Pieris Berreitter

Phil 11 Section F12:30

Evil and Justice

In the Crito, Socrates promulgates the idea that under no circumstances should evil be returned for evil, or wrong for wrong. Certainly punishment for a crime can be harmful to the victim, yet Socrates makes it quite clear in Euthyphro that criminals "ought not to go unpunished" and adheres to this view by accepting the punishment decided upon by his accusers. If "we must do no wrong," how can this apparent paradox be resolved?

Punishment for a crime almost always involves harm of one sort or another to the criminal, whether it be explicit, as in capital punishment, or more subtle, like a simple fine. The concept of why punishment exists and what purpose it serves shall not be addressed in detail here, but can, for our purposes, be narrowed down to three main goals:

The first and perhaps most obvious reason for authorities to carry out punishment on a criminal is as a direct deterrent; that is, to keep him from repeating the offense. Similarly, this concept applies as a warning to would-be criminals, who might think twice before following in the convicted criminal’s footsteps. In this regard, the punishment acts as an example to deter others from committing similar crimes. Finally, just castigation promotes the idea of fairness and security in society. By agreeing to live in a society, one cedes certain rights and freedoms for a sense of security and community. This security would be nonexistent if crimes were not punished fairly.

It is important that the punishment be just, because unjust punishment does not do anything to promote fairness or security in society. Because legal justice in Athens was determined by majority vote in the senate, it would be impossible for the citizens as a whole to vote against their best interest (that is, a vote that would promote their sense of security and justice). This does not rule out the problem of DeToqueville’s ‘tyranny of the majority’ present in any democracy, but we must accept it for the sake of argument here.

Returning to the justification of punishment in Socratic terms, Plato defined an evil being in Timaeus as one who "would wish to dissolve that which is harmonious and happy." With this definition of evil in mind, let us propose a hypothetical situation in which someone is on trial for a crime which has hurt another person. Although the defendant may be a likeable person, it would be unjust to let him go free, as Socrates points out in Euthyphro. Additionally, allowing the defendant to go free would violate the first two reasons proposed above for punishment; namely, it would open up the possibility for a second offense by the freed criminal, and would not set an example for others. Thus it would be unfair to the citizens to bring upon themselves such a risk. Although putting the criminal behind bars might make him unhappy, the prosecutors and jurors could hardly be said to be evil; they are only performing their duty to justice and the happiness of the criminal plays no part in their decision. By this example, if dissolving "that which is harmonious and happy" could be considered harm (and I think this is not illogical), Socrates might have said "only an evil being would wish to cause harm" but could have clarified that by allowing a just person to cause harm without being evil himself.

Weiss paraphrases this idea from the Republic as follows: "when ordinary rules of justice are violated in order to prevent harm and to benefit people, the violations do not constitute injustice." Let us make sure we haven’t gotten ahead of ourselves in making this argument. In the Crito, Socrates states that "there is no difference between human beings doing evil and doing injustice", and goes on to say that "a good life is equivalent to a just and honorable one." In other words, if injustice is the same as evil, then justice is good, or the opposite of evil. By this definition, punishment, which benefits the people and promotes justice, is therefore only evil when it is unjust, and any punishment that harms another is sanctioned, as long as it is just. Through this classification, other seemingly paradoxical situations involving returning violence with violence are justified under the Socratic system. Even as a criminal may be punished justly, so may a person harm another in self defense, as long as that person believes his action is just.

Indeed, because Socrates believed we can knowingly do no evil, it might at first seem that anyone who commits an evil act would, having done it unknowingly, be committing a just act. Justice must, however, be first conceived of in the mind; it cannot be the accidental product of an unthinking individual, for justice is a conclusion reached through reason, decided upon by a rational process of thought. Socrates accepts his sentence because he believes the process through which it was reached was just.