Also, underlying support of capital punishment and of harsh
> punishments by the criminal justice system generally is
> bourgeois individualist ideology. According to this idea
> we are each masters of our own fates. Each of us bears
> ultimate responsibility for the choices that we make, for
> what we make of ourselves whether good or bad.
Do you actually disagree with this proposition? Do you think that if I rob a bank, or perhaps, since we are on LBO I should say, if I found a bank, and am hauled in front of Doug's revolutionary tribunal, I should be able defend myself by saying, I wasn't responsible! I am just a creature of society! Bourgeois ideology made me do it!
> Those
> who make good or wise choices are thus entitled to
> rewards commensurate with the wisdom or goodness
> of those choices and those who make bad or foolish
> choices are likewise deserving of punishments
> commensurate with such choices.
Well, it's one thing to say that people are responsible for their choices and another to say that they should get what their choices deserve. These are seperate questions.
But even here, although people on the left might not think that bad people who make bad choices are the root of our problems, we don't have to reject the idea that if you make bad choices you pay the price. Surely that's waht we think in the case of, say, Pinochet, or anyway we think he should pay the price.
People
> are endowed with free will and thus responsibility
> for their choices lies with the individuals that make
> them not with society or social structures etc.
Well, this doesn't follow. Why not both? Why is it either/or? If we have a bad society that tends to make some people into bad people, why cannot we say that the people who do bad things should be punished, and the fact that our society makes them that way means it needs to be changed>
> To the extent that it might be admitted that some
> people's choices might not be freely made, then
> the factors that are held responsible are still said
> to be internal to the individual - perhaps in the form
> of bad genes, or mental illness conceived of in
> strictly individualist terms.
Of course legal insanity will get you off, after a fashion.
But my main point here is that I don't think that the left should buy into this bad old 60s liberal palaver about the poor widdle cwiminals and their bad enviwonments that isn't their fault.
I don't think real hard determinism is a tenable position. Hard determinism means no one is morally responsible for what she does because it is all caused by factors beyond her control, and therefore no one can be justly rewarded or punished for what they do. No one really believes this, and I don't think anyone could. Surely you could not raise children based on that premise.
Of course the left must not buy into the idea that we cannot point to social causes of crime and other misbehavior without excusing such conduct. If we reject hard determinism, we need not excuse rape, tyranny, etc., or deny the responsibility of those who chose to do such things,a nd ounish thema ccordingly. And we can still say that these bad things are caused by a bad society.
My co-clerk here in the judge's chambers says I am becoming very conservate. Maybe, who knows.
--Justin Schwartz