Topics Justice

Question My question today is concerning authority. I ask: how is authority ever justified? Let me frame my question. Let us allow that "authority" in a governmental sense is to stop the subjects from being murdered, pillaged, to stop violence, to stop thiefs, to moderate economics, etc. Now let me ask you this. If, say, a murderer thinks about killing his victim, but is ultimately unable to do so due to the various laws/punishments involved, the government has been "successful." They have deterred the murderer from committing the crime because of the legislation in place. In this sense, we can say that a government replaces "freedom" with "security". Essentially, the more totalitarian a government becomes, the more "freedom" is traded for "security". However, is it not also true that in the saving of the life of the victim, we have "murdered" the free will of the murderer? Why can authority, in essense, save the existance of one individual, while condeming the existance of another, even if that existance involves violence or crime? My question comes down to the following. Why is it that the life of the victim of the murderer should be any more valuable than his freedom? Say the government were to be abolished, prisons done away with; the murderer would achieve freedom of action and murder his victim. Why is this a bad thing? The victim is essentially in this instance becoming a martyr for anarchy - if we give up government, sure many will die, be raped, pillaged, and have their possessions stolen, but is this not all beneficial for the cause of freedom? The victim should, in the end, feel privelaged that they could give up their life for the freedom of another human being. Now, it is important to note that I recognise governments provide needed services to their subjects; my question is focusing solely on crime and punishment. Jack.

Accepted:
July 15, 2011

Comments

I'll admit to being a bit puzzled. Here's the bit where I start to feel things spin:

...is it not also true that in the saving of the life of the victim, we have "murdered" the free will of the murderer? Why can authority, in essence, save the existence of one individual, while condemning the existence of another, even if that existence involves violence or crime?

If the police stop me from popping someone off, no one nor nothing is murdered. In fact, my free will, such as it might have been, stays intact. Stopping someone from acting on a particular choice isn't the same as killing their ability to make choices at all. And if it wasn't a matter of someone literally stopping me, but me thinking the crime isn't worth the punishment, then I've made a free choice between two options. In other words, as you describe the case, it's even less clear that my "free will" has been murdered. There's nothing odd in the thought that, when I make a free choice, I'm often weighing up pros and cons, whether it's the law or other people or nature itself that fixes the minuses and pluses.

In any case, I'm not sure that free will in the philosopher's sense is your real issue. It's true: laws restrict my freedom in a familiar way. They make some choices costly enough that I'm deterred from opting for them. If what I'm deterred from doing is a bad thing, this isn't obviously a problem. You also ask why the victim's life is more valuable than the murderer's freedom. But the thought that letting the murderer make his choice counts for as much as all the choices the victim could have made but can't on account of being dead is hard to fathom. Taking advantage of one's freedom depends on not being dead.

Furthermore, we don't have to stop with "live free or die." In general, being able to do as one likes is important. But so is protecting people from violence or theft or famine or pestilence. Not least, this is because violence, theft, famine and pestilence tend to get in the way of one's choices. Even if we think freedom is the primary value, maximizing freedom calls for making trade-offs. Anarchy might end up with some people being unusually free, but a person can reasonably doubt that it's a good bet.

Just how much law there ought to be is something reasonable people can disagree about. But your own last sentence allows that freedom isn't the only thing that counts. Laws and the enforcement of laws give serious weight to those other things. And as we've already noticed, they often do something else as well: by putting some curbs on some sorts of choices, they can give us a better shot at acting freely overall.