The function of the wrongdoer

The indispensable offender

The criminal, justice and the law

The reason for philosophy to live is to damage stupidity. Nietzsche, The Gay Science.

Certain great mysteries of life are still inaccessible to humanity. Our emotions regularly close the door to certain explanations. "Truth remains hidden to the one filled with desire and hatred", says the Buddha — "that is to say, to every living being", adds Cioran.

On delinquency

Delinquency is one of those objects whose importance is difficult to perceive. It arouses such passion that it is hard to formulate anything positive about it. Yet it has its positive sides and its presence is necessary. We owe to it, for example, the evolution of law — a science that requires the combined work of the delinquent and the legislator.

From the moment humanity imposed prohibitions on itself, certain people sought to circumvent them. In doing so, they obliged society to sophisticate its legislative system. Current law is the result of these multiple transgressions.

Evolution is not finished.

Human legislation is, one must acknowledge, particularly developed. Emerging from religious rules, it covers most possible infractions. But it has not yet finished its progression — law and justice have not reached their perfection.

The entire legal and repressive ensemble therefore still needs the work of the delinquent and the legislator. Thus the transgressor — on the same footing as the legislator — is indispensable to our evolution.

The indispensable cannot be judged inferior

In the absolute, what is indispensable has no scale of value. Two indispensable things have exactly the same importance. For the progress of law, the delinquent, the judge and the jurist are all indispensable. And for human evolution, the progress of law is indispensable.

In other words, the transgressor, the judge and the jurist have fundamentally the same "importance" for human evolution — the same fundamental value for humanity. If they have the same fundamental value, they have fundamentally the same right to equal human respect.

Text written in 2000

The traveller who has nothing will pass singing before the thieves. Juvenal, Satires