From: Kai Becker (kmb@kai-m-becker.de)
Date: Thu Apr 11 2002 - 02:04:20 MDT
Am Mittwoch, 10. April 2002 20:49 schrieb Smigrodzki, Rafal:
> Kai Becker [mailto:kmb@kai-m-becker.de] wrote:
> Philosophy 101: A crime can not be justified by another. Guilt is always
> individual.
>
> ### Depends how you define your crimes. And it's also useful to ponder
> the meaning of guilt.
>
> A crime may not justify another. But, it does justify punishment, if the
> punishment results in the reduction of future incidence of crime.
> Sometimes there is no way of delivering individual justice without
> hurting bystanders. As long as the number of collateral damage victims is
> significantly smaller than the number of innocent persons saved from
> future crimes, the action is acceptable.
This will still make the punisher guilty of hurting other people, including
the assumedly criminal. This is what I mean: No one can escape his
responsibility - and/or guilt. A hurts B, B hurts A, both A and B are
guilty and responsible for everything they do or do not.
Even police officers and judges are responsible for their deeds and so are
politicians and soldiers. They get absolution for it from their society as
long as they stay to the common and the written moral (the law), but they
are still responsible. A cop who kills a criminal is still a killer, a
soldier who kill an "enemy" is still a killer. He personally is responsible
for pulling the trigger or dropping the bomb.
(NB, English is not my native tongue and I fear I have a problem to explain
properly what I mean with guilt and responsibility...)
> If killing of supporters, even
> the proud (and therefore guilty) families of suicide bombers turns out to
> be the only way of reducing the number of 16-year-olds smeared on cafe
> walls, then such killing is not a crime - it's a just way of defending
> the innocent.
This position is clearly outside the humanist philosophy, preventive
killing of potential(!) criminals or even their relatives. Think about it:
you and your family executed, because your brother is a political
extremist. This is the policy of fascist or other extremist "state over
people" regimes. It's also military thinking, to calculate human beings
like cattle without rights and dignity - collateral damage means dead
innocent people. As I've said: there is no civilization in war. And it
doesn't relieve soldiers or politicians - or you - of their guilt and
responsibility.
Kai
-- == Kai M. Becker == kmb@kai-m-becker.de == Bremen, Germany == "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"
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