Ethics

Is it morally acceptable to hate a crime but not the criminal?

Comments

I'm having a bit of trouble

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding why it wouldn't be. Among possible reasons why it would be just fine, here are a few.

1) People, and more generally sentient beings, occupy a very different place in the moral universe than mere things (including events and abstract ideas). Moral notions don't even get a grip unless they refer back one way or another to beings as opposed to things. There's simply no reason to think that our attitudes toward people should be in lock-step with out attitudes toward non-sentient things.

2) Moreover, you might think that hating people is almost always not a good thing. It makes it harder to see their humanity, it makes you more likely to treat them less fairly, it fills you up with emotional bile. Hating a crime might not be emotionally healthy either, but given the distinction you're interested in, it's not personal; it's strong moral disapproval of a certain kind of action, and that might be both appropriate and productive.

3) Suppose someone you care deeply about commits a crime that you disapprove of deeply. In spite of this, your care for the person doesn't just go away. It would seem morally very peculiar to say that because you strongly disapprove of what someone did, you should cultivate hatred of the person. On the contrary, one might think that if you succeed in making yourself hate the person you formerly loved, something good has gone from the world.

4) Someone might say that the real point here runs in the opposite direction. If you don't hate the person, then you shouldn't hate the crime. But that sounds at least as odd. Certain ways of behaving just are despicable—should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. But we don't treat the person who performs an action as one and the same with the action itself. Notice: I can (rightly!) be very angry with someone for behaving in a certain way. But everyone I know who's reached moral maturity knows what it means to be very angry with someone and yet not stop loving them. It's hard to see how that could be wrong.

Read another response by Allen Stairs

Read another response about Ethics