Mercy as a virtue

Some older texts* use mercy as a translation of the Latin misericordia, which leads them to identify it with pity or compassion or empathy. This may be a good practice in translation, but I think it is not a good practice in writing original texts, especially when talking about the virtue of mercy.

It seems more natural to think of mercy as relating to so-called acts of mercy, i.e., of forgiveness. I would think of it as indicating a preference toward forgiving, in general – to forgive debts rather than demand payment, and to forgive wrongs rather than demand punishment. Someone who forgives is said to exercise mercy, as opposed to requiring justice. A person who is wont to forgive is called merciful.

The virtue of mercy would then be closer to the virtue which is, in these same translations of Latin texts, called clemency.

I used to have trouble understanding why mercy, in the sense of clemency, is a virtue; and my search was made more difficult by this language problem. My thinking was: certainly a judge who punishes is as just as a judge who forgives, for otherwise forgiveness would not be free, which all acknowledge it to be, but would rather be required by his office. So, in what respect is he better?

Eventually, my new understanding of virtue, in light of the development of my opinions on moral psychology, made it all clearer for me. Given the satisfaction of certain prudential conditions, which I had given in one of my early posts and demonstrated to be sound in the post on virtue, reason does, in fact, demand mercy, since punishment does no good at all in those cases. Only passion may still require justice, although the judge may justly do so. The clement judge, then, is better in that he is more temperate, lacking the disordered passions which would prevent him from forgiving when forgiveness is the rational course of action.

The old moral texts, such as the Summa Theologiae, confirm this, of course. The virtue of clemency is part of temperance. But because of the translation issue, I didn’t know which sections of them to consult until I had reasoned this whole thing out for myself!

* e.g., Summa Theologiae, Elements of Moral Theology