Forbrytersk debatt

Som vi var inne på i forrige innlegg er det ikke akkurat første gang forholdet mellom forbrytelse og straff diskuteres eller når noen er strafferettslige tilregnlige og i det hele tatt ansvarlige for sine handlinger.

Vi kan vel også ta mot til oss og spå at det ikke blir siste gang.

Debatten for hundre år siden foregikk i mange fora, på mange måter og mellom svært ulike posisjoner. Noen var motivert av en naturvitenskap som ikke hadde rom for annet enn rene naturprosesser, andre brant for at fattige med en fryktelig barndom ikke skulle straffes dobbelt i et umenneskelig rettsvesen.

Noen pekte på behovet for preventive straffer, noen tordnet mot moderne umoral, andre forsøkte å argumentere for at det ga best resultat å se på mennesker som ansvarlige vesner og ikke bare rastløse produkter av biologi og økonomi, miljø og påvirkninger.

En av de mer tankevekkende, og ikke minste lesverdige, debattene stod mellom den engasjerte sosialisten Robert Blatchford (1851-1943) og en som ennå ikke hadde landet helt livssynsmessig, men som sterkt påvirket av Blatchfords utspill ble stadig mer overbevist om en klassisk kristen tro.

Vi snakker selvsagt om G.K. Chesterton.

Spørsmålet var ikke hvilke forbrytere som var ansvarlige for sine handlinger, men om noen i det hele tatt var det. Debatten gikk med andre ord ikke bare på en pragmatisk tilnærming til enkeltpersoner, men berørte det som på godt norsk kalles for first principles om alle personer.

Hva er vi? Hva driver oss? Er vi mer enn ufrivillige respondenter på biologi og barndom? Er det noen rest der inne av frie og autonome aktører, eller handler alt om ufrie naturprosesser, enten de nå er determinerte eller indeterminerte?

Tenker og gjør vi hva vi vil, eller tenker og gjør vi hva vi må?

Som Chesterton skrev i sine memoarer i Sing Sing sin selvbiografi over tredve år senere var det ikke overnaturlige opplevelser som drev ham i retning av kristen tro, men at noen betvilte normale opplevelser.

It was not that I began by believing in supernormal things. It was that the unbelievers began by disbelieving even in normal things. It was the secularists who drove me to theological ethics, by themselves destroying any sane or rational possibility of secular ethics. I might myself have been a secularist, so long as it meant that I could be merely responsible to secular society. It was the Determinist who told me, at the top of his voice, that I could not be responsible at all. And as I rather like being treated as a responsible being, and not as a lunatic let out for the day, I began to look around for some spiritual asylum that was not merely a lunatic asylum.

Bakgrunnen var en serie pamfletter og etterhvert en bok der Blatchford tok til ordet for at lovbrytere egentlig ikke var ansvarlig, men styrt av arv og miljø.

That this stage may be understood, it must be realised what the things I was defending against Blatchford were. It was not a question of some abstract theological thesis, like the definition of the Trinity or the dogmas of Election or Effectual Grace. I was not yet so far gone in orthodoxy as to be so theological as all that. What I was defending seemed to me a plain matter of ordinary human morals. Indeed it seemed to me to raise the question of the very possibility of any morals. It was the question of Responsibility, sometimes called the question of Free Will, which Mr. Blatchford had attacked in a series of vigorous and even violent proclamations of Determinism; all apparently founded on having read a little book or pamphlet by Professor Haeckel.

Bak Blatchfords posisjon lå en inderlig medfølelse for samfunnets minste. Men for Chesterton ble hans løsning å kaste barnet ut med badevannet.

In the grossly unjust social system we suffer, it is probable enough that many of these really are punished unjustly; that some ought not to be punished at all; that some, perhaps, are really not responsible at all.

And Blatchford, seeing them driven to prison in droves, felt neither more nor less than a pity for the weak and the unfortunate; which was, at the worst, a slightly lopsided exaggeration of Christian charity. He was so anxious to forgive that he denied the need of forgiveness.

Hele denne delen av Chestertons Autobiography bør kort sagt henges opp i glass og ramme.

Men hva skrev han 30 år før, under selve debatten?

Vi sakser fra hans første tilsvar, nærmere bestemt delen som handler om ansvar og straff. Nettopp fordi Blatchford la så mye vekt på at hans filosofiske ståsted som agnostiker var bedre enn kristen tro, brukte Chesterton mye plass på å vise at Blatchford verken forstod agnostisisme eller kristen teologi.

Complete Agnosticism is the obvious attitude for man. We are all Agnostics until we discover that Agnosticism will not work. Then we adopt some philosophy, Mr. Blatchford’s or mine or some others, for of course Mr. Blatchford is no more an Agnostic than I am. The Agnostic would say that he did not know whether man was responsible for his sins. Mr. Blatchford says that he knows that man is not.

Som så ofte med Chesterton er det vanskelig å velge hvor man skal stoppe å sitere. Vi er kort sagt determinerte til å fortsette.

Some Determinists fancy that Christianity invented a dogma like free will for fun -a mere contradiction. This is absurd. You have the contradiction whatever you are. Determinists tell me, with a degree of truth, that Determinism makes no difference to daily life. That means – that although the Determinist knows men have no free will, yet he goes on treating them as if they had.

The difference then is very simple. The Christian puts the contradiction into his philosophy. The Determinist puts it into his daily habits. The Christian states as an avowed mystery what the Determinist calls nonsense. The Determinist has the same nonsense for breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper every day of his life.

The Christian, I repeat, puts the mystery into his philosophy. That mystery by its darkness enlightens all things. Once grant him that, and life is life, and bread is bread, and cheese is cheese: he can laugh and fight. The Determinist makes the matter of the will logical and lucid: and in the light of that lucidity all things are darkened, words have no meaning, actions no aim. He has made his philosophy a syllogism and himself a gibbering lunatic.

It is not a question between mysticism and rationality. It is a question between mysticism and madness. For mysticism, and mysticism alone, has kept men sane from the beginning of the world. All the straight roads of logic lead to some Bedlam, to Anarchism or to passive obedience, to treating the universe as a clockwork of matter or else as a delusion of mind. It is only the Mystic, the man who accepts the contradictions, who can laugh and walk easily through the world.

Det er altså mulig å forstå hvorfor Chesterton ble et navn i den offentlige debatten før han var tredve.