On Thu, 13 Mar 2003 11:46:35 -0500 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
> [pointed out by the mysterious BuzzFlash]
>
> <http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html>
>
> God's Justice and Ours
> Antonin Scalia
>
I had posted the following concerning Scalia back in August on the Marxmail List.
Jim F.
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>On Fri, 9 Aug 2002 10:53:39 -0700 "Craven, Jim" <jcraven at clark.edu>
writes:
>
> http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html
>
> Here are some choice excerpts to tempt you to read it:
>
> The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to
> obscure
> the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to
> it, but
> the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible.
>
> And this:
>
> our people are more inclined to understand, as St. Paul did, that
> government
>
> carries the sword as "the minister of God," to
> "execute wrath" upon the evildoer.
Also, take notice of his defense of retributive punishment (including the death penalty).
"Besides being less likely to regard death as an utterly cataclysmic punishment, the Christian is also more likely to regard punishment in general as deserved. The doctrine of free will—the ability of man to resist temptations to evil, which God will not permit beyond man’s capacity to resist—is central to the Christian doctrine of salvation and damnation, heaven and hell. The post–Freudian secularist, on the other hand, is more inclined to think that people are what their history and circumstances have made them, and there is little sense in assigning blame."
"Of course those who deny the authority of a government to exact vengeance are not entirely logical. Many crimes—for example, domestic murder in the heat of passion—are neither deterred by punishment meted out to others nor likely to be committed a second time by the same offender. Yet opponents of capital punishment do not object to sending such an offender to prison, perhaps for life. Because he deserves punishment. Because it is just."
Scalia is quite right in arguing that a defense of punishment as retribution presupposes a belief in a contra-causal free will, and that the so-called post-Freudian secularist will be quite skeptical of this concept, precisely because he or she will perceive the incompatibility of free will with any sort of a scientific world-view. (And I would add it is not just post-Freudians who have perceived this, people like Hobbes, Spinoza, and Hume, not to speak of our dear friends, Marx & Engels perceived this long ago, too). As Scalia rightly points out in societies where religious faith has faded, people will become increasingly skeptical of such metaphysical, quasi-theological concepts as contra-causal free will. And rightly so, IMO, because such a belief has little rational basis despite the best efforts of theologians and metaphysicians over the centuries.
And while the consequences of abandoning such a belief may seem dire to our ruling classes, who find the notion of retribution a convenient basis for rationalizing repression, the rest of us need not find this to be too disturbing. First of all, justifications of punishment in terms of incapacitation, deterrence, and/or rehabilitation need not be undermined. Indeed, all these other rationales make much more sense if we take a determinist view of human behavior. If human actions are truly as capricious as the libertarian (believer in free will) would have them, then there would be no reason to expect deterrence or rehabilitation to be ever efficacious.
Second, the consistent determinist would IMO tend to give much greater weight to the necessity and feasibility of crime prevention, which would include altering social institutions to reduce the criminogenic conditions of our society. Justice Saclia argues that opponents of capital punishment are inconsistent since so many of them are willing to accept harsh punishment (short of death) for even murderers who kill out of passion. Such murderers in the Scalia's opinion are not likely to be deterred by punishment, nor are they very likely to reoffend. Now here, I think that Scalia has almost stumbled into a valid point. No doubt many opponents of capital punishment are not entirely consistent in their philosophies of punishment. Furthermore, I would go further and argue that he is probably right here, that deterrence is probably ineffective with these kinds of murderers and that they tend not to reoffend. So I will take the shocking but consistent position, that if Justice Scalia's presentation of the facts is correct, then harsh punishment as a general rule for these types of murderers is not justified.
I would also point out here, that as usual there is a class dimension to all this. When our murderers of passion are working stiffs, and if they are also people of color, they are highly likely to be charged with committing first degree of muder, whereas, if they are affluent petit bourgeoisie or bourgeoisie, they have a much greater likelihood of having their charges reduced to perhaps manslaughter, or second degree murder. And these affluent defendents, with their top notch attorneys are much better equipped to find all sorts of extenuating circumstances, so that judges and juries will take a more sympathetic view of their conduct. In other words they are well positioned to avoid the harshest strictures of the law, when as a matter of course such mercy ought to be made available to all defendents who are in their circumstances.
In our current situation, in the US, the wealthy can afford to buy the sort of "post-Freudian secularist" justice that Scalia condemns whereas working stiffs must make do with the retributive, vengence-oriented justice that he thinks all good Christians ought to support.
Jim F.
>
> Jim C
>
>
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