the contrary are doing violence to their own minds thereby – or are having violence done to them by their teachers. Those who are conservative and generally uphold the natural moral law but who mistakenly oppose, or just actively doubt the inherent rightness of retribution, have been hoodwinked by the outwardly sophisticated position against it. That position springs out of a perspective that (usually) opposes natural law or even morality in human affairs, or (sometimes) at least reductively belabors them to the point of evanescence.

Comments (22)

Well said. I've been increasingly annoyed by the attitude you describe. Like the silly "why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" bumper sticker. Aside from the fact that they don't object to imprisoning kidnappers or fining thieves, the idea that capital punishment is simply deserved never seems to occur to such people. It's utilitarianism and hedonism running riot.

Tony,

I liked this piece very much. It reminded me of an earlier exchange Professor Feser had with Professor Tollefsen on the subject of capital punishment:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/10/tollefsen-channels-rawls.html

My only quibble with your analysis is the use of the word "evil" in its duel meaning...do natural lawyers typically refer to an evil in the "physical" sense you define:

"Suffering an evil means suffering something that opposes goods of the physical, emotional, psychological or social sorts: physical pain instead of pleasure, sadness instead of joy, anxiety instead of peace, or shame instead of honor. (For brevity I will refer to all of these as evils of the physical order even though we will keep in mind all of these)."

I'm not sure they do and I think the use of the word muddies the waters a bit. But like Feser, and contra Tollefsen, I think your analysis of why justice demands the punishment of evildoers is spot on.

Jeff, I do know that some authors use the notion of "physical evil" to distinguish something from morally evil acts, but I don't know how widespread it is or whether it is used specifically with natural lawyers. The point is to identify, and hopefully name, things that are evils not in the sense of moral disorder. A diseased limb is a kind of evil but is not a moral disorder. I am OK with some better term if there is one.

Notice how this principle

It is never a good thing, morally speaking, for anyone to suffer, no matter what they have done

creates the following dilemma: Either all the good people must be absolute pacifists and anarchy must be allowed to reign, the evil allowed to rampage about as they will, with no policemen, no prisons, no force used to stop them, or else someone must do something that is morally bad by stopping them. Even if there is no death penalty, bad men will have to be stopped and restrained by force. And if they are effectively restrained and stopped, they will presumably be made to suffer, at least to some degree, if only in having their liberty of movement taken away. They will have to be threatened (gasp) with guns to get them to go to jail. And if they begin attacking a guard and are shot, they will suffer pain. If this is "never a good thing, morally speaking," then we have created a true moral dilemma. The state must either abrogate its responsibility to defend the innocent and restrain the evil (which would be wrong) or the policemen and other state actors must continue to do their job, which, we are now told, is going to involve things that are automatically morally wrong.

Moral dilemmas should never be created ex nihilo like this. There is a kind of wilfullness about it. As if real life, lived with common sense, doesn't present us with enough complex situations as it is, we create moral conundrums for ourselves out of thin air by adopting entirely unnecessary and false positions such as that

It is never a good thing, morally speaking, for anyone to suffer, no matter what they have done.

It would be different if he said something much milder such as that it is always _regrettable_ that anyone suffers, no matter what they have done. In such a way we can say that it is a great sadness and a cause of Jesus' sufferings on the cross that the murderer ever committed a murder and thus earned his own temporal punishment. But to say that it is never a _morally_ good thing is much stronger and lands us with an imperative for pacifism.

By the way, Tony, here is an interesting attempted extension of your very interesting discussion:

I agree that retributive punishment is a good in itself and constitutes justice. I have never satisfactorily resolved for myself what this means about the permissibility of mercy. Suppose that you are in a position to exercise judicial discretion in sentencing, or suppose that you are a governor and are being asked to grant clemency in a capital case. Let's make the situation that you are convinced that the person actually did the crime and deserves his punishment, was duly and justly convicted by a fair process, but is a really reformed character and no more danger to society and would, perhaps, do great good if allowed to live. Normally we might say that this is a case where mercy is _permitted_ though not _owed_. But if the governor extends clemency, is he not failing to execute justice? After all, the person really did commit the crime, really was justly convicted, and really does deserve to die. How, then, can clemency ever be permissible when it is not owed?

(I have a feeling I brought this up a few years ago, but if so, I can't remember what you said! Sorry for the repeat.)

It's a good question, Lydia. I think I have talked around the issue before, but not head on.

In my opinion, (and I am still formulating my opinion on this so I expect in the future my opinion may look different) there are 2 answers to this.

First, justice is not the only good that is constitutive of the common good. There are others which are sometimes as valuable, and sometimes even more urgent than justice. For example, if the murderer is a popular figure (say a sports star...OJ?) and there are racial issues, you might legitimately fear a riot if you carry out the perfectly just sentence of death. So for the sake of safety of greater numbers, you commute the sentence to life in prison.

Another example: the criminal beat someone to a pulp. But this is the first time he ever did it, he is a 45 year old father of 5 kids, and you don't really expect he will ever be in the position of getting into a fight at a bar after hearing his kid has fatal leukemia. The just punishment really is x time in prison, but the good of the family requires Dad to be home (as well as the good of the community, since they will end up supporting the family and paying the psychiatric bills / juvenile delinquency from Dad not being home) and the safety of the public is not endangered by his walking around. In clemency you commute his sentence to community hours.

In both of these cases lessening the punishment provides for the greater good. In the first case, it is because when you look at the sum total of all the outcomes, you cannot guarantee justice (not with riots), and you would rather take a hit on justice not being fulfilled with respect to one criminal than take the hit on injustice to hundreds or even thousands. In the second, the community as a whole achieves more by having Dad walking around than by having him in prison, even without achieving the fully just punishment, because many other goods come into play.

My second point is less well developed: I am sure that in a Christian society, when we apply mercy we could be quite literally calling on the merits of Christ who paid the debt of justice for that relief of due punishment. Christ paid a price which is sufficient for ALL sin, including civil crimes, so justice will be satisfied...at least in the ultimate sense. When at the end of time we look over the events, we will see this one act of mercy by the state as being morally connected to Christ's sacrifice.

However, personally I don't think that this (more or less hidden, or at least non-obvious) connection to Christ's satisfactory resolution of justice is enough for the state. I think that in addition to the act of mercy being really connected to justice being satisfied, it needs also to be SEEN that justice is satisfied. And so, I feel, there needs to be some visible nod to justice even though we think mercy is the better thing in this case. The best I can think of at this time is this: If so many in our society think that mercy here in this case is a better thing, then someone, some good citizen, should volunteer to suffer in the criminal's place, in his stead, for the part of the punishment of which he is relieved. Not in the same way, not precisely one-for-one maybe, but still some publicly perceivable act of taking on a penal imposition that bears some sort of relation to the lessening of punishment due to the criminal. This would make mercy a personal act as well as a social act for good. This would strengthen our emotional adherence to justice while not encouraging us to become harsh and cold. By seeing that justice is in fact paid, both society and the criminal will be more likely to accept the true evil of the crime.

That's my sense. I don't insist on it. I think that a sufficient answer can be found in a judge deciding "we as a whole society will put up with this small injustice (too light a sentence for the crime) because of other goods - the whole of the public order 'pays the price' of imperfect justice - and in this case that's for the greater good, though it means we cannot achieve all of the good perfectly: it is the most good and least ill of the options available."

Hmm, I doubt that accepting the offer of someone else to suffer in the criminal's stead is a good idea from any perspective. The only reason that "works" in the case of Jesus is because He's God. But that takes us into some pretty heavy theological realms.

But even apart from theology: if Bob owes me 5,000, and he can't pay it but his brother Bill can (and does) pay it, then the debt is indeed wiped out by Bill paying it. The fact that it isn't Bill's debt to begin with doesn't change the satisfaction of the debt.

With offenses, I will admit the issue is a little murkier. But not absolutely so: if a minor state department diplomat screws up and offends the King of Abyssinia, the offense can be repaired by the head of the State Department doing some grovelling and maybe throwing in some offer "gratis" that the king had been angling for in negotiations for years. That is to say, the higher-ups in the corporate body can make satisfaction for the offense without the reparation coming specifically from the individual person who offended. (It's the basis for the whole make-believe "I'm offended" ploy in diplomatic negotiations, isn't it?)

As I say, I don't insist on it with respect to crime and punishment and mercy. My objective with the idea is to protect justice while leaving room for mercy, and to tie in an analogy to the way God did this with us: by having Someone Else pay the price. Surely the reason Christ's sacrifice was of infinite value was his divinity, and the debt we owed was infinite also, but not ALL debts are infinite. So, morally speaking the nature of the moral order still has to allow for satisfaction being made "by someone else", and there doesn't seem to be any specific reason to think the moral principle is really "satisfaction can only be made by the person at fault or by someone else who is divine."

>creates the following dilemma: Either all the good people must be absolute pacifists and anarchy must be allowed to reign, the evil allowed to rampage about as they will, with no policemen, no prisons, no force used to stop them, or else someone must do something that is morally bad by stopping them.


Of course not. In that situation all you have to do is say that you are choosing the lest bad alternative, which is the right thing to do. It is bad that criminals suffer in prison, but it is worse to allow them to commit various crimes. Therefore, it is more to put them in prison. QED

In which case there is no reason to limit the incarceration to the degree of evil of the offense. Justice becomes a mirage laid over mere utility, and you simply apply that penalty for which you find the greatest utility. Ornery free-thinkers getting people upset? No problem, just take them out behind the police station and kill them. No fuss, no muss, no long, drawn out trials and costly prisons. Very useful.

"In which case there is no reason to limit the incarceration to the degree of evil of the offense.:

That's a premise I don't think you can defend without arguing for your own comprehensive ethical system, which I reject. We don't even agree on metaethical issues like the objectivity of morality, and I doubt we will agree on this. My point is that it is wrong to say that this view requires you to embrace "Evil" or pacifism.

But even apart from theology: if Bob owes me 5,000, and he can't pay it but his brother Bill can (and does) pay it, then the debt is indeed wiped out by Bill paying it.

I think the specifics of financial debt differ from the type of debt that is incurred in a grander sense by the idea of "justice." The term "debt" helps to understand justice, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing in both cases. One could maintain that, yes, when evil is done something is owed, but the notion of a debt is meaningfully different depending on who is owed and who owes.

When you wrong another person, you also wrong yourself. Borrowing $5,000 does not, in and of itself, constitute a wrong. But beating an innocent person into a bloody pulp, murdering someone, sexually assaulting someone--et cetera--all of these do constitute a wrong. Thus, if a man attacks another man and breaks his arm, he will owe a debt that is separate from the financial cost of treating the broken arm. The financial cost is owed to the victim. But the other debt--the debt which requires that justice be done, not just reparations, but justice--is owed, at least in part, to himself. As such, if Bob murders another human being, only Bob can repay the debt in such a way that justice is served.

I think I agree with Lydia that accepting an offer from another person to suffer in the criminal's stead is not a good idea.

I admit that I was taking Scanlon's "It is never a good thing, morally speaking..." etc. in a strong sense. But I think that is how a lot of people _will_ take it. Try combining Scanlon's statement with some sort of general idea that it is _wrong_ to bring about states of affairs that are "never a good thing, morally speaking" and one ends up with a situation where one has to do something wrong, as per my dilemma description above. Now, some people might have no problem with this, because maybe they have no deontological intuitions or something and are just fine with saying that they are doing something wrong but doing something "less wrong" than someone else. But that takes one into metaethical territory that I think is highly misguided. And there just is no reason to go there in the first place if one doesn't accept the premise that it is a _morally_ bad thing for anyone, ever, to suffer. But that is what Scanlon says.

In which case there is no reason to limit the incarceration to the degree of evil of the offense.

That's a premise I don't think you can defend without arguing for your own comprehensive ethical system, which I reject.

Well, no, it is not a premise. It is a suggested conclusion from your stated position that it is bad that criminals suffer in prison. You might have noticed that my comment starts with "In which case", which often refers to a prior statement, which generally means that I am not proposing a first premise but a derivative thought. I think that "there is no reason to limit the incarceration" follows from the ethics of "utility" and the notion "it is bad that criminals suffer in prison."

Dunsany, it is as if you speak some other language than English, a language that borrows many sounds from the English language but uses them in completely different meanings. You then go around using your language in an English-speaking country, knowing full well that it sounds very nearly like English even while you don't think true anything like what the English words mean. Why do you bother? You apparently KNOW HOW to speak English, so why don't you use it here in this forum where the rest of us speak English?

We don't even agree on metaethical issues like the objectivity of morality,

As far as I know, the objectivity of morality is established in the discipline of Ethics as assisted by the disciplines that feed Ethics its premises about man - i.e. the study of man, not in a "metaethics". The truths of human nature are studied in the science of man. The objectivity of the REAL WORLD generally is seen in the study of metaphysics and epistemology, from which it follows that the truths of human nature are objectively valid.

Nevertheless, THIS discussion starts with a premise that there is an objective morality, and that the expression "justice" is part of that system of morality. Of course, if you don't believe that there is such a thing as objective morality or justice, then you won't find this discussion of much use. THIS discussion is not intended to get into metaphysics and the arguments for objective reality and knowability. I do take on such discussions, but this is not one of those places. Within the assumption that there is an objective morality and that justice means something approximating what all men thought justice meant for about 6000 years, the above discussion considers further ideas. If you cannot set aside your denial of the premises to think intelligibly about the implications of an objective morality and justice if they really existed, then your participation in this discussion will be of severely limited value, won't it?

My point here was to show up an inconsistency within the thinking of people who hold themselves out as conservative, and who think generally that the natural moral law holds, but who then err by thinking that it is wrong to deliver evil to evil-doers. Obviously, THOSE people are not troubled by a denial of my "metaethics", they hold (with me) to objective morality and natural views of justice.

I understand your impatience with being able to tackle the deeper issues, the metaphysical questions. Well, it is unfruitful to attempt to discuss everything at once - you can only sort out needed distinctions a bit at a time, not all at once. The fact of the matter is that we don't often get around to those deeper philosophical matters on this blog. Not that we can't, not at all. But in point of fact we have mostly ceded those discussions to people like Ed Feser in his blog:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/

There you will see more in depth tackling of the most fundamental questions, like this one: what is the philosophical definition (and implication) of "zombie"?

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/12/zombies-shoppers-guide.html

Well, ok, that's a bit of fluff, but his 10 part take-down of the eliminative materialism of Alex Rosenberg, which plenty of professional philosophers have considered really worthwhile work.

As such, if Bob murders another human being, only Bob can repay the debt in such a way that justice is served.

Well, then why could Christ do so? It is exactly what Christ did, so we say and think: he paid off on the punishment we deserve for our sins.

One could maintain that, yes, when evil is done something is owed, but the notion of a debt is meaningfully different depending on who is owed and who owes.

I will accept the possibility that "debt" is being used equivocally between the debt of a loan and the debt of punishment. But I don't see that you have actually established the distinction. What, precisely, is the difference?

It seems to me that there is at least a small plausibility that we use both "debt" and "satisfaction" in both environments because they share a commonality of meaning in both environments. Maybe not perfectly the same meaning - in which case there would be instead an analogy present rather than sheer equivocation. But often an analogy is strong enough to carry through to additional elements of the analysis, like that of vicarious satisfaction.

Maybe the problem you are seeing is this: when Bill pays 5,000 for his brother Bob's debt, the inequality of the debt is "solved" or "healed". And when Christ pays for us, He (as God) can also heal the disorder that is present with the crime, whereas if a mere human volunteer suffers instead of the criminal, the human has no power to heal the inequality, the disorder present in either the criminal or society.

I fear that this mis-places what the punishment does to make satisfaction for a crime. If I deface a stop sign (say I paint it over with white and put a big green "Go" on it), that's a crime. My sentence may be $100 - the cost of replacing the sign with a new one - and 48 hours in the local jail for thumbing my nose at society. If, after 48 hours, I am released from jail having "paid my debt to society", I have satisfied the lack that was the injustice. But what have I really done to satisfy? There may be no corrective in me personally - if I am ready to do the same act all over again, I have not been healed of my own personal disorder. But that's reform, not the retributive purpose, anyway. By my serving the 48 hours, the doling out of a penal suffering by the state, by the entity whose authority I defied, satisfaction of the disobedience is made.

So, here is the question: it seems (to me, at least) that we would say that satisfaction works because of 2 elements, (a) I (who by my crime took to arrogate to my own will what I was to do) was made to suffer something against my will, and (b) the state, whose authority to impose a rule for the common good was disobeyed, imposed instead a penal evil. Are both elements necessary? In Christ's satisfaction, (b) holds but not (a) - at least not obviously. And if Christ's voluntarily taking the penalty "satisfies" on the part of the authority offended, this precisely IS the "making equal" of the disordered state of affairs, which the injustice requires. There is no additional healing event needed beyond that voluntarily accepting the suffering, it is not that Christ BOTH takes on the suffering and also performs some divine act of healing the injustice too.

I will accept the possibility that "debt" is being used equivocally between the debt of a loan and the debt of punishment. But I don't see that you have actually established the distinction. What, precisely, is the difference?

I think there's a pretty large difference and that the same term is used for both only by a loose analogy. I think it would be harmful to take the similarity literally. The debt of a loan is made good by the payment of the money, because the money is actually what is owed. The so-called "debt" of punishment is a punishment, rather, that in the name of justice is supposed to fall upon the offender who has deserved it. As long as the creditor gets paid, he has no interest in insisting that he is paid only by the labor of (or selling the effects of) the person who originally took on the loan. But the state, society, etc., do have an interest in actual punishment falling upon the offender himself.

Well, then why could Christ do so? It is exactly what Christ did, so we say and think: he paid off on the punishment we deserve for our sins.

Again, this is _only_ possible because Jesus is God and because the offense was therefore against Him. Hence Christ's taking the punishment and his forgiving the sin are, in an important sense, one and the same act. I told you this would get us into heavy theological waters. I really don't think this should be pressed. It would have been strictly impossible for some ordinary human being to go to hell for another human being. Justice would not have been served and the punishment not taken care of. God strictly speaking _could not_ have accepted the death of any mere human being in payment for another's sins.

Can the state "pay" the debt due for an offense against itself?

I'm inclined to think that if mercy is going to be granted, it's _just_ mercy. Unlike Jesus, the state doesn't have any mechanism for taking upon itself alone, in some isolated way, the suffering due to the prisoner, because if it could, it would be harming others. The state isn't really a personal being. E.g. "We're letting you go, and this will cause greater chaos in society, but we're willing to accept that." If mercy is ever warranted, it had better be in cases where the state will _not_ suffer. We might commute the sentence so the person is still being punished somewhat. E.g. Commute a capital sentence to prison time. But if the person deserved to die and goes to prison instead, that's plain mercy. We would do better to say that justice in the form of punishing offenses is not an absolute imperative but rather an imperative that can be trumped by other goods. In fact, I think we have to say that for clemency ever to be allowable.

I will accept the possibility that "debt" is being used equivocally between the debt of a loan and the debt of punishment. But I don't see that you have actually established the distinction. What, precisely, is the difference?

I think it's fair to say that money is fungible, but guilt is not. (And by guilt, I mean the responsibility for having done a wrong, not the feeling of guilt.) If you borrow $5000 from me, then I have $5000 less than I ought to, and that $5000 is owed to me.

But if you attack me and beat me when I am innocent, then you cannot un-beat me. (Sure, you might owe me medical bills, etc., but those are ancillary expenses that arise from your responsibility for the beating. That's a separate issue from the notion of justice.) If justice requires punishment, such as a loss of freedom, that punishment is not owed to me. It is owed from you.

Again, this is _only_ possible because Jesus is God and because the offense was therefore against Him.

When a debt is owed to a lender, the lender can indeed _forgive_ the debt if he chooses. This would seem to be more in the nature of a pure act of mercy than making right the scales of justice. Or, if you prefer, the very nature of the forgiveness is a filling up the inequality by an accounting, willed by the lender to count it so. I.E. justice itself can count mercy in its scales and add it up. And for this accounting, it would seem that ONLY THE LENDER has the power to achieve it, for only the lender can will it on his own account. And so, the saints and theologians tell us, God could indeed have forgiven our sins merely by willing to forgive them.

But apparently it is less fitting to do so than that the inequality be evened out not solely in intention but in concrete fact. That "more fitting" is why God went ahead and actually paid the price in cold hard reality rather than an intentional accounting of the debt as paid.

Can the metaphysical nature of created reality allow for a "debt" of punishment be satisfied by neither the offender nor the offendee? I would submit that it is impossible that the debt be satisfied under the intentional form of satisfaction other than by the lender, for this form of satisfaction is inherently from the mind of the lender - it only by reason of the will of the lender that justice can account the mercy in adding up the score. But it is not so clear that the other form, concrete satisfaction, can only be paid off by the offender, nor is it entirely clear that it can be "paid off" in the concrete sense by the lender himself (is taking it out of one bank account and putting it into another bank account, both owned by the lender, a concrete paying off of someone else's debt, or is it an intentional accounting of the debt as paid off?).

The ultimate form of the universe calls for justice. One of the ways we tend to think that God's providence is ultimate is that he WILL, in the end, provide that justice is satisfied in every detail. Which means that somehow He will make it that every injustice will be satisfied - even those that are offenses against other persons than Himself. If He can do this, then it would appear to be the case that metaphysically it is indeed possible for offenses to be satisfied by someone other than the offender or the offended person. And, for the sake of fittingness, probably under the form of concrete satisfaction rather than the intentional form - for it seems that the intentional form of satisfaction can ONLY be in the will of the offended person.

I'm inclined to think that if mercy is going to be granted, it's _just_ mercy.

I am OK with it being just straight up mercy too. But in the ultimate analysis, I am not completely confident that the underlying reality of the state doing something that is "just mercy" is not, through intention, also doing something to satisfy justice. Although the state is not a REAL person, it is a _derivative_person_ - that is, it is "of persons" both because it is formed by persons, and because - like persons - it acts by reason. And in that strictly derivative sense it has intentions and wills things. And, I think, it belongs to THAT derivative sense that we can even say that the state "is offended" by crimes, and that the state can suffer an injustice - for only persons can be just or suffer injustice.

But if the state's mercy is NOT so connected to satisfying justice through intention, then I think that ultimately we will still expect that God's providence will eventually satisfy justice anyway. So, is it sufficient (in a case where we want to be merciful) to just shrug and say "it doesn't matter if we apply just punishments, God will right the accounts in the end?" No, that's ridiculous. Insofar as in it lies, the state must still attempt to achieve justice generally. I don't have a problem with saying that in extraordinary situations the state can forego justice and be merciful for the greater good. It was in attempting to answer the objection that the state has no authority to lighten a punishment out of mercy that I was trying to suggest a connection between justice and mercy, but that attempt is not necessary if we just allow that the state has authority to be merciful.

But if you attack me and beat me when I am innocent, then you cannot un-beat me. (Sure, you might owe me medical bills, etc., but those are ancillary expenses that arise from your responsibility for the beating. That's a separate issue from the notion of justice.) If justice requires punishment, such as a loss of freedom, that punishment is not owed to me. It is owed from you.

Phil, it refreshes my heart to see people agree with my main point above on the basic feature of justice: that simple retribution is a right thing. Thank you.

I don't insist on my entirely incidental hypothesis on vicarious retribution, I am willing to admit that it may be off. I would just ask for caution on rebutting it, because of Christ's satisfaction of our punishment. (Not wholly independently, Catholics also think that we ordinary humans can participate with Christ in that vicarious satisfaction, interpreting St. Paul's words "making up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ" so. Of course, it is a gift to us out of God's mercy that we may so participate, and the merit of it stems originally from the merit of Christ's act of obedience rather than from us as source, so even when we so participate is it to Christ's glory and not our own.)

Which means that somehow He will make it that every injustice will be satisfied - even those that are offenses against other persons than Himself. If He can do this, then it would appear to be the case that metaphysically it is indeed possible for offenses to be satisfied by someone other than the offender or the offended person.

Every single injustice is against God, ultimately. Presumably there's supposed to be a mystical sense in which, in the Crucifixion, Jesus took upon himself the harm that we do *to other people* and bore both the sin and its punishment. This is all so theologically high-flying that I think we're certainly going to run into some sort of error if we try in any way to mimic it in the state's interactions with criminals.

It is true that every injustice, even to the lowest sinner, is also an injustice against God. However, when we suppose that Jesus took upon himself the punishment due for all these injustices, it seems less than plausible that we should suppose the reason he was able to satisfy them was that "he was the offended party" and at the same time that he can satisfy the offense against other persons than himself under the very same rationale. That seems odd. Perhaps he can do the latter by reason of some OTHER principle than "he was the offended party". Perhaps not. Perhaps it is because of an ADDITIONAL reason on top of "he was the offended party". But we wouldn't know without asking the questions.

This is all so theologically high-flying that I think we're certainly going to run into some sort of error if we try in any way to mimic it in the state's interactions with criminals.

Could be. I don't see that there is any harm in trying on the concept (i.e. in theory, not practice) to see how far it runs before it runs off the rails. Which would mean that it is not so high-flying that we cannot at least try to speak intelligently about it. It's not that mystical. (Indeed, even if it is that mystical, we can still attempt to talk about it, as did St. John in the Gospel and in his Letters and Revelation.) I don't see the reason we should avoid even considering the idea - even if only to definitively shoot it down because we know exactly why it doesn't work. Knowing why it can't work would also help us understand why and how to pursue retribution in full, and probably help understand when and why and how we can lessen retribution for the sake of mercy without danger to the common good.

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