yeahiknow3
Ok, except that. Don’t burn down the neighborhood.
We are entitled to justice but that doesn't entail killing folks on a whim
I appreciate the conversation. I doubt we disagree on the fundamentals. However, I have to push back against this characterization. There was nothing whimsical about her decision or this guy’s culpability.
It’s also important not to conflate our ability to know something definitively (our epistemic confidence) with the truth.
If what she claims about this guy is true, then she is morally justified. If it’s not true, then she isn’t. Our uncertainty about the matter is a separate issue and regrettably not the subject of this litigation.
when the law has really failed you
This is the actual crux of the issue. Justice doesn’t recognize national borders, governing bodies, or laws. The very fact that we — as thinking, feeling creatures capable of suffering — allow a bureaucracy to monopolize violence and distribute justice on our behalf is a tenuous miracle (and a biiiig illusion).
We are entitled to justice. It’s an innate aspect of our rational nature (what Immanuel Kant called membership in the kingdom of ends). We permit a “justice system” to act on our behalf for the sake of practical efficiency, but that's a tenuous contract, and when it fails to hold up its end of the bargain…
Vigilantism is immoral
This is a category error. You wouldn’t say that “kicking is immoral,” or that “driving is immoral.” It just depends what you’re kicking and where you’re driving.
“Vigilantism” is the extrajudicial pursuit of justice. It involves breaking the laws in some random corner of the world. However, none of that has any bearing on morality. The holocaust was legal. Slavery was legal. What the Supreme Court is doing now is legal. That has no bearing on whether it’s moral.
She did the right thing with forethought and premeditation? How dare she!
Her morally good action was premeditated? Unthinkable!
It’s illegal to take matters into your own hands.
The article is about justice, not “legality.” The question is about the size of the gap (or in this case the gaping chasm) between what is legal in our society and what is moral.
Any rational agent in this woman’s circumstances should do what she did. I understand that doing the right thing is often illegal, which makes some people uncomfortable, but you know maybe that’s why the gap between justice and legality is so vast. That’s why our Supreme Court is a joke.
Most people don’t care about what’s true, something that took me forever to realize. Encountering humanity under the assumption that everyone cares about the truth (or any aspect of empirical and normative reality) is bound to be suuuper confusing until you figure things out. People are literally animals (we forget that), and animals are just trying to survive. Some of them are cute or loving. Not all of them are particularly “good,” and even fewer are willing to sacrifice creature comforts in pursuit of some abstract virtues. That’s why Trump gets any votes.
I mean, it was. Covid was literally killing all the old people until our gerontocratic government stuffed them full of vaccines. Trump supporters were dying at 2 or 3 times the rate of the general population.