VICTOR REPPERT SAID:
“I think a fair reading of Grayling in context suggests that the passage of time without punishment is not grounds for not inflicting the punishment now.”
We’ll see about that.
“However, if Polanski had spent time in prison for his offense, and his term was up, I don't think you would find Grayling complaining that his crime was so heinous that we can't let him out.”
The particular illustration is beside the point. Maybe he wouldn’t think that Polanski’s crime is unforgivable. Maybe he doesn’t rank Polaski’s crime on the same plane as the Nazis.
But the point at issue concerns the underlying principle, and not which historical illustrations are apt. According to him, are some crimes so heinous as to be unforgivable? That’s the point.
There’s an fundamental difference between whether the illustrations are debatable, and whether the principle they illustrate is debatable. Even if a particular instance fails to illustrate the principle, that doesn’t, of itself, falsify the principle.
“When he says that certain offenses cannot be forgiven even after a long passage of time, it's pretty clear that what he really means is that the proper judicial punishment ought to be set aside because it happened a long time ago. I would think this reading of Grayling should be pretty obvious, given everything else we know about him. Forgiving, in context, means foregoing criminal prosecution. (So I would withdraw my complaint about his saying we ought not to forgive.)”
Well, if that interpretation is so obvious, then why are you having to retract your previous interpretation (i.e. “So I would withdraw my complaint about his saying we ought not to forgive.”)? Evidently, your previous interpretation wasn’t based on a “fair reading of Grayling in context.” So much for clarity.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t even assume that Grayling has a consistent position. Rather, it seems to me that he tries to bundle two positions into one.
On the one hand, there’s his visceral revulsion against certain crimes. Crimes so heinous as to render them unforgivable.
On the other hand, Grayling the philosopher and editorialist tries, in some measure, to rationalize this visceral revulsion by appealing to the principle of deterrence.
Yet he says some other things that go beyond that pragmatic appeal. And, indeed, unless he thought the underlying crime was sufficiently and inherently heinous, there’d be no overriding reason to deter it.
Like many unbelievers, he’s conflicted. His residual sense of moral absolutes is in tension with his secular relativism.
“But I think a proper sense of the sitz im leben of the text, and other contextual matters, suggest to me that you can't get a refuation of the proportionality objection out of Grayling's comments without eisegesis.”
If it’s eisegesis, then why did you have to reverse yourself on your prior interpretation?
Seems like an interpretation is “pretty obvious” as long as it suits your preconceived agenda. But when your “pretty obvious” interpretation backfires, you have an epiphany which leads you to discover the really honest-to-goodness “pretty obvious” interpretation–in contrast to the deceptively merely apparent “pretty obvious” interpretation.
“I'd better stop before I start sounding like a pedant.”
You’d better stop before you backpeddle over a cliff.
You are trying to evade the obvious fact that Grayling is talking about a crime that has not been judicially punished. So you really have to pull a lot out of "never forgive" in order to get a refutation of the proportionality objection.
ReplyDeleteProportionality, as such, is taught in Scripture, in that there are uppoer limits on the retribution that we are allowed to impose. An eye for an eye, not an eye, an arm, and a leg for an eye.
Constitutionally, there are limits on the harm we can inflict even on even a McVeigh or a Dahmer.
VICTOR REPPERT SAID:
ReplyDelete"You are trying to evade the obvious fact that Grayling is talking about a crime that has not been judicially punished. So you really have to pull a lot out of 'never forgive' in order to get a refutation of the proportionality objection."
You are trying to evade the obvious fact that you're now backtracking on your original interpretation of what he "obviously" meant.
It sometimes takes time for me to see the obvious. Everyone in my family knows that. It is nevertheless reasonably clear when you think about what he is saying.
ReplyDeleteBesides, it is a rule of interpretation that you don't saddle someone with a contradiction of their own principles unless you have to.
The most important point is that the penal code is based on proportionality, and there are limits on what you can do to the worst criminals. Let's not get sidetracked. Someone operating within the framework of the criminal justice system, assuming that we are thinking in terms of retribution, is operating on the assumption that there is a degree of punishment that should be given for this or that crime.
Criminal justice is inherently limited and inherently proportional. You need a disanalogy from criminal justice in order to get a defense of hell. You can't attack proportional limits from within the perspective of the criminal justice system, because criminal justice is inherently proporitional, and this comes down from Scripture. But because you have to win every argument, you have to keep avoiding my central point.
VICTOR REPPERT SAID:
ReplyDelete"It sometimes takes time for me to see the obvious. Everyone in my family knows that."
Well, Victor, that's one thing we agree on. So perhaps we should quit while we're ahead.
Victor Reppert said...
ReplyDelete“The most important point is that the penal code is based on proportionality, and there are limits on what you can do to the worst criminals.”
i) All you’ve done, as usual, is to beg the question. An adherent of everlasting punishment has no problem with proportionality. He accepts that principle. And he denies that everlasting punishment is disproportionate.
You may disagree, but don’t pretend that you affirm a principle which he denies. And don’t assume what you need to prove.
ii) In addition, the question of limits is often a practical question rather than a principled question.
A man may murder 50 people, yet we can’t execute him 50 times. And even if we could, that wouldn’t restore the victims to life. Or compensate the survivors for pain and suffering.
So the punishment we inflict is limited and, indeed, disproportionate–not because it’s more severe than he deserves, but because it’s less severe than he deserves. We lack the earthlymeans to punish him adequately.
“You need a disanalogy from criminal justice in order to get a defense of hell.”
The only disanalogy I need to evoke is a practical one rather than a principled one; to wit: in the here and now there are many crimes in which the iniquity of the crime exceeds any feasible form of punishment. The crime is worse than any corresponding punishment that we can assign.
Even with the most serious serial killers, we have not merely practical limits, but moral limits on the degree to which we may punish. Yes, we may believe that we ought to execute a Dahmer or a Himmler, but we may not torture them, in spite of the tortures that they inflicted on others.
ReplyDeleteBut suppose we had all of the resources of the Catholic Purgatory. We have all the time we need to inflict whatever punishment the action deserves. Let's assume we have a repentant sinner, someone who is not reoffending. Let's say we have Hitler or Stalin, so we have worst of evil deeds to be punished. Let's say we make Hitler feel the suffering of every Jew he sent to the camps. At some point, maybe in 1000, or 10,000 years, isn't there a point at which it makes sense to say "OK, justice has been served, he's suffered enough, the punishment has gone far enough." The evil deeds, at least from the perspective of the justice system, are finite in the harm they do. If we think that these actions harmed others to a finite degree, then it looks as if there has to be some finite degree to which the punishment has to be calibrated. Whereas in hell, you've no less days to roast away than when you first begun. We can't inflict on Hitler all of the pain he inflicted on others, but if we could, surely it would have to come to an end sometime.
It looks to me as if at this point you've got to go outside of the criminal justice analogy and use one of two arguments. Either you have to argue that any offense against an infinite being deserves an infinite punishment (in federal theology the sin can even be that of Adam), or you have to presume that the lost are reoffending. But in the criminal justice system, you can't assume that those you punish will continuously reoffend, and there are no infinite victims.