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 nyone
who wants to know exactly why people have a desire to punish
those responsible for last week's attacks need look no further than
Robert Wright's latest "Earthling" column on Slate.
The desire for retribution, he says, has been revealed by Darwinian
theory to be nothing more than an evolutionary adaptation, useful
only insofar as it serves as a deterrent for future lawless acts.
Admittedly, some people persist in regarding the punishing of criminals
as "a good thing in and of itself regardless of whether
it actually has deterrent effects." Needless to say, they are
hopelessly naive — but Wright is sufficiently puzzled by the
prevalence of this outdated notion of "justice-for-its-own-sake"
to attempt an explanation of its hold over the human mind.
"So far as I can tell," he concludes, "after listening
to moral philosophers try to justify this principle, the answer
is this: because these moral philosophers — and jurists over
the ages — were born with the intuition that retribution is
good. They are just trusting their instincts. And because this instinct
feels loftier than, say, hunger or lust, they accord it a loftier
kind of authority ... It's a kind of double counting. We say that
retribution is good A) because it deters destructive behavior and
B) because it feels morally right — when in fact it feels morally
right only because of its tendency, during human evolution, to deter
destructive behavior." So roll over, Aquinas, and tell Aristotle
the news — Robert Wright, with a little boost from Charles
Darwin, has got this whole justice thing figured out.
Needless to say, Wright's view of justice as deterrence, and only
deterrence, has practical consequences. Specifically, since "most
of the popular support for retaliation seems to come from ... the
intuition that retribution is good in and of itself ... in large
part our policy is being driven not by reflection on the consequences
of retribution, [but] by an emotion that once served as a good proxy
for such reflection, but, in a modern social/technological/political
environment, may well not." Indeed, "the current technological
environment makes retaliation — retaliation of certain kinds,
at least — a dubious idea." And if you want to know why,
well, you'll have to wait for Wright's next column, in which he
promises to prove why retaliating against terrorism will fail to
deter future crimes — and thus, on sound Darwinian terms, will
be pointless.
Wright, anticipating criticism, also gets in some digs at "people
who consider themselves Christians" yet push for retributive
justice. "This is ironic," he writes, "because one
of the more widely noted things Jesus said was that the retributive
impulse is one instinct you shouldn't uncritically obey." Never
mind the acres of Christian thought on the differing responsibilities
of states and individuals, on just-war theory, on the significance
of "render unto Caesar," on Jesus's friendship with Roman
soldiers, and so forth. Having dumped 3,000 years of moral philosophy
into a Darwinian dustbin, offering a facile gloss on the Christian
tradition is just part of a day's work for Robert Wright, deep thinker.
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