Mercy versus Justice

[UniversalMonster]

Do a google search on the terms "gevurah" and "chesed".

You might be surprised. These are the Judaic analogs to mercy and justice (actually you find a variety of definitions, but the idea is there).

"Gevurah or "strength" is usually understood as God's mode of punishing the wicked and judging humanity in general. It is the foundation of stringency, absolute adherence to the letter of the law, and strict meting out of justice. All this contrasts with chesed or "kindness" (discussed in Chesed - The World Is Built On Kindness) which implies mercy and forgiveness. "

Anyhow, if you pick through those terms you'll find tons of commentary on justice and mercy and how they interact.

I see justice as a lawful neutral concept and mercy as a neutral good concept.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

1: Says you!

Indeed.

2: yes, that would be a constant danger

See above.

3: bitter violent confilcts do not have to be lethal ones. Especially if the conflicts tend to take the form of stealing, releasing, and/or executing each other's prisoners of war.[/b]

Executing prisoners is lethal, you understand. Certainly "violent" in the sense of "severely agitated" conflicts do not need to be lethal ones, and certainly religious orders may disagree over doctrine, but once you start executing people, you've moved away from Goodness. The difficulty here is that a lawful-good Church is lawful-good because of its actions, not merely the tenets of its god. So if the Church begins to act in an unlawful (stealing) or ungood (executing prisoners, open warfare) way, then it ceases to be lawful-good.

4: There are many situations where strong ethics would all but force you to go toe-to-toe over doctrine, especialyl if that doctrine involves a creatures living or dying!

Could you lay out such a situation? My point is not that good creatures cannot fight other good creatures, but that if it persists or becomes institutionalized, the creatures involved cease to be good. I cannot envision a situation where Good (capital G) creatures continue a prolonged battle, both on firm moral ground. One or both sides must move away from Good to maintain the conflict.

As a chaotic good character would you not step in to stop an execution you found unjust, even if the guards and executioner were also good?

It's rather hypocritical for someone to kill five innocent guards (who most likely believe the prisoner to be guilty) to save a single innocent man, don't you think? Yes, I could possibly see a very unwise CG character, who couldn't see the inherent fallacy of his reasoning, kill the guards to save the man. But it wouldn't be a good act, and doing so on a regular basis would be the sign of an Anarchist, and move the PC away from CG towards CN.

 

[S'mon]

One of the problems that this raises is the exact nature of justice.

In some parts of the real world, for instance, it is considered just to sentence a man to a long prison term for defending his property with lethal force (against burglars on their third or fourth burgalry of his property). In others, it is considered honorable for a man to kill a female relative for being raped. And it would not be considered just to punish that man.

I agree with your point. The burglar example is what happens in Britain, where I live (Tony Martin case) - I'd characterise this as highly Lawful, since what happens is that murder is phrased as a crime against society and no exceptions are made for individual circumstances the way they are in a more individualist society like the USA. I'd say the intent of the system is LG, the actual result may be a more CN to CE society since the message it sent encourages crime - I remember after that sentence, seemingly every little kid in my neighbourhood tried to 'hold up' the corner store! I'm talking 8-10 year old demanding money from the shopkeepers right in front of my eyes.

The second case is non-western - in this case the victim is not seen as relevant (has no rights), the initial crime is an honour crime against the family, with solution kept in-family. Since the double victim is excluded from all rights on account of her gender, under PHB definitions this would be an Evil act, since it's aimed at maintaining group (family) honour I'd tend to see it as a Lawful-Evil system in PHB terms.

Edit: in the Tony Martin case, some people characterised the result as excessive concern for the rights of the burglar who was killed (CG) as opposed to those of the defendant Martin, a farmer, who the police disliked. Not having been in the courtroom I couldn't say. Since the result encouraged crime (chaotic, probably evil) you could argue that this 'no exceptions to crime of murder' approach in the circumstances was CN at best.