Errors, Faults and Mercy and Love: Punishment and Justice

Errors, Faults and Mercy and Love
Mercy, Punishment And Justice

We do not appreciate mercy greatly. In front of the transgressor and the criminal, the devise «An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth» is much more pleasant to us than pardon. In practice, our justice doesn’t combine too much with love.

And that, even in court. The impartiality of judges may be higher than that of our daily love, but they can’t open their hearts too much. It would be too disturbing.

A judge can’t speculate as Sponville does, concerning the offender’s faults:

How we know we wouldn’t have turned out like him, had we been brought up as he was in fear and violence? And if, having been brought up like him, we did not turn out like him, then isn’t it because, despite the similarities, we are different from him? Did he choose to be the way he is? And did we choose not to be that way?

The courts’ purpose isn’t to apply justice according to love duties to mankind. That would lead too often to mercy, which would be too damaging to social order.

What determines the harshness of many punishments is not so much the degree of offence, but the necessity of order and of discouraging crime. In the words of George Savile:

In the name of our social order, courts have to punish. The official justice can’t be based on love and forgiveness.

But that’s not the case of our everyday life. Outside courts love is fundamental, namely when we are the judges and feel tempted to act according to the principle of «An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth».

With love we forgive. Without it the errors and the sins of our adversaries become outrageous crimes – often a cause of our own faults and mad wars.

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Quotations

Ways of Seeing Justice

No entire people has ever burned with love for a woman, no whole state has set its hope on money or gain; ambition seizes individuals one by one; only fury plagues whole communities at once.

How many things demand our pity, our humanity, our indulgence, justice and faith, and aren’t foreseen by the law?

For what reason does the good man hate those we are in sin? The sage should not hate, because otherwise he would hate himself.
Seneca, 4 a.C.-65 d. C., Roman philosopher and politician, Of rage

The maxim of mercy is this: when you are unable to love, at least cease to hate.

André Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, A short Treatise on the Great Virtues

Forgiveness is not intended for people smugly content in their good consciences or for unrepentant offenders.

But all punishment is mischief: all punishment in itself is evil
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, English philosopher, Principles of Morals and Legislation

Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, English philosopher, Principles of Morals and Legislation

If hanging a man in effigy would produce the same salutary impression of terror upon the minds of the people, it would be folly or cruelty ever to hang a man in person.
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, English philosopher, Works, Principles of Penal Law.

For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it.
Plato, 428-347 b.C., Greek philosopher, Republic

I have never yet seen anyone whose desire to build up his moral power was as strong as sexual desire.
Confucius, 551- 479 b. C., Chinese philosopher, Analects