Justice vs Mercy, Part 1
We need mercy because we err in judgement - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't judge
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
-Micah 6:8 (NIV)
I recently came across a phrase that I liked from Peterson’s series on marriage. I think it applies to all human interactions at large. He argues that effective negotiation is 50% justice and 50% mercy:
Justice, because we must hold each other accountable to goodness in order to achieve it;
Mercy, because neither we nor our judgements are perfect. In the process of seeking justice we can and will fuck up, and we need to handle this without killing each other.
Justice requires the pain of judgement
Justice is the pursuit of the Good, and to believe in the Good means to make distinctions between Good and Bad. This distinction is judgement.
Effective therapists, suicide hotline responders, and friends understand just how powerful the removal of judgement can be. It is judgement that keeps depression, suicidal thoughts, or closeted sexualities in the dark - to name just a few of the ways in which social stigma can cause and exacerbate the pain of being human.
But the very act of pursuing a good outcome is judgement. The only reason we do anything is because we judge the present to be inadequate. The only reason we define specific goals is because we judge other outcomes to be inadequate. The very act of trying to prevent someone from taking their life is to admit that the present state - the one where they want to end it - has something wrong with it.
So how do we reconcile mercy with the pain of judgement that is required for justice to mean anything at all?
Mercy is the recognition that we pursue justice imperfectly
Thy Form, from out thy sweet Abode,
O'ertook Him on his blasted Road,
And stop'd his Wheels, and look'd his Rage away.
-William Collins, ‘Ode to Mercy’ (1747)
An excellent example of mercy being a necessary companion to justice is the tendency of Western liberal democracies to abolish the death penalty. Flawed systems - such as humans trying to assess the truth - should not be allowed to prescribe irreversibly harmful outcomes in the name of justice.
I’ve realized that libertarianism isn’t actually about believing that anything goes.
Instead, it’s the best response we have to the fact that people can and will err in their judgements. Thus we need to limit our capacity to hurt others in the process of seeking justice, because we will make mistakes.
Justice requires definite optimism
In order to hold someone accountable to goodness, we must define what goodness is. Furthermore, we must define goodness on clear and concrete enough terms to be able to assess whether they are moving closer to it, or further away.
In other words, we need to have a definite vision of the future1 in order for justice to mean anything at all.
Otherwise, “goodness” is a vague and subjective term with no meaning. We could argue in circles all day about whether someone’s intentions are good. Name any outcome you desire, and you can drum up a post-hoc rationalization for why it is “good” in some philosophy or system of ethics. (The more educated you are, the more likely you are to be good at this sort of sophisticated self-deception).
This is the trap of indefinite optimism, and something I am very much guilty of. This is thinking yourself a person who aims towards the good, without actually defining what good is. Indefinite optimism is a comfortable place to hide. It is optionality-hoarding disguised as tolerance and open-mindedness. If you never define good in concrete terms, then you can never fail to achieve it. It is an attempt to have all the upside of goodness, without the responsibility of tradeoffs that actually make it so. It is, to put it harshly, cowardice.
Judge not what was or is, but what someone chooses going forward
The most effective way of expressing judgement is a subject of debate. In this modern world, we generally agree that physical harm and shame are no good. Telling someone the consequences of their actions and saying “This produced some bad outcomes, so please do better next time” seems better. Sometimes you need to add “and if it happens again, I will have to change something to protect myself”.
And here we may find the answer: there is no point in judging how someone is today, or how they came to be that way. Those things happened in the past, or are irrefutable facts of the present. Such judgement can only cause pain and division.
But we absolutely can and should judge how someone - including ourselves - chooses to act going forward, and this is generally what we mean by the word accountability.
Accountability requires you to believe that a person understands the difference between right and wrong, that they have the capacity to act towards what is right, and most importantly, that you believe they want to do so.
It is the statement that no matter what they have done in the past or how they are in the present, you believe in their ability to do better going forward. You have a concrete definition of better which you’re going to use to hold them to their word. You’re going to pit their good intentions against cold, irrefutable reality - and you believe that they will come out triumphant.
It’s hard to think of a better way to express respect and love.
Gratitude
Thanks to Ruxandra Stefan for conversations that precipitated some of these ideas, and to Ben Parry for parsing the original mess of a draft and suggesting that I break it down. Part 2 is on the way. 🙏
The axes of definite vs indefinite and optimism vs pessimism come from Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Numerous blog posts have been written about it, but here is my take:
