Lockerbie Compassion Release Proves Nothing is so Good it Can't be Bad

Compassion and the Straight Face Test August 23, 2009

Compassion is the basis of morality. ---Arthur Schopenhauer

For Schopenhauer, compassion, the direct participation in the suffering of another, is the foundation of ethics from which humanitarianism and justice derive. He relates compassion to the Great Pronouncement of Hinduism: this is thyself or sometimes translated this thou art. The Hindu dictum posits the oneness of the world—the reality that what one does to another one does to oneself.

This is not the selfless compassion of the selfless love called agape. It is instead the pragmatism of the golden rule do unto others, as you would have others do unto you because they are you and the rationalized compassion of the old biblical injunction to love your neighbor as yourself.

In Schopenhauer’s construct, compassion sees through the artificial wall between thee and me and regards separateness as an illusion. Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion may be contrasted with Kant's ethics of pure reason.

The clash between the two can produce either chaos or a mature social justice system stabilized by opposites. The difference is rooted in wisdom. Like a symphony composed of many notes, tones and timbres, some sharp, some soft, some sweet and some harsh, a justice system achieves its harmony when balanced by contraries under the steady hand of a skilled conductor. Rational laws and human compassion are the handmaidens of justice. Law is good. Compassion is good.

The recent release of the convicted mass murderer called the Lockerbie bomber, however, proves the truth of the old adage: Nothing is so good it can’t be bad. The same thing might be said of the recent legal pronouncement by at least two members of the United States Supreme Court in the Troy Davis death penalty case: that is, the United States Constitution does not recognize innocence as a legal defense to an impending execution.

Both decisions give law and compassion a bad name and leave one asking; whatever happened to the popular correctives of the law called fairness and common sense?

But is the release of the Lockerbie bomber really an example of compassion? I suggest it is not.

Compassion is not for the exclusive benefit of the subject whose condition provokes it—compassion is a reaction to excessive suffering of the subject of the observer’s pity. The compassionate act provides relief to both the subject and the observer.

No one is entitled to compassion—one is entitled to the strict reckoning required by law based on the constant and perpetual disposition to give everyone his or her just due. Official acts of grace or mercy guided by pity for the excessive suffering of the prisoner is the first but by no means the excusive characteristic of legal compassion.

The dynamics of justice and compassion each involve proportionality. In order for a punishment to be proportionate to the crime, two elements are required. First, the punishment must fit the crime in the sense that it is like the punishment others receive for the same crime; and, secondly, the punishment must vindicate a valid state interest. If the punishment does not vindicate a state interest then the punishment is excessive and violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In one application the punishment must not be too much for the prisoner and in the other application the punishment must not be too much for the warden. In a different context Seneca said, in so many words; I understand what the evil man did to deserve his fate, execution by being fed to the lions, but what did I do to deserve the trauma of having to watch it?

Pity is a burden on those who bear it. Compassion is pity in action. So while the suffering of another person provokes the compassion of the observer, compassionate acts minister to each.

The rationale of releasing a prisoner on the verge of death may be that the state no longer has no official interest in further punishment and, therefore, continued incarceration is excessive punishment.

The release of the Lockerbie bomber under color of a compassionate act fails all the basic tests and purposes of compassion. In the Lockerbie case, there was no consensus that the inmate*s suffering was excessive or, indeed, any different from the type of suffering that was actually contemplated when the prisoner was originally sentenced to life in prison, which really means to die in prison. Nor was there any cathartic relief to the community in whose name the compassionate action was taken.

Not only does the Lockerbie decision fail the compassion test, it fails Kant’s rational law test and two lesser-known tests applied by average people everywhere: the smell test and the straight face test.

DV