Two Wrongs Make a Right

David LaRocca

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they make a good excuse.

Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin

If the notion that “two wrongs make a right” is false - perhaps because it is a fallacy - then it would seem that a hallmark trait of thinking in Western civilization, and a guiding ethos from Hebraic antiquity, is predicated on a mistake in reasoning.

Let’s begin with the calculus of the claim by rendering it this way: 2 wrongs = 1 right. Or put another way: 1 wrong + 1 wrong = 1 right. At first blush, the math seems to suggest a double negative in which 2 negatives equal 1 positive (as in “I’m not not hungry”). Part of the confusion about how to write the claim stems from the fact that its obverse is also prevalent and regularly invoked, namely, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” This bro­mide is frequently told to the young, for instance, as a hedge against striking back at a playground bully. In short, the child is assured that committing a wrongful action is not an ethically suitable approach for responding to a prior wrongful action; the slugger’s strike doesn’t create the conditions for the child to become a (justified) slugger himself. Two wrongs making a right, however, is a different claim altogether and our focus here.

If the notion that “two wrongs make a right” seems familiar, but also peculiarly stated, it may be owing to the fact that we more often hear it in

other, more commonly rendered forms. For example, the most famous ancient instances of the sentiment appear in the Code of Hammurabi and later in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus (24:19-21), where it is written:

And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him. Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.

Originally a method to align compensation accurately with the amount of one’s loss (hence the emphasis on equivalency 1 = 1; eye = eye - and coverage of everything from bodily injury to loss of property), Roman law later evolved the notion into lex talionis. Today we have inherited this kind of vengeful retaliation - the sort that aims to “even things up” - with theories and practices of retributive justice.

Retributive justice, despite its largely sanitized form in contemporary society (since one does not personally undertake retribution but lets the state do it), retains the core idea that justice can be achieved by the extraction of some quantity of something, such as time. A murderer kills an innocent person; instead of being killed himself, say, by the victim’s heirs (where, as Leviticus would want it, the equivalency would be even), he is incarcerated by the state, perhaps for life. In this way, “taking his life” (by taking away his freedom) is translated, or becomes a metaphor for, killing him. Debates about the death penalty are fundamentally debates about the literalness of retribution: is justice done only if the one who kills is also himself killed? Can the victim’s heirs achieve justice if the death is repaid “merely” with the murderer’s incarceration time?

But let’s say the murderer (of an innocent person) is himself put to death. Then we have a scenario that depicts the math rehearsed earlier: 1 person killed (the innocent) + 1 person killed (the murderer). (Though again, it is likely to be the state that kills the murderer, not the victim’s heirs.) Yet what do these deaths (1 for 1) equal? If they equal justice and right, then the claim “two wrongs make a right” is sound and not fallacious. But insofar as it is difficult to determine that these two deaths amount to justice or confirm right, then there is a significant danger that a fallacy has been committed.

From Babylon to the Bible and beyond to the present day, it’s clear that much of Western civilization has sanctioned, codified, and reified the idea that the way to right a wrong is to commit another wrong (of at least equivalent scope). If this is the case, and all signs suggest it is, then much of Western religion and moral philosophy (ethics) is predicated on a fallacy, if this be one. And if it is indeed a fallacy, then the discovery becomes a refer­endum on and indictment of millennia of Western moral, legal, and religious values. To say “two wrongs do not make a right” - namely, that its antithesis is a fallacy - necessarily implies a wholesale condemnation of retributive justice.

In recent centuries, petitioners have developed the countermanding the­ory of restorative justice to expose the fallacious thinking (and “logic”) at the heart of retributive justice by focusing not on the extraction of compen­sation in terms of money, time, or life (from the offender) but in terms of mutual understanding (between offender and victim and within the com­munity they share). With restorative justice the aim is, insofar as it is possi­ble, that both parties - the murderer and the victim’s heirs - are meant to achieve some kind of healing and consolation. Selective emphasis has made it seem that Babylonian, Hebraic, and Roman law exclusively focused on retribution, but this is not so. The Code of Hammurabi, the Pentateuch, and the Twelve Tables all reflect models and measures of restorative justice.

In the realm of fallacies, the present one is described as “informal” mainly because - despite what seems a nearly mathematic equation - the error in thinking is not a matter of logic per se but of reasoning. Pushing the claim into other territories shows how we are dealing with matters of relative persuasiveness. For instance, “two wrongs make a right” is com­monly invoked in economic matters, such as cheating or thievery: stealing money from the bank is a wrong, but, the robber claims, so is the bank’s policy of charging high interest rates (viz., analogized here to be another form of stealing); hence, the literal stealing is treated as equivalent to usury (believed to be a sort of metaphorical stealing), and so the two acts cancel one another out.

Likewise in the realm of lying. If a politician lies under oath (and is caught), then her appeal to other politicians who have lied (and perhaps not been punished) will draw on the history of the tu quoque fallacy (or “you, also”). Her implied defense is that because other politicians have lied, it is hypocritical of her accusers to hold her accountable when the other politi­cians have not been. To be sure, tu quoque (see Chapter 11) is a red herring (see Chapter 43) and also an ad hominem (since the lying politician must malign the character of others in a similar situation; see Chapter 10).

Victor Lasky has pointed out in It Didn’t Start with Watergate (1977) that if immoral acts are not prosecuted, then legal precedent may be set and future transgressors should expect to escape punishment as well. Lasky focused on the uneven prosecution of wiretapping (e.g., Kennedy’s use without punishment, and Nixon’s, which led to his impeachment). Such presumed analogical defenses - if Kennedy got away with it, so should Nixon - can be tallied from many directions: as the citizens of Israel were, historically, the victims of Nazi mistreatment, is present-day Israel justified in its alleged mistreatment of Palestinians? Since innocent noncombatants were attacked and killed on 9/11, does this violation provide justification for the United States to carry out global military operations that achieve the same result (and through a range of methods from “enhanced interrogation” to drones to the instantiation and renewal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force)?

These and related questions presume that retaliation - as a form of score­settling or as defense against future harm - is justified (morally, legally, and logically). But the essentially rhetorical nature of the claim, “Two wrongs make a right,” assures us that no such logic is in place, and worse, that the so-called justifications for committing wrongful acts are not derived from a rigorous calculus (as the claim wishes to convey) but rather through blunt insistence.

Reference

Lasky, Victor. 1977. It Didn’t Start with Watergate. New York: Dial Press.