Act and guilt
Hans Keller
Freewill and Responsibility Anthony Kenny (Routledge £4.50) My title, I claim, is better than the author's — for distinguished philosopher that he is, it is philosophically that he stumbles over both free will and, especially, responsibility. His four lectures — first given at Trent University, Canada —are 'an attempt to apply in the practical field of the criminal law, and in a philosophically non-technical manner [to a fault], the philosophical account of human action and volition' that he had given in Action, Emotion and Will (1963) and in Will, Freedom and Power (1975). However, all that comes out at the other end is that 'a legal system which took no account of states of mind would be as chimeric as it would be abhorrent' — which is hardly a philosophical proposition, however practically applied. for neither 'chimeric' nor `abhorrent' is a philosophical notion.
Relevant thoughts on free will are, on the whole, confined to the second lecture which, under the title 'Choice and Determinism', offers a young person's guide to this problem and its solutions, albeit not a comprehensive guide: the author is either ignorant of, or, more likely, allergic to Schopenhauer, whose overdue revival our culture — especially its transatlantic part — is staging at the time of writing, however non-U he may still be amongst philosophers proper. But then, our culture is marked, not just by counter-cultures or `alternative' cultures, but by their not really being alter natives: more and more, its leaders assimilate their thought without difficulty, much to the distress of those who would insist on remaining unacceptable.
The neglect of Schopenhauer becomes particularly painful when the author comes to consider the concept of responsibility; in fact, one might go, run, so far as to say that in the face of it, Dr Kenny the philosopher simply abdicates. For it would have behoved the philosopher to re-examine the concept; as it is, he doesn't even examine it.
The philosophical part of one's mind races through the book at ever-increasing speed, ever more irritatedly, in search of a philosophical discussion of responsibility.
On the way, one is told that `the question whether someone is to be held responsible for his acts is a legal or moral one, not a question of fact', without being philosophically warned that it all depends on what we mean by responsibility.
It is, in fact, as late as the fourth lecture, on `Reason, Deterrence, and Punishment', that the concept is defined for the first and only time — though meanwhile, we have learnt to distinguish between four senses of 'want' and four senses of 'can'. Are the multiple senses of 'responsibility' less to the author's central point?
Yet, having dutifully assimilated three lectures — the first on `The Mind and the Deed' and the third on `Purpose, Intention, and Recklessness' — all we get is a reckless, extra-philosophical, indeed extra-Kennyian definition of the concept: `Responsibility, in the appropriate sense, is liability to punishment; and so the justification of respon sibility is closely connected with the jus tification of punishment.' A wholesale begging of the question, this; or (if I may rub it in technically) — well, no, not just a petitio principii, but a downright circulus in probando.
Strictly speaking, there are, in fact, concentric circular arguments — for now we're off on punishment, listing retributive, deterrent, and remedial theories, and plunging for deterrence with sweet (rather than empirical) reasons, without as much as considering the stark fact that retribution, however deplorable, is psychologically ineluctable: there never has been, and never will be, such a thing as a Christian society, though admittedly there have been Christians, one or two. The all-pervasive, profound attraction of the religion has indeed been its collective unattainability, the inevitability of collective retribution.
Amusingly enough, the author worries about `room for mercy', `a place for mercy', without telling us why; whereas he doesn't worry about a place for society's moralized aggression, without telling us why not.
It so happens that, as a person, I myself am not interested in legalized aggression, in lex talionis: I get rid of my considerable aggression in other ways. What I am interested in is keeping a habitual burglar, or a habitual murderer, out of harm's way as long as fairly, or justly, or mercifully possible: here's a real problem. Dr Kenny, however, doesn't cater for my realistic interests at all: the conventional cate gorization of punishment — custodial punishment's protection of the citizen. And his own investigation into the nature, or possible natures, of punishment is downright simple-minded.
Thus, he will maintain, again with intellectual recklessness, that `no activity what ever can be rightly called "punishing" unless it is performed by authority' — as if he had never heard of self-punishment. If he has, and is prepared to extend the deno tation of the concept of authority to the Freudian superego, he will have to add yet another circular argument to his list. Nor, for that matter, does he see the basic difference between capital punishment and all other types of modern punishment — its irreparableness in case of a miscarriage of justice (an inescapable contingency if we accept the fallibility of human justice).
If, in view of Dr Kenny's disregard of self-punishment, the reader now suspects that he is indeed at his naivest on the psychological side, he's right 7 even though it was only the day before yesterday that psychology was a philosophical discipline. Since he ignores, or is simply ignorant of, the Szaszian destruction of the concept of mental illness and, once again, leaves both it and the term 'schizophrenia' utterly undefined, he falls at the last hurdle — that of dispensation from criminal responsibility.
Admittedly, under the direct or indirect influence of Szasz, he does describe 'mental illness' as a metaphor in the case of 'a psychopath' who 'is given psychotherapy'; but otherwise, he talks about 'paradigmatic cases of mental illness' where 'organic causes are known or suspected' (to whom or by whom?), and where, therefore, `the rela tion to organic cases and physical treatment is strong enough to give clear content to the concept of disease'.
'Clear content' on the basis of suspicion? Or of the effectiveness of physical treat ment? You can treat sadness physically, e.g. with alcohol. Does that make sadness a disease? Logic is a branch of philosophy too.
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