It is not possible to be a monster and a man.

[Gravitycollapse]

I remember hearing this argument in my ethics course 5 years ago and the claim is stuck in my mind to this day.

This is obviously a considerable shortening of the argument:

If you call a man a monster, beyond the realm of humanity, then he is beyond the realm of right and wrong or punishment and reward. If there is a criminal who is a monster, it does not make reasonable sense to subject him to punishment. The monster may be beyond the limits of compassion, but it is also beyond the limits of justice. In other words, punishment is pointless when dealing with a monster. We may argue that compassion is not worth the effort. But neither is hatred. It is, after all, a monster devoid of humanity.

If what we think is a monster is actually a man, then he is not beyond the realm of justice. He is not beyond the limits of reason or punishment. It would seem to be the case that he is worthy of punishment when a crime is committed. However, there is a cost associated with making a man a man, and that cost is, as a human, he deserves compassion.

This serves as a sort of equalizer. In both cases, there is no real justification for cruelty. In one case, it would be a waste of time and in the other it would be unjust.

I am certainly guilty of making statements along the line of : "What a monster. I hope he rots in jail."

Well, if we analyze what it means to be a monster, I think we would all come to the conclusion that the identity of "monster" places someone outside the realm of humanity, in general. Outside of compassion but also outside of cruelty. If, for instance, cost was the same, it should make no ethical difference between putting a monster in a festering basement or sending the monster to a vacation resort. There is no lesson to be taught. There is only vengeance. How we treat the monster is a far greater reflection of ourselves; who we are as ethical human beings.

So we should be very careful who we label monster. Once that label sticks, we abandon a body of ethics fundamental to the stasis of our society. Losing that burden may make us feel comfortable about mistreatment or scapegoating. But the longterm consequences could be disastrous. In the grand scheme of things, when we dismiss the humanity of one, we lose a little bit of our collective humanity. I do not want to see the day when we see our humanity spent.

Sorry, just thinking out loud. Peace

[Donald Ian Rankin]

1. Not all humans deserve very much compassion.

I very much agree with this - we shouldn't dismiss people as monsters, and we should bear in mind that they are humans when sentencing them.

But some of them are very, very evil humans indeed, and should not be shown very much compassion.

In some cases, it's entirely reasonable to say "what a bad person. I hope he rots in jail".

[Gravitycollapse]

2. That's where the argument becomes more complex.

And the conclusion is that no human being deserves to rot in jail. It is in fact a great injustice to do such a thing. To waste a life like that.

Do I agree with that? Not necessarily. It may very well be a sort of unworthy dichotomy that must be deconstructed. But it is certainly compelling enough to make one think twice.

And even if the two do not exist separately, that we are all humans and monsters, some far greater one than the other, then we must still reconsider how we dole out compassion, punishment and justice.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Of course some humans deserve to rot in jail.

I'm opposed to the death penalty, because it will inevitably sometimes be wrongly applied, and if that happens there's no remedy.

But the corollary to that is that it should be possible to imprison people on the understanding that the main reason we're not executing them is because we may be wrong, and that they will never be let out again unless they can convince an appeals court to overturn their sentence.

[joshcryer]

3. Why do you write crazy philosophical stuff late at night?

When I don't feel like responding?

I do not think social justice suggests that only men (humans) can be responsible for their actions. Indeed, corporations, in reality, literally, are not people, yet they are punished for their crimes to the extent that we can muster (depending on our corporate our government is, anyway).

An instructive position:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche

[lapislzi]

5. At the intersection of monster and human: that is where we are.

When the human-monster inflicts acts on humans that are in themselves cruel. We, as humans, know these actions to be cruel. Perhaps the man-monster is outside of this determination, but we humans are not.

The standard of cruelty-not cruelty (and, by extension, compassion) must be applied evenly, across the board by all humans, to all humans.

So, if we cannot determine with any certainty whether we are faced with a man or a monster, on which side do we err? And why?

PS Gravitycollapse, you just became my favorite DUer. Love this discussion.

[bobclark86]

6. This is pretty much how I feel about it...

Then again, I don't believe in good and evil as anything but human-created abstract ideas; and in reality, there are just people, the actions they take and the judgement of other humans based on those actions. I believe anything can be considered "good" or "evil," depending on who did it, why they did it and who is making the judgement.

For example, Assad probably thinks gassing his own people was good, because he's holding on to order against an Al Queda and Hezbollah-led revolt. A Jewish guy living in Jerusalem (within Scud missile range) who lived through the Holocaust probably doesn't think it's good.

Labeling a person -- like, say, all Japanese during WWII as evil slanty-eyed yellow devils who will stop at nothing to kill us all -- made it possible for us to lock up more than 100,000 Americans because they looked "funny" and drop nuclear weapons on civilian populations just to prove a point to some big-mustached jerkoff in Moscow. Nobody would have nuked Berlin, full of wholesome, "normal-looking" people.

I'll have to go with Wayne on this one: "Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten who said, 'If you label me, you negate me?'"