david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris) (05/18/84)
Rich Rosen: >As long as we are residing in animal bodies with >animal chemicals resulting in animal needs and urges, we can never completely >shirk what you call the "irrational". But how irrational is this? From a >biochemical point of view these actions make perfect sense. Look even at >someone like Hitler. Due to chemical imbalances/psychological disorders >(really one in the same depending on your perspective), he felt the need >to direct hatred against a whole class of people. The Jews conveniently >(for him) fit the mold he needed to fill. What do you think caused him to do >these things? His "soul"? External agent "demons"? Or the chemicals in his >body? Given his chemical make-up, Hitler's responses were "natural". This tenet raises such difficulties which compel me to reject the philosophy on moral grounds. My explanation which follows has a lot of C.S. Lewis in it, taken from his essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment." First, a premise. According to the this theory, to punish a man because he "deserves" it is mere revenge. The only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. Thus, in Hitler's case, we might punish him to deter others (unlikely), or to somehow correct him (how can we hold him "responsible" for the chemical makeup of his brain, over which he had no control?). When this theory is combined with the idea that all crime is more or less pathological, the "mending" or "fixing" turns into "healing" or "curing" and the punishment becomes therapeutic. So it would appear that we have passed from the self-righteous notion of giving the wicked what they deserve to the more charitable one of tending the psychologically sick. One other thing: the things done to the criminal must be compulsory. Society could not continue otherwise. Lewis' (and my) contention is that this doctrine, from the moment any of us breaks the law, deprives us of the rights of a human being. Why? This theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert (remember, I brought this up some time ago?). But 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. But there is no sense in talking about a 'just deterrent' or a 'just cure'. We want a deterrent because it deters, not because it is just. We want a cure because it succeeds, not because it is just. 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'. The distinction can be clarified by asking who is now qualified to determine sentences when sentences are no longer held to derive their proprriety from the criminal's deservings. The "old" view was that fixing the right sentence was a moral problem. The judge was therefore trained in jurisprudence; a science of rights, duties and moral obligations. And this is a subject on which we all have an opinion, not because we follow this or that profession, but because we are men, rational animals. This all changes when we drop the concept of Desert. We must now ask whether a punishment deters or cures, and these are questions for the "penologist" and psychotherapist. It would be in vain for the rest of us to say that a sentence is criminally unjust or hideously disproportionate to the crime. The problem, then, is that Rationalism removes the concept of Desert from punishment and in so doing removes our rights as human beings. I said in an earlier article that I did not like what I found at the logical conclusion of this philosophy; perhaps now you understand what I meant. -- David Norris :-) -- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david