Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
https://kevinswatch.com/phpBB3/
Your thoughts have been thought before, and answered before...Fist and Faith wrote:In most cases, I don't think there is justice. If you rob somebody, having to pay them back is justice. Probably pay a little extra, because a lot of their time and energy that could have gone into something else was wasted trying to get you to pay them back.
But how do you pay somebody back if you kill, rape, or harm them? You can't. Being in jail isn't balancing the scales. Being in jail for the rest of your life might be a good idea, since that would stop you from doing it again.
Doing to you what was done to them doesn't balance anything. It's just revenge, designed to make the victim feel good.
If we could truly rehabilitate people, so we knew they wouldn't do things again, jail wouldn't even be necessary. If someone was truly sorry about what the harm they caused, and it was assured that they wouldn't do it again, jail would serve no purpose aside from revenge.
more...C.S. Lewis wrote:According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.
My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.
The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.
hmm...Fist and Faith wrote:That's all well and good. However, something has to be done. "Gee, I hope he doesn't do that again" is not the answer. As I've been saying in our other discussions, society will fall apart if we don't prevent certain behaviors. In order to prevent the destruction of the society, these behaviors must be prevented. Everyone must be denied the right to murder. Those who do it anyway must be stopped from doing it again. Having done it, they have given up certain other rights and freedoms. Tough luck. If you don't want to go to jail as punishment for murder, or undergo psychotherapy to stop you from doing it again, then don't murder. Don't expect us to wring our hands and do nothing for fear of objectifying the murderer.
I don't think we disagree on that, though, Fist. The point that I wanted to make (and that is fully made in that essay) is that justice, deserved punishment, is far more humane and ultimately limited than accepting the judgement of some experts who could, in the name of curing, impose unlimited "curing" as they saw it (1984?).Fist and Faith wrote:That's all well and good. However, something has to be done. "Gee, I hope he doesn't do that again" is not the answer. As I've been saying in our other discussions, society will fall apart if we don't prevent certain behaviors. In order to prevent the destruction of the society, these behaviors must be prevented. Everyone must be denied the right to murder. Those who do it anyway must be stopped from doing it again. Having done it, they have given up certain other rights and freedoms. Tough luck. If you don't want to go to jail as punishment for murder, or undergo psychotherapy to stop you from doing it again, then don't murder. Don't expect us to wring our hands and do nothing for fear of objectifying the murderer.
And I think this is what may have been among the things that spawned the idea of God meting out justice in Heaven -- of people who don't get what's coming to them here in this life having to answer to Somebody after death.Vraith wrote:There is an emotionally weighted connotation of justice that desires a balance, a feeling that the punishment is a counterweight for the victim's pain/suffering.
Sometimes this is possible, but for some crimes there is no punishment that will counter it.
Yet the curious thing is that this desire is practically universal. That suggests something that contradicts the idea that practically all of humanity is merely thinking wishfully or fantasizing.aliantha wrote:And I think this is what may have been among the things that spawned the idea of God meting out justice in Heaven -- of people who don't get what's coming to them here in this life having to answer to Somebody after death.Vraith wrote:There is an emotionally weighted connotation of justice that desires a balance, a feeling that the punishment is a counterweight for the victim's pain/suffering.
Sometimes this is possible, but for some crimes there is no punishment that will counter it.
I think a lot of things in the human psyche cause humans to want to believe that there's more to existence than the plane we're currently inhabiting.
Note that I'm not saying that this impetus doesn't prove that an afterlife must/must not exist. I tend to think there *is* one, but just because I wish there was one doesn't make it so.
And yet we have religions a) talking us out of that desire, b) telling us that we just have to wait 'til the next life to get it, c) telling us you just have to work hard enough in *this* life to get it (the "religion" of capitalism, if you will), d) suggesting that if you *don't* have it now, you're not wishing hard enough (a la "The Secret"). And so on. Just having a near-universal urge for something-or-other doesn't prove anything.--AThere is no justice. There is just us.
Heh..I once wrote in a truly aweful poemAvatar wrote:Like Fist, I don't really think there is justice. There may be restitution, but unless all you mean by justice is "fairness" then it's unlikely that we're achieving much in those stakes.
At Uni we studied Rawls' theory of justice, but while the principle may be interesting, his insistence on the veil of ignorance makes it impractical, if not downright impossible, to actually obtain a workable system of justice from.
Nope, justice is either fairness, revenge, or nothing.
As an author once wrote,--AThere is no justice. There is just us.
Well, since we won't learn the answer of whose worldview (if any) is the actual objective truth until we die, if even then, we have to base our decisions in these matters on other things.rusmeister wrote:It all depends on your worldview.
And whose worldview (if any) turns out to be the actual objective truth.