The concept of Justice in Objectivism

[Christopher]

All actions that individuals take are actions that uphold the individuals' values. Objectively these values include life and liberty.

Justice pertains to the subset of actions taken towards individuals who threaten the life or liberty of others. Justice is therefore expression of values within a specific context, in this case with the purpose of protecting values. Since justice remains within the category of human action, those individuals who carry out justice necessarily are taking actions that should uphold their own value systems (via standard of life). Criminals are dealt justice not as floating philosophical justification (asserted in The Objectivist) nor as punishment for criminal behavior; they are dealt with for our protection.

Justice taken for philosophical reason alone is devoid of the reality embedded within an objective value system. It is difficult to fathom that somehow a man's life loses its objectivity as life simply through conceptual thinking alone. We cannot change objective reality by what we think. As such, we cannot use philosophical justification alone as a means of objectively-grounded action. Nathaniel Branden failed to recognize this fact 47 years ago when he wrote in about Capital Punishment in The Objectivist.

Justice taken to exact pain or punishment is not an Objective value-action, it is vengence. If the goal of justice was punishment, why stop at confinement - why not beat, mame, or otherwise hurt criminals? No, the goal of justice is clearly not punishment. Although incarceration might appear as punishment by the nature of benefits lost from inter-individual freedom and free trade and freedom of personal action, the goal of incarceration is not punishment per se, nor can it be in an Objective value system.

Referencing the death penalty: If one were to condone the death penalty, one condones value-behavior in antithesis to the standard of life. No amount of conceptual clouding can alter this fact. Those individuals that mete out capital punishment to disempowered criminals are in fact murderers; those individuals are, within the reality of the moment regardless of conceptual evasion, objectively the cause of human death since their actions serve no purpose towards the future protection of human life.

[tjohnson]

I don't know... We allow soldiers to kill each other and innocent bystanders and we don't call them murderers. I think capital punishment is in the same category in the sense that we sanction the killing of others. Obviously the solution is to learn how to get along with our fellow humans and then we wouldn't need wars and punishment (or protection of our rights) at all.

[BaalChatzaf]

I don't know... We allow soldiers to kill each other and innocent bystanders and we don't call them murderers. I think capital punishment is in the same category in the sense that we sanction the killing of others. Obviously the solution is to learn how to get along with our fellow humans and then we wouldn't need wars and punishment (or protection of our rights) at all.

Don't hold your breath until this comes about. If you do, you will turn blue and die.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[John Day]

All actions that individuals take are actions that uphold the individuals' values. Objectively these values include life and liberty.

Justice pertains to the subset of actions taken towards individuals who threaten the life or liberty of others. Justice is therefore expression of values within a specific context, in this case with the purpose of protecting values. Since justice remains within the category of human action, those individuals who carry out justice necessarily are taking actions that should uphold their own value systems (via standard of life). Criminals are dealt justice not as floating philosophical justification (asserted in The Objectivist) nor as punishment for criminal behavior; they are dealt with for our protection.

You appear to be presenting a utilitarian view of justice, that justice is whatever presents the greatest good for society. (Forgive me if this is not an accurate view of your position) That would run counter to the Aristotelian view that justice is giving people what is due to them. As Rand puts it:

"Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero..."

Under that standard, the death penalty can be seen as moral under the Objectivist view of justice. I don't buy into the deterrent argument for the death penalty, at least in this country because the vast majority of murderers are never executed. I would say though that there are a few heinous criminals who deserve to be wiped out, and perhaps in a utilitarian argument, we as a society are better off for them no longer existing in any respect.

Referencing the death penalty: If one were to condone the death penalty, one condones value-behavior in antithesis to the standard of life. No amount of conceptual clouding can alter this fact. Those individuals that mete out capital punishment to disempowered criminals are in fact murderers; those individuals are, within the reality of the moment regardless of conceptual evasion, objectively the cause of human death since their actions serve no purpose towards the future protection of human life.

In Galt's speech, he makes the point that it is moral to use force to "destroy destruction." I would say that it is not only moral to destroy one's ability to destroy, but in some cases, it is moral to destroy the destroyer himself.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Christopher,

You are mixing standards that apply only to metaphysical questions with ones that apply to political questions while ignoring the other standards in politics.

Using human life as a standard so you can derive ethics is different than the right to life within a society. Actually the second derives from the first, but there is a critical difference. A political question includes more than the fundamental standard of life. It also includes trade. This is because more than one life is involved, and all of them bear the same right to life.

My life is not yours to take and destroy. One of the functions of government is to act as my agent in ensuring that my life has an equivalent value should you decide that my life actually is yours to take and destroy. My agent will take yours and destroy it as repayment. That's the only currency that makes any sense on that level.

Note that the agent operates essentially by proxy, even though it is not one that has been formally assigned by the individual (except, maybe, by the Pledge of Allegiance we all do over and over in school).

One can throw the gifts of compassion, rehabilitation and mercy into the mix, but they are parallel to the payment, not a replacement for it. The only rational way to deal with a murderer is by using the standard of equivalent value. Note that equivalent value even operates on the level of gifts. Compassion, rehabilitation and mercy are usually not be available to an unrepentant murderer (nor should they be).

Payment always means forfeiting something of value in exchange for something else of value. So what is gained with capital punishment? For the person who is murdered, nothing is gained. There is no person to gain anything anymore. The estate remains, however, and demanding payment closes the books on the estate. For the person's agent, it gains an example to ensure that other people understand that payment will be demanded if they take that which is not theirs and destroy it.

On those grounds, capital punishment is proper.

I am against it, however, because human knowledge is always open to correction. Should the agent take and destroy the life of an innocent person by mistake as retribution for a murder, it morally becomes the same as the murderer. The agent takes and destroys something that does not belong to it.

This is a very serious issue because death is permanent. Saying, "Oops," will not get the agent a chance to fix a permanent mistake. There is no way for the agent to be accountable without destroying the agent itself (using the standard of equivalent value), or accepting it as a tyrant where no standard but obedience exists.

The next best thing for the agent to do is demand and accept as payment the freedom of the murderer, i.e., the person who took and destroyed that which did not belong to him. At least if a mistake is made, the incarcerated person can be set free and compensated as remedy. In this manner, the agent is realistically accountable.

Michael

[Selene]

Folks:

I have children and I chose as one of the responsibilities of parenting, to protect them with my life.

Do I have the right under your system of capital punishment to kill the individual holding my child, while waving a gun around and threatening to kill my child?

Adam

I already have my answer

[BaalChatzaf]

Folks:

I have children and I chose as one of the responsibilities of parenting, to protect them with my life.

Do I have the right under your system of capital punishment to kill the individual holding my child, while waving a gun around and threatening to kill my child?

Adam

I already have my answer

You have the right answer, too. You have every right to kill anyone threatening your children or actually harming your children. If this were taken to its logical extreme there would be a bloody revolt in this country that would make the Terror of the French Revolution seem like a quiet picnic.

Comes the revolution, the public school teachers will be among the first to lose their heads along with the public school administrators. It is only just recompense for what they do to our kids.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I don't know... We allow soldiers to kill each other and innocent bystanders and we don't call them murderers. I think capital punishment is in the same category in the sense that we sanction the killing of others. Obviously the solution is to learn how to get along with our fellow humans and then we wouldn't need wars and punishment (or protection of our rights) at all.

You have to differentiate between murder as a moral concept and murder as a legal one and merely killing another human being is not ipso facto murder in either sense.

--Brant

blame Canada!!!

we conquered Mexico, but no such luck with Canada--it's time to redress the balance! Remember Massachusetts!!!

[9thdoctor]

Do I have the right under your system of capital punishment to kill the individual holding my child, while waving a gun around and threatening to kill my child?

Wouldn’t that fall under the heading of self-defense?

[tjohnson]

The solution to crime and punishment is simple, stop crime and then we don't need to worry about punishment.

[BaalChatzaf]

The solution to crime and punishment is simple, stop crime and then we don't need to worry about punishment.

Who was the dude who told the tide to turn back? The surest way to stop crime would be the the extinction of the human race down to the very last one of us. Don't hold your breath until crime stops. If you do, you will turn blue and die.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

The solution to crime and punishment is simple, stop crime and then we don't need to worry about punishment.

Who was the dude who told the tide to turn back? The surest way to stop crime would be the the extinction of the human race down to the very last one of us. Don't hold your breath until crime stops. If you do, you will turn blue and die.

Ba'al Chatzaf

OK, I won't hold my breath, but that does not mean it isn't true.

[Brant Gaede]

Do I have the right under your system of capital punishment to kill the individual holding my child, while waving a gun around and threatening to kill my child?

Wouldn't that fall under the heading of self-defense?

Yes, and it wouldn't have to be your child. It could be someone you didn't even know. You would be acting as the agent of the hostage's self defense. Your legal risk is not understanding self defense as codified in statute in your state and doing something that violates that. A policeman gets a lot of training in this area. How much training have you had? Probably the best thing to do in this particular situation is to call the police.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

The solution to crime and punishment is simple, stop crime and then we don't need to worry about punishment.

Practically speaking punishment is a different type of problem, in so far as it is a problem, than crime.

The trick is to redefine what is and isn't a crime in law congruent with the protection of individual rights. The war on drugs is the most obvious example. Etc.

Less crime and less crime is the ideal, not no crime, for the same reason that more freedom and more freedom not absolute freedom is the ideal. Insisting on the Utopian vision is insisting on political anarchy or tyranny, both expressions of the desire for human stasis as opposed to natural, dynamic reality--the first in wallowing in the unattainable, the second in blood made possible in part by the first.

What few people understand about Atlas Shrugged--it took me over 40 years--is that Rand's depicted ideal is political anarchy. She herself certainly didn't understand that. That's why the conceit of a judge at the end rewriting the US Constitution.

--Brant

Edited January 18, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Christopher]

Many good posts.

My position is not one of politics (which you, Michael, and NB both highlight the fallibility of knowledge and potential of irreparable mistakes). My position is not one that is for the good of "society." My position is also not that you cannot harm someone who is immediately threatening you or your child.

Justice falls within the realm of action, action fall within the realm of values, and values are based on the standard of life. Once a criminal is disempowered, such a criminal is no longer a threat to others. Those who hold power now have the responsibility to act according to proper values.

In the case of "fairness," reparations for theft, etc. are straight-forward. But there is no sense of fairness in taking a life for a life (just as there is no sense of fairness in taking eye for an eye). No reparation can be made for the dead, and taking more life does nothing but add to the death toll. Life for life and eye for eye are compatible justice systems, but not correct ones. These systems are based on a balancing of equations and could work for property, they are not based on values standardized against life since life is irreplaceable.

A clean fact is that life is objective. Life cannot be made "unobjective" or treated as if life is not life. This is a conceptual error. Therefore philosophical points such as proposed by Aristotle and NB that find arguments for treating life as not-life are in violation of reality. As such, these philosophical arguments undermine proper Objective human value systems.

That is my argument, and I'm holding to it!