We Do What We Are

In my Introduction to Philosophy class I had my students read through a portion of Clarence Darrow’s closing argument in the trial of Leopold and Loeb. These two young men murdered a teenage boy simply because they embraced the ethics of Nietzsche and thought themselves capable of committing the perfect crime. Darrow’s argument is classic rationalization. He argued that the boys couldn’t be blamed for what they had done because of the failures of their parents in their upbringing, because of their malfunctioning endocrine glands, because of childhood traumas. Darrow argued that retributive justice was barbaric, and unfair, that what these young men needed was rehabilitation. Darrow argued for a more “humanitarian” theory of punishment.

Darrow is best known for defending Scopes for teaching evolution in the Tennessee trial memorialized in Inherit the Wind. William Jennings Bryan served as the prosecuting attorney. As gifted as Bryan was, Darrow met a far more astute opponent in CS Lewis. Lewis published his essay in an obscure Australian quarterly but it is republished in the collection of essays, God in the Dock. There Lewis does not argue the virtues of capital punishment. Rather he argues against the humanitarianism of a humanitarian theory of punishment. Time was prisons were called penal institutions. Now they are Rehabilitation Centers. Can you see the difference? In the former you went to pay your debt. In the latter you go to be healed. In the former you are the perpetrator. In the latter you are the victim. In the former you are responsible. In the latter you are a helpless pawn.

And therein is the problem. It sounds nice, wonderful even to embrace a view that covers over our guilt. Trouble is the same theory covers over our humanity. It robs us of our dignity. Lewis, however, exposed yet another horror that comes with this theory. When you pay your debt to society, when you are responsible for what you do, that debt can be paid. When, however, you are “sick” you are not done until your masters determine you are done.

There is yet another problem, however. If we are victims and can’t be held responsible for what we do, then those who make such determinations about us are likewise victims and can’t be held responsible for what they do. If we are all puppets on strings then those who think they hold the strings need to look up. They will find they too are on strings. In a closed system where men are machines to be manipulated someone or something must manipulate the men manipulating other men. As Lewis said in The Abolition of Man

Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man’s side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car.

There is no escaping responsibility and maintaining humanity. We do what we do because we are what we are. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

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