A Study Of “On The Character of Men And the Virtuous Life”: Part XVI

Introduction and Part II

Because of the disorganized nature of our text, we will look at paragraphs sixty-nine and eighty-one together, and then, afterward, look at the paragraphs which fall between them. This is because these two paragraphs work well together, while what lies between them are, in their own way, better tied together.

First, our writer states that, if we find someone needing correction, we must do it in purity, without anger:

We should not become angry with those who sin, even if what they do is criminal and deserves punishment. On the contrary, for the sake of justice we ought to correct and, if need be, punish them ourselves or get others to do so. But we should not become angry or excited; for anger acts only in accordance with passion, and not in accordance with good judgment and justice. Moreover, we should not approve those who show more mercy than is proper. The wicked must be punished for the sake of what is good and just, but not as a result of the personal passion of anger.[1]

Nonetheless, while we read that we must not be “too merciful,” our writer does not want us to think we should be without mercy:

If you are in a position of high authority, do not lightly threaten someone with death, knowing as you do that by nature you, too, are subject to death and that the soul sheds the body as if shedding its last garment. Since you know this, be gentle and merciful, always giving thanks to God. For he who has no compassion has no virtue.[2]

Justice seeks after what is good, not just for one person, but for everyone. When someone sins, they have, in some fashion, abandoned some good. They need to be led back to that good. This often means that they must make satisfaction for what they have done. Perfect satisfaction for sin is often impossible – if you kill someone, it is unlikely you can bring them back to life. It is for this reason any punishment for sin must be done in accordance to mercy: just because someone cannot restore that which they destroyed does not mean they, in return, should be destroyed. Mercy allows for this, because it understands the just demand for satisfaction must not become retribution or revenge, for such retribution does not lead to the restoration of the good, but, rather, continues the cycle of sin and eliminates even more good from the world. Retribution is not satisfaction, but its elimination. Mercy, however, can only be given to those who are ready for it, for those seeking satisfaction for their errors; by ignoring the plight of those who have suffered some wrong and giving mercy to those who continue in their error, just like retribution, justice is lost and error is promoted.

Punishment is often needed when justice has been abandoned. It is because, when justice is significantly transcended, society is hurt. To repair what has been damaged, the one who has done wrong might have to be forced to act rightly, if they do not want to do so. We are not individuals free from society, we are a part of society, and we benefit from society whether or not we try to set ourselves apart from it. We can be, and should be, forced to change our ways when our ways significantly fall from what is good. Murder cannot be left unpunished. The squashing of significant human rights, such as when some of the rich seek to make the poor into their playthings and slaves, cannot be ignored. But, when we do this, again, our justice must not be done by anger, must not be accomplished in a fit of passion, because when acted out of passion, such actions rarely end up being just. Instead, justice must be enforced, when necessary, but through a desire for the good of all involved, both the victims of injustice (if they are still around), and, moreover, the ones who violated justice. They are humans with human rights, who we must treat with compassion, seeking their salvation not their destruction. Of course, by their violation of justice, they can be (and sometimes should be) forced to act contrary to their desires, if they want to continue on the path of injustice. That is not a violation of their rights. What is, however, is to seem them are a mere object, or to ignore their humanity and the good contained in them because they have been given human life; when either of these are done, they can become the victims of injustice as well. One cannot deal with injustice by more injustice.  Thus, as Vladimir Solovyov notes, there are two errors which we must confront: first is the theory of retribution, the second is the belief that persuasion alone can bring someone to their senses and lead them to justice.

Let us look at what Solovyov has to say on justice, and how he comes to this conclusion. First, he explains the two aspects as two feelings we feel when we face an act of injustice, such as when a strong man beats up a weak one:

When one man is doing injury to another, e.g., when the stronger man is beating the weaker, a person witnessing the injury – if he takes the moral point of view – experiences a double feeling and an impulse to a twofold course of action. In the first place, he wants to defend the victim, and in the second, to bring the injurer to his senses. Both impulses have the same moral source – the recognition of another person’s life and the respect for another person’s dignity, psychologically based upon the feeling of pity or compassion. [3]

The two desires which come together are for the sake of the victim, that they are defended (and what wrong they have suffered is overcome), but also for the sake of the injurer, that they not only are stopped from harming someone else, but their state of mind is changed so that they willingly stop such injustice. Here we can see the foundation for both errors, for the first, when taken by itself, leads directly to vengeance, while the second, when taken by itself, ignores the harm done to the victim and so will lead one to pamper the injurer until they change their mind (which, of course, can be forever, because they will see no need for that change as long as they are coddled and find no demands are placed upon them). The two must go together, the two must always be preserved in any act of justice, otherwise, greater injustice ensues.

Solovyov takes greater pains to deal with the notion of pure retributive justice which ignores the personal demands of justice that the injurer places on society because most legal systems fall under this ideology. It, in the end, becomes self-contradictory, because it leads to the creation of a new victim, as justice and its demands upon society are ignored. The basis of pure retribution is that one cannot ignore victims, but because it makes a victim it ignores, by such action, the whole theory is overridden:

Psychologically, our feeling for the victim is very different from our feeling for the aggressor – the first is pure pity, and in the second anger and moral indignation predominate. But to be moral, that indignation must not pass into injustice towards the wrong-doer, into denying his human right, although that right materially differs from the rights of the victim. The latter has a right to our defence, the former has a right to be brought to reason by us. The moral basis of the two relations is, however, in the case of rational beings, one and the same – the absolute worth or dignity of human personality, which we recognize in others as well as in ourselves. The twofold violation of that dignity taking place in criminal assault – violation passive in the injured and active in the injurer – calls forth a moral reaction in us, which is essentially the same in both cases, in spite of the fact that its psychological expression is different and opposed. [4]

We can require the one who has violated justice to seek its reparation. However, we must not confuse this with vengeance. It doesn’t have to be. If someone is killed, destroying their murderer does not bring back the one who is killed, but it does eliminate someone else from society who, according to their nature, is good. This means capital punishment destroys more good, and it does so without creating any kind of restitution. Indeed, it justifies murder because it says one can kill someone else if one believes it is for the greater good. We must see beyond this nonsense and see how the death penalty never restores justice but creates more injustice. Even if one suggests capital punishment must be allowed (as with other questionable punishments, such as torture), because they provide a threat which will prevent people from doing what is wrong, this principle ends up destroying the dignity of the human person and can be seen as immoral:

 The moral principle asserts that human dignity must be respected in every person, and that therefore no one may be made a mere means of or an instrument for the advantage of others. According to the deterrent theory, however, the criminal who is being punished is regarded as merely a means for intimidating others and safeguarding public safety. The penal law may, of course, intend to benefit the criminal himself, by deterring him, through fear of punishment, from committing the crime. But once the crime has been committed, this motive obviously disappears, and the criminal in being punished becomes solely a means of intimidating others, i.e., a means to an end external to him; and this is in direct contradiction to the unconditional law of morality. From the moral point of view a punishment inspiring fear would only be permissible as a threat; but a threat which is never fulfilled has lost its meaning. Thus, the principle of penal intimidation can be moral only on condition of being useless, and can be materially useful only on condition of being applied immorally.[5]

Society as a whole can be shown to be immoral when it gives out punishment due to anger. It lashes out in cruelty, ignoring the good of a given human person, a good which can never be violated:

All this systematic cruelty is revolting to the moral feeling and brings about a change in our original attitude towards the criminal. Pity to the injured person and the impulse to defend him set us against the injurer (the criminal).But when society, which is incomparably stronger than the individual criminal, turns upon him its insatiable hostility after he has been disarmed, and makes him undergo prolonged suffering, it is he who becomes the injured party and excites in us pity and a desire to protect him. Although the legal theory and the legal practice have decidedly renounced consistent application of the principles of retribution and intimidation, they have not given up the principles themselves. The system of punishments that exists in civilised countries is a meaningless and lifeless compromise between these worthless principles on the one hand and certain demands of humanity and justice on the other. In truth, what we find are simply the more or less softened vestiges of the old brutality, with no uniting thought, no guiding principle involved.[6]

The self-contradiction involved explains why a justice system based upon retribution cannot be accepted. It must be rejected. Capital punishment is, of course, the extreme representation of this system, but it is also the extreme which, when followed, shows the extreme willingness of a society to undermine the principles which make murder criminal:

The special evil and horror of murder consist, of course, not in the actual taking of life but in the intrinsic renunciation of a basic moral norm, to sever decisively by one’s own resolution and action the connection of common human solidarity regarding the actual fellow creature standing before me, who is the same as I, a bearer of the image and likeness of God. But this resolution to put an end to a man more clearly and completely than in simple murder is expressed in the death penalty, where there is absolutely nothing apart from this resolution and carrying it out. Society only has left an animus interficiendi in absolutely pure form with respect to the executed criminal, completely free from all those physiological and psychological conditions and motives which darkened and obscured the essence of the matter in the eyes of the criminal himself, whether he committed the murder from calculation of gain or under the influence of a less shameful person. There can be no such complexities of motivation in the death penalty; the entire business is exposed here: its single goal — to put to an end to this man in order that he not be in the world at all. The death penalty is murder, as such, absolute murder that is in principle the denial of a fundamental moral attitude toward man. [7]

Anger and its desire for revenge cannot be used to justify punishment. When it is done following the path of anger, injustice, not justice is served, because compassion is left out. Virtue requires us to love our enemies, to seek after the welfare of those who would do us harm. It is not because we approve of their desires, but rather, we should seek for their betterment, to turn those who would be our enemies into our friends. We must seek for justice, and make sure, when injustice is being done, it is stopped, but we must not allow such injustice to justify other, worse injustices. When we act, it must be out of compassion for everyone; we should see justice for the injured as well as for aggressor to be changed, to be rendered no longer an aggressor but another just actor in society. Punishment must be done which keeps this in mind. One reason why we can lock someone up is not out of anger, but because it can do them some good. Thus:

Protection of individuals, public safety, and the subsequent good of the criminal, demand in the first place that the person guilty of a crime should be for a time deprived of liberty. In the interests of his relatives and of his own, a spendthrift is rightly deprived of freedom in the administration of his property. It is all the more just and necessary for a murderer or a seducer should be deprived of freedom in his line of activity. For the criminal himself deprivation of freedom is especially important as a pause in the development of the evil will, as an opportunity to bethink himself and repent.[8]

If we keep someone confined, not for their better good, even our acts of incarceration become unjust. We must remember why they are imprisoned; it is for the good of society, yes, but also for their own good. We must keep their good involved and not ignore this. We cannot turn them into mere objects of vengeance. When we keep forgetting their good, we end up promoting injustice and ideals which end up promoting injustice. Justice demands restitution, and can require incarceration so that those who do evil, can be stopped from doing evil and hurting themselves more in the process; but we must not think such incarceration is itself justice, nor can we think about “locking them up and throwing away the key,” because when we do so, we ignore what justice itself demands from us. But if we remember this, then we can begin to see how and why, and to what limit, society can deprive someone of “liberty,” of “freedom.” Persuasion alone, without some sort of social force for the sake of justice, would ignore this, though of course, we must try to persuade, and we must recognize our penal system can be a tool for the moral restitution of criminal. We can force them to stop doing evil, as long as we do not do evil in return, and then, once they have been stopped from doing evil, it is our duty to convert them to the cause of the good. We must love them and treat them with compassion. If we do so, we show we, too, find the cause of the good is our own, showing an element of our virtue in the process.

Can we see the semblance of these beliefs in other Anthonite literature? Yes. Anthony, for example, connects justice with temperance and many other virtues, all which we should seek:

Further, we should consider that even if we do not relinquish them for virtue’s sake, still afterwards when we die we shall leave them behind–very often, as the Preacher saith, to those to whom we do not wish. Why then should we not give them up for virtue’s sake, that we may inherit even a kingdom? Therefore let the desire of possession take hold of no one, for what gain is it to acquire these things which we cannot take with us? Why not rather get those things which we can take away with us–to wit, prudence, justice, temperance, courage, understanding, love, kindness to the poor, faith in Christ, freedom from wrath, hospitality? If we possess these, we shall find them of themselves preparing for us a welcome there in the land of the meek-hearted. [9]

We find, similarly, Anthony’s exhortation to St Constantine to be one which follows the ideals of our passages, that of justice mixed with mercy.[10] This, of course, is also how he acted, as a spiritual authority. Though he could, and would, make tough demands on people, he also understood the struggles monks faced, and he made it clear, those who falter and yet lift themselves up are to be respected, not denounced:

It happened one day that one of the brethren in the monastery of Abba Elias was tempted. Cast out of the monastery, he went over the mountain to Abba Anthony. The brother lived near him for a while and then Anthony sent him back to the monastery from which he had been expelled. When the brothers saw him they cast him out yet again, and he went back to Abba Anthony saying ‘My Father, they will not receive me.’ Then the old man sent them a message, saying, ‘A boat was shipwrecked at sea and lost its cargo; with great difficulty it reached the shore; but you want to throw into the sea that which has found a safe habour on the shore’ When they brothers understood that it was Abba Anthony who had sent them this monk, they received him at once.[11]

Anthony worked with the monk, to strengthen him and make sure he overcame sin. Mercy is needed in order to make sure one does not destroy someone who would otherwise be converted and become a force for good. The monk, Anthony believed, had need of help, not condemnation; justice is for the promotion of the good, and that promotion can only be had by helping a sinner overcome sin, not by destroying the sinner. Thus, if someone falls into sin, that is, shipwrecked, they should not be destroyed, but rather, helped to get to the habour safely, so that the ship can be mended. This, of course, shows us Anthony lived out in person what we find suggested in these passages. It is not that there is no work, no restitution which must be demanded from the one who sins, but rather, such demands must be made through compassion, understanding how and why they failed so one can turn them around and respected for overcoming what sought their own personal destruction.

This, of course, is the point of monasticism; monasticism is a tool by which a sinner is able to be made into a saint. It relies upon the recognition that sin hurts the sinner, and it is God’s compassion which allows the sinner to overcome sin, a recognition Anthony made clear in his letters (once again connecting to our text here):

For this cause, therefore, he who sins against his neighbour sins against himself, and he who does evil to his neighbor does evil to himself; and he who does good to his neighbour, does good to himself. Otherwise, who is able to do ill to God, or who is there who could hurt Him, or who could refresh Him, or who could ever serve Him, or who could ever bless Him, that He should need his blessing, or who is able to honour Him with the honour that is His due, or to exalt Him as He deserves? Therefore, while we are still clothed in this heavy body, let us rouse up God in ourselves by incitement of each other, and deliver ourselves to death for our souls and for each other; and if we do this, we shall manifesting the substance of His compassion for us.[12]

While what we see here, for the most part, appears like what Anthony would say, one could question whether or not he would write, in an otherwise monastic document, on the treatment of criminals. However, he was asked for advice by secular authorities, such as Constantine, and his plea was that they acted mercifully. Thus, it should not surprise us if, after he was called to reflect on this topic, he wrote down notes in case he, once again, was asked to advise some authority