I, Niall Francis Lambkin, hereby assert and give notice of my right under section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this essay.
Raskolnikov did not commit a crime; he is sure of this, there is no doubt in his mind. The circumstances of the act were bloody and unnaturally violent. At his feet lay the cloven, bloody bodies of the old pawnbroker and her pitiful sister, and in his hand he held the blood-drenched hatchet and watched the women’s lifeblood spread darkly across the floorboards of the miserably shabby apartment. How could there be any doubt about the nature of this act? There was the intention to kill the pawnbroker (the killing of the sister was unfortunate and not premeditated), the motivation, the means and the act itself, all witnessed by the reader. Raskolnikov has, according to most sensibilities, committed an unambiguous crime, a murder, a double murder in fact, in circumstances most of us would not hesitate to characterise as dreadful. However, when confronting himself with what he has done Raskolnikov spits out, with a revealing passion: "Crime? What crime? That I killed a vile, noxious insect…"
We are clear in our minds, though, that Raskolnikov’s act is indeed a crime and a heinous one; or are we? How can it be meaningful that Raskolnikov does not recognise his action as something that offends society’s sensibilities in so fundamental a manner? He does not, of course, deny that his act has offended society and indeed he is fearful of punishment should he ever be discovered. What he denies is that he has committed an act that deserves censure. The point of asking this question about meaning and possibility is in the first instance to highlight the difficulty of establishing a foundation for objective moral action, and secondly to highlight the fact that the nature of crime is not simple and the application of punishment uncertain. The nature of crime is complex because from the first person point of view the act may not be understood according to the third person moral criteria applied by the society within which the act is committed and by which it is judged.
In order to analyse the general nature of crime and of punishment, therefore, we can ask specifically of Raskolnikov’s case the following questions:
What in the first place motivated his action?
Could he have acted differently viz., was his act genuinely free or was it in
some way determined? (Free Will versus Determinism)
Can there be an objective morality which unequivocally shows that certain reasons
for action (Raskolnikov’s) are morally misconceived and shows the action
itself to be absolutely wrong?
If there is a satisfactory and objective foundation for judging the behaviour
of others what justification do we then have for punishing those we judge to
have committed a crime?
Dostoevsky’s own summary of his novel serves to place the unfortunate
Raskolnikov in context.
A young man from a bourgeois background has been expelled from the university and he is living in dire poverty. Because of his rashness and instability he has become prey to certain strange, "unfinished" ideas which are in the air and has decided to free himself from his miserable position in a single stroke. He has decided to murder an old woman who lends money on interest. This old woman is stupid, deaf, sick and greedy…She takes horrific interest rates, is cruel, and torments her younger sister who works for her. She’s fit for nothing. What is she living for? Is she useful to anybody? Such questions drive the young man out of his mind. He decides to murder and rob her in order to find happiness for his mother, who lives in the provinces, and to rescue his sister from a landowner. She lives on the estate as a companion and is continually harassed by the landowner’s lechery…
Completely by accident, he manages to carry out his plan quickly and successfully. Nearly a month passes before the final catastrophe. There is no suspicion of him and no cause for any. In this month, the entire psychological process of the crime unfolds. The murderer is faced with insoluble problems; he is tormented by undreamed of, unexpected feelings. God’s truth and earthly law triumph, and in the end, he understands that he must turn himself in.
MOTIVE
What motivates a man to commit what is ordinarily conceived of as a crime is central to the attitude we take up towards him. If we understand his motivation then in some sense we understand him and consequently deal with his action in an appropriate manner. The process involves stepping into the mind of the criminal and seeing his act from his point of view. We can do this because we share a publicly available domain of sympathies whereby imaginatively we occupy the psychological space of the criminal and identify with it. If this was not possible then all our dealings with our fellows would be similar to the dealings we have with mere machines; that is, we assume a subjective internal life in all our dealings with other human beings (and other animals in some cases). Thus, we cross examine the accused and gauge his answers to our questions; we make judgements about whether the truth is being told, whether facts are being withheld, whether spin is clouding objectivity and so on; we look to see whether the accused appears to understand the nature of his actions and whether if found guilty he indicates his fault and desire to make reparation; we examine all the evidence available to us and judge as to whether it is all consistent with what we have been told. If after all this we fail to reach an appropriate understanding of the man accused then we conclude that in some sense the accused is not what we would ordinarily accept as being a bona fide member of the moral community. I shall have more to say on the importance of what Strawson has called ‘participant attitudes’ later on. In the meantime let us look more closely at precisely what motivated Raskolnikov to commit his crime and see whether we can understand it.
There are two things to note here: the dire poverty Raskolnikov was living in (crushing poverty and misery was widespread in St. Petersburg) and the strange "unfinished" ideas that were in the air. I shall say nothing of the social theory of crime and specifically the influence of poverty for it is easy to see how poverty and overcrowding and disease can de-humanise and motivate a man to steal or commit some other crime in order to better his state. Of more interest is the notion that an idea can motivate a man to take the life of another. How can we understand this?
The strange unfinished idea is nihilism which came to take on its own particular flavour in Russia under the influence of theorists such as Nikolai Chernyshevskii but did not reach philosophical maturity until Russian intellectuals discovered Friedrich Nietzsche in the early 1890s and hailed him a powerful and coherent proponent of self-fulfilment and an enemy of the ‘slave morality’ of Christianity. The writing of Crime and Punishment coincided with the growth and fermentation of nihilist thought in the young, radical, non-gentry intellectuals in Russian universities who espoused an undiluted materialism and placed their intellectual faith in positivism and a belief that science constituted the only authority in terms of legitimate knowledge. In Raskolnikov we have the estranged youthful university intellectual plunging himself into the heady nihilist brew and living in squalor to boot. Whilst nihilism was at the time a broad social and cultural movement, it could forge an individual’s response to being in the world in ways which could place him entirely outside the normal expectations of society. And so it is with Raskolnikov as he drinks in a philosophy of negation, rejection and denial of all aspects of thought and life. For the purposes of this essay it is with moral nihilism that we shall be concerned, with the notion, that is, that there is no possibility of justifying or criticising moral judgements because morality is no more than a cloak for egoistic self-seeking, and therefore a sham; the notion that only descriptive claims such as those of science can be rationally judged and that prescriptive moral claims such as ‘thou shalt not kill’ cannot be logically derived from descriptive claims and must therefore be transcended (that is to say understand that they do not apply); the notion that moral principles are no more than expressions of subjective choice or preference or feeling describing the person so expressing. In the end the cosmos is intelligible to science alone and is in itself entirely indifferent to human projects and values; in fact the cosmos may in fact be hostile to human existence and when this is seen the pointlessness, futility and absurdity of human existence becomes clear. It is left to the individual to plough his own furrow and make the best of an essentially valueless existence, and good luck to him. Against this intellectual state must we understand Raskolnikov’s act and already we see that he is no ordinary criminal but some kind of existential agent provocateur.
Raskolnikov has written a published article stating the right of the individual to use his complete freedom to kill another human being. Through courage and a completely authentic decision to cast aside the values of the community he inhabits, an individual lifts himself up out of the ordinary, like Napoleon, and becomes extra-ordinary; and qua extra-ordinary person he lives free of ordinary moral constraint. Ordinary morality is for the ordinary and mediocre; the act of deliberately killing another human being without regret is the ultimate act of liberation, the definitive act that propels the individual into real life, into real unfettered existence. Raskolnikov chooses his victim with care ensuring that she is of low value, low life; he likens his act to crushing an insect beneath his boot.
He lives alone, morose, hating human wretchedness and the human weakness that allows such misery. Within him there is dormant power to overcome the ordinariness of human existence which holds him and everyone else in misery and desperately he wishes to awaken this power and spark himself into true existence. He must arouse himself from his half-life and find a definitive act.
…a sort of savage energy gleamed suddenly in his feverish eyes and his wasted, yellow face. He did not know or think where he was going, but had one thought only: ’that all this must be ended today…that he would not return home without it, because he would not go on living like that.’
Human weakness depresses him; his own weakness humiliates him; there is human misery everywhere. The intellect stands in the way of real being with all its theorising and moralising. The way out is to re-discover the will, the pure will fettered deep in the psyche. Raskolnikov does not believe himself to be a criminal but only a man who needs to mine deep into himself to unearth the strength that will lift him out of the mire of ordinary existence. So, where a better man may have found some extra-ordinary act of charity or bravery to provide the definitive act, Raskolnikov does not see past his poverty and settles on the killing of the old woman. His purpose is two-fold: the murder will provide money to lift him out of financial despair, and the violent act itself will be the definitive act of defiance that will set him apart from other men — the kick-start to real existence. But he fails on both counts. He does not use the money he steals and he does not manage to excavate the strength he believes lies buried deep within him. It turns out that he is sensitive and over-estimates his own callousness; he is, in fact, incapable of transcending ordinary human existence for with two murders to his credit his life has not changed one jot in type; it has merely intensified in terms of ordinary misery. With this self-realisation Raskolnikov has little option but to confess and seek some form of redemption. His redemption, however, is not of the Christian type. As someone who has placed himself on the Nietszchean peak ‘beyond good and evil’, Raskolnikov must somehow redeem himself according to the demands of the notion that man can overcome himself and not succumb feebly to the gravity of Christian repentance. He hears the story of Lazarus and knows that like him he is dead and needs to be raised. He knows that he is spiritually dead and needs to experience a re-birth of spirit for in murdering the pawnbroker he really murdered himself. There was no spark of life in the act for it failed to define him and now he must pay the penalty for his own cowardice and clumsiness, not because he has committed a terrible and evil act.
Only now I see the imbecility of my cowardice…It’s simply because I am contemptible and have nothing in me that I have decided to {give myself up}…I wanted to do good to men, thousands of good deeds to make up for that one piece of stupidity; not stupidity even, simply clumsiness, for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now it has failed…
Raskolnikov was plainly a man gripped by a theory, demonically possessed by an idea; his failure in action and subsequent self-loathing points to the mismatch of idea and the reality of human nature, an observation that escapes him altogether and one that would have redeemed him.
FREE WILL VERSUS DETERMINISM
We now have a motive for Raskolnikov’s act and a confession of guilt. When he is arrested he makes it clear that he wishes to serve a full sentence and knows full well that what he has done is a fundamentally unacceptable act of violence against ordinary society. But in accepting his punishment he maintains he has committed no crime in any fundamental sense for he does not accept the conventions of ordinary society. Whether he has committed a crime in some absolute sense is not clear and we might usefully question the coherence of the very idea of an objective morality against which Raskolnikov’s action might ultimately be judged. From the point of view of the overman (Nietzsche’s ‘ubermench’) he has merely acted according to the dictates of his will and his admission of guilt stems from his personal humiliation at having failed to transcend ordinary existence — for him this is his crime; from the point of view of ordinary society, however, he has committed a most heinous offence and one that is fundamental in its thrust. But before I deal with the question of whether there can be such a thing as an absolute morality which binds both the ordinary and extra-ordinary individual, we must deal with the question of whether Raskolnikov could have acted other than he did. That is, was Raskolnikov merely acting according to the uncomplicated principles of causality by which the physical world is bound and therefore determined to act as he did because determined by all antecedent conditions?
The issue here is of fundamental importance: how do our interpersonal responses sit with what we know of how the physical world is constituted and operates? The world is teeming with human beings reacting to and interacting with one another and this forms the context of our moral behaviour, a context which allows us to live hugely entertaining and richly spiritual lives. We feel agreeable when associating with what we take to be good; we blame others (perhaps ourselves) when things go wrong; we praise when things go right; we admire and condemn; we admonish and forgive; we resent and love. By virtue of living our lives within this context we make of ourselves moral beings — indeed these ‘participant reactive attitudes’ cannot be separated from the moral world, for they constitute it. Yet these attitudes, which we take for granted, are in fact deeply problematic. The question is: how are we able to justify such attitudes in the light of what we know about the physical world in which we live? Is it enough merely to recognise that such attitudes oil interpersonal relationships?
Let us take Raskolnikov’s action. He committed murder and if he hadn’t reacted to his own action in the way that he did he would not have been arrested for there was insufficient evidence pointing his way. There was of course a police investigation; St. Petersburg society felt outrage that such a crime should have been committed. Someone had to be blamed (if Raskolnikov had not confessed then the decorators would have taken the blame). If Raskolnikov could have shown that it was not his intention to kill the old woman but only to frighten her — the hatchet slipped, his palms were sweaty, he was delirious, not himself — then society would have tempered its attitude towards him, pity him perhaps, and punish him still, but not resent him. It is the fact that Raskolnikov showed no remorse for his crime that caused society’s resentment; his act was premeditated, he deliberately set out to cause harm to the pawnbroker and thereby to society. There were no mitigating circumstances. Society therefore resented Raskolnikov because of his attitude towards it; it is because Raskolnikov showed contempt for it that society reacted as it did.
The participant attitude that society had towards Raskolnikov depended on the belief that Raskolnikov entertained participant attitudes towards it. This is an important observation for it shows that participant attitudes are appropriate only when it is believed that the objects of such attitudes themselves entertain attitudes of similar type. So a distinction can be made between objects capable of ordinary participant reactive attitudes and those incapable of such attitudes. For example, I might wish to distinguish accordingly between my conventional next door neighbour and a psychopath or a patient in a persistent vegetative state. Of the latter two I struggle to react to them in an ordinary moral way for they do not appear to be ordinary objects of moral concern,and I feel in some sense justified in so struggling. This of course points to the assumption that I am justified in reacting to ordinary people with my full range of participant attitudes. The problem is that even in ordinary cases I can reasonably ask whether I am in fact justified in blaming, praising, admiring and condemning etc.
It is at this juncture that our moral lives come into conflict with physical science and causality. It is with this form of determinism and its impact upon the notion of free will that I shall concern myself, leaving aside the more mediaeval problem of reconciling human freedom with divine foreknowledge.
The issue is this: do participant reactive attitudes make sense in the face of universal causal determinism? If it is true that everything that occurs in the cosmos (including all human behaviour) is subject to causal laws working in conjunction with all antecedent conditions, then concepts such as blame, resentment, praise, guilt etc., are mere human fancies, indulgent delusions. If Raskolnikov acted according to strict and inexorable causal laws then he could not have acted other than he did, and if this is the case then he could not have helped himself, he could not have chosen not to kill the old woman and cannot therefore be blamed for what he did. In other words, if universal causal determinism is true then Raskolnikov is not an object of participant reactive attitudes.
But can this be true? If determinism is the case then I cannot act but as I do. However, it seems clear to me that I am free to act most of the time as I wish; I feel certain of this and so reject determinism. If determinism implies that I cannot act other than as I do then determinism seems false and anything that implies a falsehood must itself be false!
Of course causal determinism cannot be dismissed merely by my feeling that it must be false and it will become clear that maintaining the existence of freedom in the face of it is an enormously difficult task. However, if we are to make sense of the concepts of crime and punishment then we must make some effort to reach a coherent and persuasive conclusion that freedom is indeed a fundamental feature of human existence and that we are not just kidding ourselves.
The case for a coherent determinism is as follows: we live our everyday existence on the assumption that causal laws operate in the world; that these laws operate at many levels and allow us to predict the behaviour of the world at those different levels. The assumption is an altogether reasonable one to make for it is self-evidently the case that we can make predictions about the behaviour of objects in the world and do so with impressive accuracy. If there were no causal laws then it would not be possible to control and understand our environment. We must include human beings amongst the objects in the world that obey causal laws; medicine, the cognitive sciences, psychology and the project of education all presuppose causality and enable us to predict outcomes to lesser or greater degrees. As human beings we are an integral part of the physical universe and all matter obeys causal laws. Our actions are public manifestations of internal operations which are themselves part of the physical world (electro-chemical neurological activity being the physical cause of muscle contraction and relaxation, digestion, thoughts, emotions etc.) All this is well established and remains well established even if it is the case that on the quantum level there is a fundamental uncertainty built into the fabric of the universe. This is so because at the macroscopic level causality is expressed through statistical determinism so that even though there may be uncertainty at the quantum level there remains at the macroscopic level a completely regular world which allows accurate predictions to be made. I might be supposed that our subjective lives are immaterial and therefore are not bound to the causal laws which bind the material world. But there is no reason to suppose that even if it turns out to be the case that a thought, for example, is not identical with its neural correlate that it is thereby not subject to causal laws; one thought (an immaterial occurrence) determines another thought (another immaterial occurrence).
It is clear how the theory of determinism challenges what it takes to be the conceit of human freedom. It follows that if determinism is true then our moral lives expressed through the rich interplay of participant reactive attitudes are inappropriate and logically should be discarded. How we deal with Raskolnikov, therefore, in part depends upon how the tension between determinism and free will can be resolved. Yet a resolution is no simple matter and I shall deal with the possibilities only briefly. The world as described by science is predictable and for this reason determinism appears to be true. But at the same time we seem convinced that as agents operating in the world we are free to act as we do (if true bad news for Raskolnikov). Is there any way in which we can recognise the fact of determinism and at the same time retain our freedom and therefore our moral lives?
COMPATIBILISM
The arguments for maintaining that human freedom is compatible with determinism are bound to be subtle. Let us see how one might work with Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov, prior to his killing of the old woman, had two mutually exclusive courses of action open to him: he could kill the pawnbroker (A) or not kill her (B). Let us say that Raskolnikov did (A) [which he did] whilst believing that he could have done (B). Now what does this mean? It might mean that if Raskolnikov had chosen to do (B) then he would have done (B). This amounts to the following: Raskolnikov’s freedom is preserved if his choice to do (A) is part of the causal chain which determines his subsequent action. This means that given his choice/desire to do (A) his doing (A) is a free act because it is done as a result of his initial choice/desire/will and not irrespective of it. This is what is implied by my saying, for example, that I could have done otherwise and would have done so should I have chosen to do so. On this view freedom consists in being able to act (or choosing not to act) according to the dictates of the will. How free the will is, however, remains another question but whatever answer we might want to give to this problem should have no real bearing on my present freedom according to the compatibilist thesis. The will is either something ultimate and given in experience (in which case it does not require justification) or it is not, and if it is not then I am thrown into a regress of choosing my choices and choosing the choosing of my choices and so on ad infinitum. It would appear, therefore, that determinism and Raskolnikov’s freedom are compatible for Raskolnikov’s will places him at the centre of the determinism that issues in particular action, in this case the killing of the pawnbroker.
THE MANNER OF THE PAWNBROKER’S DEATH.
This compatibilist saving of freedom in the face of determinism seems all that we need yet there are those who would argue that genuine free will involves much more than this and that causal explanations are simply not enough. To be genuinely free our actions must be capable of explanation in terms of our reasons for action. We know why the old woman died: she stood still before Raskolnikov; neural activity in his brain caused his arm to rise, the grip of his hand on the hatchet to tighten, momentum and gravity to bring the object down hard on the woman’s skull, which was fragile and cracked under the force; blood flowed freely and the body ceased to function.
This explanation of the woman’s death does not, however, explain why Raskolnikov was standing in her shabby apartment with a hatchet hidden about his clothing; does not explain why he held her in contempt and was willing to do violence to her; does not explain the subjective monologue going on in Raskolnikov’s mind and the neural correlative activity of his central nervous system which together (we assume) bring about the raising of the arm. Without this kind of explanation in terms of reasons (motives, desires, beliefs etc) as opposed to mere physical causes, we cannot make proper sense of human action for human action is simply not like the action of non-psychological objects such as rocks or water where the acts of falling or splashing can be fully explained causally. The incompatibilist’s suggestion that freedom requires explanations in terms of reasons goes some way to explaining the notion that Raskolnikov’s action might be neither causally determined nor purely random. The idea here is that when dealing with human agency there cannot be a wholly sufficient causal explanation, for such an explanation leaves out the possibility of true freedom which resides in our psychological lives. Our psychological states explain why we behave in this way or that but these states are not themselves determined.
RATIONALITY AND CAUSALITY
We might, however, wish to question whether it makes sense to suggest that reasons can explain human action in a way that does not entail their reduction to ordinary causal laws, that is we might wish to question whether rationality itself is incompatible with a purely causal account of mental states (Raskolnikov’s belief that killing the old woman will answer his immediate problems, for example, and the specific correlative neural activity in his brain which can be fully explained in terms of simple causal laws.)
I sit Raskolnikov down and interview him. "Why did you kill the pawnbroker?" I ask.
"I needed the money to lift me out of my inhuman poverty and to rescue my sister from the drooling of that lecherous landlord. It was a reasonable thing to do: the old woman had money; she was cruel to those around her, her life was worthless; she was an insect, a noxious creature, completely repulsive. No one would miss her, therefore I killed her. I did society a favour; you should be patting me on the back not giving me your censure. My need was superior; that’s all."
It seems that Raskolnikov’s complex belief explains why he killed; he needs money, he wishes to save his mother and sister, he decides not to kill just anyone but a particular person and justifies his choice of victim. In other words he reasons his way towards the killing. The question is: can this explanation (this rationality) resist being reduced to a causal process? Does the explanation offer anything in addition to a simple causal explanation of how Raskolnikov came to have the beliefs he had? It is difficult to see how there could be anything in addition other than some inexplicable jumping of uncaused beliefs into the general causal picture for surely it is clear that Raskolnikov held the beliefs he did because he looked around him, made various judgements about various states of affairs and drew a simple conclusion according to the rules of simple logic. How would one explain Raskolnikov’s choice to kill the pawnbroker as something completely free of causal explanation? His choice cannot be free in the manner in which a non-compatibilist requires for if he maintains that choice must in some way be beyond cause then each choice must be accounted for in terms of prior choices which must themselves be accounted for in terms of prior choices and so on ad infinitum. As we have already noted eternal regress is not satisfactory and so at some stage a choice must be ultimate and if this is the case I cannot be held responsible for this ultimate choice or indeed for any of the choices supported by it (which means all choices).
It would appear, therefore, that reasons might possibly have causal power in human affairs even though a reason and a cause seem on the surface to be two entirely different things. If I am caused to do something then I am unable to extricate myself from the causal process; I am compelled to behave according to the dictates of the cause. However, I am not similarly compelled by reasons. Reasons are normative and tell me how I ought to behave so that even when I am presented with sufficient reasons to behave in a certain way I may still choose not to do so. But it does not follow from this that reasons cannot be causes, although it might sometimes be difficult to identify a reason acting as a cause. In Raskolnikov’s case we can understand how he came to view the old woman in the way he did for we can follow the chain of reasoning he took and see how it adheres to the laws of inference. But at the same time we can understand how this chain of reasoning caused Raskolnikov to take the action he did and it would be odd indeed not to take it into the account of the causes of the woman’s death; that is, she didn’t just die because of her smashed body; she died also because Raskolnikov was in a specific frame of mind, and he was in this frame of mind because he had followed a certain chain of reasoning which had sprung from a certain state of affairs. There is, however, a difference in the status of the ordinary cause and the reason which is a cause; the former relates to an actual state of affairs in the world which operates according to rigid laws; the latter relates also to a state of affairs in the world (a belief, say) but this state of affairs may not relate truthfully to something in the world — the belief might be entirely erroneous yet still be the part cause of a particular action (my belief in a flat earth causes me not to travel further than fourteen miles or so in any direction). If this is not a convincing account of how reasons might also be viewed as causes one might appeal to the possibility of physicalism which holds that all mental states are identical with physical states of the brain. If this is true then it follows that my belief in a flat earth can clearly be a cause of my not venturing further than fourteen miles in any direction. According to physicalism this account is equivalent (identical in meaning) to a specific neurological state causing me not to venture further than fourteen miles in any direction.
In the end, though, the debate between determinism and free will seems open: the compatibilist maintains that if a belief has been arrived at according to a correct rational process and that belief is acted upon (chosen) then it becomes part of the causal chain that issues in human action. On the other hand the incompatibilist maintains that choice must be entirely non-causal, even if normative action correlates with action clearly explained in ordinary causal terms.
THE WAY FORWARD
It remains unclear, therefore, whether participant attitudes should be discarded for reasons of logic. But whether participant attitudes should be or could be discarded is another matter entirely and there is good reason to suppose that if such attitudes were indeed abandoned we should see the end of what we would normally take to be a human world.
Hume had pointed out the essential metaphysical nature of the idea of universal causation by showing that nature only displays regularities rather than causal necessity. His suggestion was that there was nothing in nature to suggest necessary connections between events; there was only empirical regularity and as a result there was nothing in nature that could justify the belief in universal causation. Universal causation is therefore a metaphysical concept rather than an empirical one. But despite the indeterminism that underpins the quantum fabric of the universe (upon which the macroscopic world is manifested) and Hume’s impeccable argument, the idea of universal causality has a firm grip on human common sense and it seems an entirely reasonable assumption to make about the world from a practical point of view; we confidently and successfully predict our immediate futures on the back of this assumption about how the world is structured. Acknowledging that our predictive powers are based on this assumption leaves it open as to whether the entire fabric of the world is determined by universal causal laws. Whilst we recognise empirical regularity in human psychology and behaviour it remains an open question as to whether our thoughts and behaviour are determined by necessary laws. And this point is important because it allows us room to continue to entertain our participant attitudes seriously and with fondness, for we define ourselves in terms of them. We are all, as it were, natural psychologists and as such we enter into the hearts and souls of each other; we form friendships; we love each other, forgive each other, admire and respect each other, praise and admonish, reward and punish each other; our whole being as creatures in the world is defined by how we subjectively respond to the world and those with whom we share it. Our normal response, therefore, to the world and our fellows, is to engage deeply in and through our participant attitudes. This explains why we sometimes respond to others with a distant reservation because we find them cold or disengaged in some radical way. Those who exhibit some sort of psychopathology do not have full membership of the moral community and we find it almost impossible to engage with them on a truly human level. For us they become something closer to objects of scientific study than genuinely human persons. Commitment to certain ideas might lead us to fail to see some persons in terms of their true nature and therefore treat them in pathological ways; we see this happening in programmes of ethnic cleansing. Whenever we are confronted with psychopathology we find it difficult to pity because we do not fully recognise what we have before us is legitimate human behaviour and so we detach and respond to it accordingly. All this is the consequence of having fundamental participant attitudes and none of it could be washed away by any acceptance of causal determinism.
In Raskolnikov we have a man possessed of an idea which appears aberrant and a man driven by the desire to rid himself of grinding poverty. He is disgusted by the human condition in poverty and disgusted by the mediocrity of the human spirit. He wishes to surpass man; he wishes to recreate himself by removing the obstacles of ordinary morality and living according to the will. He kills. And then he becomes disgusted by his own failure to surpass the ordinary.
His case is interesting because although his ideas lead him to deny the value of the life of the old woman, we do not characterise his behaviour and attitudes as pathological. We understand him fully; anyone who cannot enter into his state of being is himself disengaged and in need of living harder. And determinism is not proven; nor is it abandoned. How then to judge Raskolnikov? The fact of participant attitudes demands that we respond to his act appropriately and it is this fact that in a sense makes the problem of unresolved determinism irrelevant. This is in fact Strawson’s position.
Even if we accepted determinism and theoretically committed to it we would still wish to deal with Raskolnikov in a manner which made sense of the idea of a moral community. We could not help ourselves for as natural psychologists we do not recognise, nor could recognise, the human community as a community of wholly determined biological automata; interpersonal dynamics are simply necessary to us being the creatures we are.
So where does this leave determinism? Either it is compatible with freedom expressed through our participant attitudes or it is not. If it is then interpersonal dynamics are safe and we can continue to live full moral lives; if it is not then the richness of our interpersonal being (which is necessary to us being the creatures that we are) gives us sufficient reason for rejecting determinism as something that threatens to diminish such being. But the basic problem remains: if it is the case that human beings are part of the natural world and the natural world is subject to causal laws then it follows that human beings are subject to causal laws; how is it therefore possible for humans to act freely in such a world?
EXTERNAL MORAL REALITY
Let us assume that Raskolnikov in some sense freely committed his act of killing the old woman, free in the sense that he could have done other than he did. We may now ask the question whether this killing of the old woman was wrong and wrong not just from the point of view of the St. Petersburg moral consensus (conventionally wrong) but wrong in some absolute sense? Can there, in other words, be an objective morality which unequivocally shows that certain reasons for action (Raskolnikov’s) are morally misconceived and shows the action itself to be absolutely wrong? If we are to punish Raskolnikov for what he did then we ought to be clear about where our alleged authority to judge his behaviour comes from.
I have already suggested that Raskolnikov did not take an ordinary view of morality. He was not a relativist in the sense he believed that his moral opinion and that of St. Petersburg had equal moral worth. He was well aware that moral reasoning is constrained by the laws of logic and so one moral argument may be demonstrated to be more coherent and logically compelling than another. Raskolnikov was, more disconcertingly, a deep nihilist for he did not just reject the morality of the ordinary man, the everyday morality of Christian Russia, but the idea of morality itself. Real existence for him involved leaving the moral world behind and living his life fully and unconstrained, his will soaring free in a stratosphere of being.
If we are to condemn Raskolnikov for his actions we must demonstrate a mistake in his thinking and provide good reasons to suppose that morality is not just central to human existence but is also objective. This point of objectivity is important for without the notion of an external moral reality it seems incoherent to maintain the importance of morality and be morally committed for without such a reality the foundations of moral behaviour can only be conventional, and if conventional then it is difficult to see how one man’s morality can legitimately be imposed on another. So, can a case be made for the existence of an external moral reality?
Raskolnikov killed an old woman and did so with a hatchet. This is an empirical fact. By saying that this is an empirical fact I am saying that it is true that Raskolnikov killed an old woman with a hatchet and by saying that it is true I am saying that it describes a real event in the world. I might also say that I believe that Raskolnikov killed an old woman with a hatchet, even though I did not witness the event. I have assessed all the evidence for the event and believe that it points to the probability that Raskolnikov did in fact kill an old woman with a hatchet; that is, my belief fits the real world appropriately. Now what if I go further than this and say that I believe Raskolnikov’s act to be wrong. Is this the same kind of belief I have when I say that I believe Raskolnikov killed the old woman? If it is then it follows that my belief that it was wrong to kill the old woman must fit a state of affairs in the world, a moral reality external to the belief itself. But now I have a problem: what does it mean to say that there is an aspect of reality (a natural state) that is about what humans ought to do? If there is such a moral state of the world how could this ever be established; in other words, how could beliefs about this moral state of the world be verified? My moral beliefs cannot therefore be like my empirical beliefs; we might agree that Raskolnikov killed the old woman but disagree about whether he did wrong. Raskolnikov himself agrees with the empirical evidence — he killed the old woman with a hatchet, it is true; he does not however agree that he did something wrong. It is true he killed the old woman but is it true that he did something wrong in itself? If it is true that he did something wrong then the truth of this must lie in some reality external to the act which makes it true that he did something wrong. But the nature of such an external reality which guides our moral behaviour in this way is obscure.
It looks as though our condemnation of Raskolnikov is therefore conventional; we condemn him because he has offended the moral sensibilities of civilised man and not because we believe his act to have infringed the moral law imposed by a real and external state of the world which we cannot contact in the manner in which we contact empirical reality. This idea of an external moral reality is altogether too obscure. We should be content to accept that our moral codes are written by ourselves according to how we wish to live our social lives and this means that we have no absolute foundation for moral authority. As far as Raskolnikov is concerned we condemn him not because he has done something absolutely wrong but because he has offended us. Yet we are still left with the feeling that this is not quite right; it’s not the case that we censure Raskolnikov because he offends our conventions — we censure him because we believe he has done something utterly wrong, that the wrongness of his action is somehow fundamental and beyond mere convention and that Raskolnikov himself is deeply mistaken to believe that he has committed no crime. But how do we make this conviction we have coherent and meaningful? The wrongness of Raskolnikov’s act is not entailed by the raising of the arm, the crashing down of the hatchet and the splitting of the fragile skull. The act and the wrongness are separate things, the former an ordinary empirical fact about the world, the latter a value judgement placed upon the fact. The issue remains: what authority does the judgement have; can values be objective and therefore have authority which bind us absolutely in a manner that will disallow reasonable dispute? The fact that we argue (rationally) over the value of states of affairs in the empirical world suggests that we assume that moral (and aesthetic) disputes are indeed open to resolution.
So, despite the fact-value distinction, my belief that Raskolnikov was morally wrong to kill the old woman appears to be equivalent to the claim that it is true that Raskolnikov was morally wrong. But can this be right? If I have a problem understanding what it means to claim truth or falsity for value judgements, that is for the existence of moral facts, what options have I?
ANTI-REALISM
One option I might have is simply to deny the existence (indeed the intelligibility) of a moral reality external to our moral convictions. I could do this by appealing to the distinction between perceiving an aspect of reality and projecting upon it some aspect of my subjective being. To perceive an aspect of reality is to imply that the reality in question exists independently of my perception of it. I may not perceive this aspect in all its fullness; I may not perceive this reality as it is in itself; what I am sure of is that the reality is an intelligible object of my perception even though my perception of it may be imperfect. In the moral field I am able to make correct moral judgements because I perceive the moral reality with which the judgements fit, though how exactly I do this may remain utterly obscure to me. If I hold such a position then I am a realist.
The anti-realist maintains that this alleged perception of a mind-independent reality is too obscure to be taken seriously. There is, in fact, no reason to posit the existence of such a reality for it makes more sense to see the moral field as a kind of projection of our rich psychological being upon the screen of ordinary reality. That is to say, the world does not contain moral qualities in the same way it contains qualities such as substance. Good and evil are not therefore natural inherent properties of the world but projections upon it, like colour or taste. If the world is a screen then good and evil are shadows thrown upon it by our own particular needs as beings in the world; there are no good or bad things in reality — there are rather our specific psychological responses to the world, our interpersonal antics constantly throwing shadows upon the screen which we may naively be tempted to take to be inherent qualities of the world itself. This is the realist’s error. When I say ‘Raskolnikov is degenerate’ I am really saying that I am taking up a certain attitude towards him; I am expressing my personal disgust at what he has done. In projecting upon Raskolnikov my emotional response to him it seems that Raskolnikov himself is degenerate, that his degeneracy is a part of the natural fabric of reality; but analysis shows that all there is to reality are the natural features of things and our reactions to them. If Raskolnikov is degenerate it is because I have responded to him with an emotion of disgust and that is all. It is how I perceive him.
Persuasive though this projectivist notion may seem it does not prove that there is no moral dimension to reality which exists independently of us and with which we make contact through our moral behaviour. The anti-realist is not suggesting that there is no morality or that we should not indulge morality; he is merely making a claim about the real nature of our moral behaviour. It remains a possibility, therefore, that the realist is right in thinking that moral properties are properties of the world in the same way as mass and shape, for example, are properties of the world.
Whilst the idea of objective moral features might make prima facie sense it is difficult to see how such features could act upon us. How could natural features of the world generate reasons for action and do this independently of any motives and desires I might have? For example, if goodness is an inherent feature of the world then certain elements in the world may be deemed ‘good’, that is goodness resides in them. If this is the case the goodness of the element exists independently of my perception of it; the problem is how does the goodness come to act upon me so that I pursue it? I see the goodness of the element but what makes me pursue it? What attracts me to it? Am I like an iron filing aligned through some mysterious magnetic force? I wish to pursue the good element but do I do so because it is compelling me or because I already desire to pursue good things and act ‘freely’? The idea of compulsion is strange for it implies that a fact about the world (a moral fact) has prescriptive power we are bound to respond to.
Such prescriptive power built into the fabric of the world is indeed a strange notion but then so is the idea of non-locality in the quantum world; for example two subatomic particles can interact locally and then move far apart — to opposite ends of the universe perhaps — and yet remain an indivisible whole in so far as measurements performed on one of the particles will depend in part on the state of the other. This is mysterious ‘ghostly-action-at-a distance’ and Einstein refused to believe it. But disbelief does not negate. Non-local effects are real and point to the holistic nature of the quantum world where the behaviour of one particle is inextricably caught up with the behaviour of other particles no matter how great the inter-particle separation. The point is that if we fail to understand something because it seems strange and outlandish then this may point merely to a failure of the imagination or intellect rather than to negation. It is possible that there is a dimension to the fabric of the universe which is a saturation of something presently beyond the understanding of science but intuited by mind and which will become more apparent and coherent as mind progresses in its apprehension of the world. Consciousness may indeed be something fundamental to the world’s fabric and our moral behaviour a dim apprehension of this. If this is the case then the idea of moral objectivity makes more sense and avoids the difficulty of explaining how it is that moral utterances describe properties in the world which are at the same time inherently action-guiding for if consciousness is fundamental then we are inextricably caught up with the fabric of the world and not separate from it. We become more like the subatomic particles experiencing non-local effects and suddenly the traditional subject/object divide seems illusory, or at least something that only makes sense at a certain level of understanding — a gross macroscopic level of understanding.
But this is speculation interesting though it may be. Is there any other response we can make to the ant-realist? I suggested earlier that our moral intuitions may be similar in kind to secondary qualities of the world such as colour or taste; that is, real qualities but ones outside the ordinary scientific account of the world. Can objectivity be saved by the notion of secondary qualities?
At first glance it would seem a hopeless idea. According to Locke secondary qualities are not qualities that objects inherently have; rather the subject of experience (the perceiver) projects these qualities onto the object of experience so that a blue object, say, is not itself blue but merely appears to be so — the blueness is provided by me, the perceiver. Although it appears to be the case that my sensation of blue is in some way caused by the object I perceive, the blueness exists in me not the object. So Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities is a distinction between that which an object (as it appears to the perceiver) possesses in itself and that which it does not. If it is true that moral qualities are secondary then it would seem that we are suggesting moral qualities are projections and do not inhere in objects themselves, and this leads us away from objectivity and not towards it.
Perhaps, though, the notion of secondary qualities can be viewed slightly differently. Let me take again an object which appears blue. Of this object I could say that the blueness is an expression of two modes of existence; the object appears blue to me because that is how the object is perceived by my central nervous system, so I might say that the blueness of the object is phenomenally intrinsic — in other worlds, whenever I perceive the object I have a sensation of blue and will continue to do so as long as my central nervous system remains as it is and the object also remains as it is. I could then go on to maintain that the blueness I experience corresponds to a definite physical state of the object and, without saying that the object itself is blue, hold that when I perceive the object as blue I directly perceiving the object qualitatively. The blueness of the object is therefore mind-dependent but the state of the object that corresponds to the blueness is mind-independent and therefore objective.
Secondary qualities seen in this way can help clarify the idea of objective moral qualities and show how they might impinge on our minds, for when I take something to be good it is not just that I am taking up a subjective position or attitude but additionally I perceive some quality in the world which is mind-independent. However, the analogy with secondary qualities of sense perception is unconvincing. First of all it promotes relativism and this is unacceptable. I see blue when you see green; I see something as good when you see it as not so good! Furthermore, the analogy with sense perception breaks down when I seek reasons for my moral judgements. I do not seek reasons as to why I see an object as blue, although of course I may seek a causal explanation. When I make a moral judgement, on the other hand, I need to be able to provide reasons for that judgement in order to justify it and perhaps persuade you of the cogency of that judgement.
The case for an external moral reality has not, therefore, yet been made. Might theism help? The divine command theory holds that there is a logical connection between moral requirements and the commands of God so something is good and right to do because God commands that this is so. I do right, therefore, because God commands me to do right and what is right is what God commands. If I believe in God and I believe also in the divine command theory then I am morally obliged to follow the commands of God secure in the knowledge that I am following a moral and virtuous life. If I do not believe in God then I am free of any moral obligation, or so I may think. My belief in God and God’s existence are two separate things and it can only be God’s non-existence that can entail my freedom from all moral obligations if the divine command theory is true. This was certainly Dostoevsky’s view who wished to show through Raskolnikov how badly we can stray if we deny God’s existence. Similarly, Nietzsche felt that the falsity of Christianity meant that the specific moral content of Judaeo-Christian thought held no potency and should be rejected.
Let us assume that God exists and that the divine command theory is true; what follows from this? Socrates asked the following question: are pious things pious because they are loved by the gods or do the gods love pious things because they are pious? In other words, if some act is right and if God commands it, is it right because God commands it or does God command it because it is right in itself? There is a problem here. Let us suppose that charity is good because God commands that it is so; this means that if God does not command that charity is good it follows that charity is not good. But let us suppose instead that God commands jealousy; it follows that jealousy is good! On the other hand what if God commands charity because charity is good in itself — if this is the case then God loses all moral force for a logical gap appears between his commands and the moral worth of the contents of those commands. If this is the case then goodness is something independent of God’s existence and the divine command theory is false.
If God commands charity because it is good then nothing has changed; we do not need God to be moral beings. If charity is good because God commands it then in some sense we do not have a morality we can properly relate to for it follows that God himself is not constrained by moral requirements which exist prior to his commands. In other words if actions and states of mind are good because God commands that they are then God is making morality up as he goes along and that for him at least there is no distinction between right and wrong.
There seems to be a serious problem, therefore, in grounding value objectively by appealing to the dependence of value on God. To be successful here we would need to be able to show a necessary connection between value and God and we have suggested that that connection cannot be logical and it is difficult to see what that non-logical connection could be.
Perhaps the objectivity we are looking for can be found in what it means to be a human being in the world. Aristotle held that everything in nature, including human beings, had a specific function and that in order to flourish each object had to adhere to that function. A rock, for example, must conform to its simple function of being inert and massive; a laptop computer must conform to its much more complex function of processing information; a living thing must live according to its specific biological function. If objects do not conform according to their function then they fail to be what they are designed to be and their malfunction renders them diminished. So it is with man; to flourish man must live well according to his distinctive function, which is rational thought, and to do this he must live according to certain virtues. If he does this then he is a good man in the same sort of way that if my computer behaves as it should qua computer then it is a good computer. The virtues come from his nature qua human being and are independent of him qua individual so for the individual to live well he must conform to the virtues characteristic of the species. This notion lends plausibility to the notion of an objective moral reality. On this model Raskolnikov is not a good man because he does not act according to the virtues necessary for a good life — that is a life lived according to the correct functioning of a human being. There are, of course, all sorts of difficulties connected to the idea that man has a function or purpose in the sense that Aristotle means, and there are difficulties connected to the idea that the only feature of man’s nature that really matters is rationality. But there is not room here for a full criticism of neo-Aritotelianism and I shall content myself with saying that there are sufficient problems with it for the objectivity of a moral reality to remain in serious question.
What then are we left with if realism remains a credible assertion? Perhaps we should not look to perceive objective moral features of the world but instead look towards our thinking about morality and how we should behave as social beings interacting with the world in all its aspects; perhaps, that is, look more closely at how we actually think about our moral being. Kantbelieved that it is reason and not perception that gives us the content of morality and that this reason is practical because it tells us what we ought to do. Morality, therefore, is a set of rational prescriptions (imperatives/maxims) that tells us we must do this and not that and tells us in such a way that our reasons for action are not dependent on our desires. This idea that reason alone can motivate action needs explanation since it seems clear that our actions are motivated through our desire to achieve certain ends. It may be the case that moral requirements are related in some way to desire but it remains true that reason will tell us which desires should motivate us and how we should conduct ourselves subsequently. Let us say I am in pain. Pain is intrinsically bad because unpleasant. I have therefore good reason to alleviate my pain. If I am sure that someone else is in pain then likewise I have good reason to alleviate that pain (because it is intrinsically bad); if I do not attempt to alleviate the pain of another then I shall be doing something morally reprehensible. If there is desire here it is the desire to follow practical reason; the important point is that I have reason to act in a certain way and this reason is objective because it gives me reason to act even though I may not actually want to act to alleviate the pain of some person (my enemy for example); I act out of duty. What makes it wrong to inflict pain is the fact that I do not have good reason to do so (although I may indeed have a reason — to see my enemy suffer, but this reason is not a good reason and is really a crude desire to humiliate or extract information from him). Practical reason, therefore, aims at finding good reasons for action independent of my particular desire; I may have a desire to eat flesh but have good reasons not to; if I continue to eat flesh then I behave in a morally reprehensible way. Our moral life, then, is guided by practical reason which is objective by virtue of the logic which structures it.
It may be objected that this emphasis on practical reason ignores what we know to be the core of morality; that is our emotional and imaginative being. We are obligated to act in certain ways because we are the kind of creatures we are. But we can accept this view and still insist that practical reason guides our behaviour because we can always ask why we should behave in certain ways and not others and provide reasons for our actions which might be good or bad. If we judge our reasons to be weak then we shall adjust our behaviour accordingly, or at least we shall feel uncomfortable if we do not.
In this sense practical reason can be said to guide virtue just as truth can be said to guide belief. But we are still left with the problem of characterising objective reasons which in some sense exist apart from desires. Is there a difference between saying that external reality contains objective moral facts and saying that there are objectively valid moral reasons? The anti-realist is surely going to consent to the intelligibility of the latter and react fiercely to the former.
THE REALIST’S MOST PLAUSIBLE CASE.
Moral discovery cannot be of the quasi-scientific sort whereby through rigorous ‘search and find’ manoeuvres the truth about what is right or wrong is discovered. Moral truths do not appear to be simply out there in an independent reality waiting to be apprehended. Nevertheless a plausible case for the objectivity of moral truth can be made if we maintain no more than that our everyday feelings and rational deliberations about these feelings brings us into contact with what we might take to be a moral reality. There is no denying that there is the possibility for irresolvable moral disagreement but nor is there any denying that all human beings engage in moral activity. What we feel, along with the practical reasoning we bring to bear upon what we feel, places us in a moral world distinct from the purely scientific cosmos which remains a value free zone. When disagreement occurs we cajole and persuade, we use our practical reasoning to point out the logical strength of a particular position, we emphasise the objectivity of the rules of reason we employ and do this to achieve a consensus. And when we reach a consensus we keep our minds open.
RASKALNIKOV AGAIN
Despite Raskolnikov’s conviction that he had committed a crime only in terms of how society had chosen to interpret the moral realm (no crime, that is, in absolute terms) he accepts the situation for what it is and receives his punishment without a whimper. The question we must now raise regards the justification of punishment in his or anyone else’s case and we must raise this issue in the light of what we know about the problems associated with free will and determinism and the objectivity of a moral reality.
Raskolnikov was given years of hard labour for his crime; the issue is not whether he should have been punished or not (I cannot conceive of a human society which was not directed by the basic action/reaction principle) but what justification can be given for the punishment he did in fact receive.
The utilitarian theory of punishment.
In utilitarian terms punishment is justified by the good consequences it has. Punishment in itself is not taken to be a good thing; it is rather the effects which punishment brings about that justifies it. In fact, taken on its own, apart from the idea of consequences, punishment is bad because it deprives an individual of something that he desires — in Raskolnikov’s case, freedom. Raskolnikov in the labour camp is imprisoned, malnourished, in physical and spiritual grief. In other words Raskolnikov suffers and in utilitarian terms all suffering is bad in itself; his suffering can be justified only if it prevents greater degrees of suffering or brings about greater degrees of happiness. So, if by punishing Raskolnikov he is deterred from committing further crimes and indeed deters others from committing crimes and gives rise to an increased sense of security in the general public who sleep more soundly and walk the streets more confidently, then the good society receives outweighs the bad Raskolnikov suffers. Punishment, according to the utilitarians, is therefore a justified means of reducing unhappiness in society.
The retributive theory of punishment.
According to this theory punishment is justified because the offender voluntarily committed a wrong act. Here we have the idea of just deserts; the criminal commits an act of which society disapproves and he receives a punishment which he deserves and deserves regardless of any particular consequence which might follow. Here the victim of crime comes to the fore; his suffering is perceived as something bad and offensive whereas the suffering experienced by the punished criminal is seen as merely just and not bad in itself.
There are clear and fairly obvious difficulties associated with both theories. For example, with respect to the utilitarian view it not at all clear why punishment should be restricted to the perpetrators of crime if what is aimed at is good consequences; it is conceivable that punishing the innocent might have positive consequences for society as a whole. On the other hand if consequences are not important for the retributivist then it is not clear why the guilty should be punished at all.
Under normal circumstances the person who commits the crime (breaks the law) is punishable, but under utilitarian principles it follows that the innocent may be justifiably punished if the results benefit society by increasing the general amount or degree of good. The official (though secret) framing of a man for a crime he did not commit (because the guilty party cannot be found) may be seen to be justifiable because the innocent man’s death reassures public faith in law and order; such faith is good so the innocent man’s punishment is justified.
In response the utilitarian might point out that the punishment of innocent people would never be the right thing to do because the long term damage in pursuing such an approach to law and order would have dire consequences for society and would outweigh the immediate benefits of securing a short term benefit. However, this kind of response is unconvincing because it fails to grasp the real weight of the moral objection to the punishment of the innocent; even if the utilitarian calculation of consequences is always in practice accurate the logic of the position remains objectionable.
The notion that we might punish the innocent because the benefits might be desirable to society is repugnant because punishing the innocent is completely unfair and we would maintain this position even though it could be shown that such punishment would eradicate entirely some anti-social behaviour or other.
Fairness seems to get pushed aside by the utilitarian theory of punishment. We believe it to be unfair to punish someone who commits an illegal at if he was incapable of acting otherwise, or he was suffering a mental illness at the time. There is therefore the idea of mitigating circumstances. But as a utilitarian I may be disposed to ignore fairness and excuses because it is perfectly possible for deliberate criminals to fake excuse and avoid punishment and this would have the negative effect of increasing social insecurity. Better, therefore, to punish regardless of fairness.
Something else we take to be important in the administration of justice is that the punishment administered must not be disproportionate. Utilitarianism, however, might entail disproportionate punishment for its focus is always on positive overall effects. A severe punishment — the cutting off of a thieving hand — might be justified because its effect would be greater than if thieves were merely fined, and fewer thieves is what society wants. Furthermore, the severe suffering of the handless thief is nothing compared to the suffering of a thief infested community.
The retributivist theory of punishment on inspection seems superior to the utilitarian theory. As far as retribution is concerned we punish only those who deserve to be punished and do so in proportion. A murderer forfeits his life or is held in life-long confinement; the thief is given a short sentence or community service. The criminal strikes out at society and society strikes back; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth — and there lies the tidy logic of the affair. Problems arise, however, when we look at what retributivist punishment is for. According to the theory the purpose of punishment is not to reduce crime but to hand out just deserts. If this is the case we can ask the awkward question: what gives the state to right to inflict suffering upon wrong-doers? It is true that the state has a right and duty to protect its citizens from harm but if the state is employing the retributive theory of punishment then the deterrent effect is merely incidental and not part of the justification. Suffering is inherently bad so what right can the state have to inflict upon any of its citizens something inherently bad?
The idea of punishment is deeply embedded in the human psyche but the notion that punishment can be inflicted without rigorous justification is unpalatable. Thus, it is possible for the retributivist to counter the objection by laying aside the simple notion of suffering is deserved. He will point to the basic structure of society and what he takes to be its balance of benefits and burdens. That is, all citizens benefit from living in society because society allows them to fulfil their individual and collective projects in a state of freedom, free from the interference of others. This freedom is maintained by voluntary self-discipline so that the individual accepts certain limits to his personal freedom in the interests of the freedom of the whole community. This is the individual’s burden; to obey the law which allows him to be free to fulfil his projects. Criminals, however, do not accept the burden but do accept the benefit, so they need to be punished in order to redress the imbalance. The crime is lack of self-restraint whilst enjoying the protection of the law. The punishment is there to get the criminal back into line.
But this can’t be right. When a murderer kills the wrong done is to the victim and not to society, except in some metaphorical sense, society being the extended family of each of its citizens. If I imprison a murderer I do this not least because I wish to prevent him from killing again (an expectation I might have) rather than to redress an imbalance of benefit and burden. Further, the idea of burden suggests that the ordinary decent citizen has criminal tendencies kept in check only by the desire to maintain his freedom and that of society. Most citizens, however, do not break the law because they have no interest in doing so. Finally, the idea of benefit/burden balance is suspect because clearly there is always an unequal distribution of benefits and burdens; money often provides many benefits and lack of money imposes many burdens.
The retributivist theory of punishment is therefore too simple. The emphasis upon deserts means that the social consequences of punishing can be ignored. Bur surely we cannot ignore such consequences. Imagine a society in which the punishing of criminals caused deep embitterment amongst the criminal fraternity, turning them even further away from civilised society, compounding their criminality so that criminal activity in general increased; that is to say, punishment caused the crime rate to increase. A utilitarian would have to look again at the procedure of punishing criminals — they could conceivably do away with punishment altogether if that meant the crime rate decreased. The retributivist, however, is committed to punishment and the circumstances just described this would entail and underling or encouragement of increased crime. The question would then be asked: for whose benefit is punishment to be instituted? Certainly not the citizenry!
There is, therefore, a real problem in finding an ethical theory that can justify the institution of punishment as we presently experience it. It is, of course, possible to make adjustments to the two basic theories we have, but there always remains the fundamental questions of [a] what constitutes wrong-doing, [b] is the wrong-doing constituted absolutely, or [c] is it constituted relatively (i.e., is it relative to the society in which it takes place)?
It has been suggested that we might usefully get rid of the idea of moral wrong-doing and replace it with the notion of social irresponsibility; that is, if an individual acts in a socially irresponsible way then steps must be taken to either remedy the behaviour or remove the possibility for the repetition of the behaviour through some form of rehabilitation that might involve drug therapy, hypnotherapy or precision surgery to the cortex. Punishment is thereby replaced by hygienic social clean-up.
But then we have the problem of what precisely counts as ‘anti-social behaviour’ or ‘ socially irresponsible behaviour’, and the additional problem of defining how radical the social hygiene programme should be: modify people so that they cannot offend against society; arrest people because they might commit a crime?
CONCLUSION
Raskolnikov killed two women and he watched their blood spread thickly across dirty floorboards. He did this deliberately. The society of St. Petersburg charged him with murder on the grounds he had done something morally wrong. That what he did was socially irresponsible was incidental. And he was punished for what he did. But are we so sure that what he did was in fact wrong, morally wrong in some absolute sense? Can we demonstrate this convincingly? If what he did was wrong only in terms of the society in which he acted then his punishment seems grossly unfair; had he acted in a society which encouraged social hygiene (the old pawnbroker was a thoroughly unpleasant type) then he may well have been applauded. Are we so sure that Raskolnikov’s act was free, for if it was determined then his punishment is outrageous.
Raskolnikov himself has an entirely different perspective on his predicament. He is the outsider and for him God is dead. The godless society is one in which there are no moral requirements. For Raskolnikov killing the old woman was a means to kick start himself into existence; it was not a crime. To have not acted in the way he did would have been a crime because the life of the old woman could not stand against the value of his own life which mattered above all else. To have not killed the woman would have entailed his own existential death and this would have been reprehensible from his own point of view and according to his nihilist theory of action. Besides, the woman herself was of little worth, perhaps no worth at all; she preyed on others in a dreadful manner, she was as Raskolnikov said, a vile, noxious insect. If Raskolnikov had kept his head then he would have escaped the ordinary consequences of his act. But he confesses under the strain of knowing that his action has solved none of his problems, and this fact suggests that his nihilism is an unsatisfactory modus vivendi, indeed one that is impossible for the human individual ever to operate if he is to remain human. But his failure to overcome himself does not show that the killing of the old woman is necessarily to be condemned.
However, let us assume that his act was in fact wholly free and morally wrong absolutely; can we be sure that he was punished for good reasons? Was he condemned to years of hard labour as an act of state retribution or because his suffering would deter others from killing and thereby contribute to the general welfare of society? Certainly his suffering (his personal existential anguish in addition to the suffering imposed upon him by society) needs to be explained and justified satisfactorily.
Our predicament is that we cannot be sure of any of this beyond all reasonable doubt — and this fact points to the existential complexity of the human condition and our uncertain grasp of coherence. We live on the edge of precipices but like to keep our eyes closed.