Donald Sensing has a typically excellent essay on Justice and Compassion that I suggest you don't miss.
Many leftists think that the right is hard-hearted and cruel towards the poor (and maybe some on the right are), but that's largely because the left thinks the government should be used to force everyone to be compassionate. Rev. Sensing explains why this doesn't work, and is, in fact, tyrannical.
Compassion makes a very poor guide for justice. Compassion can exist only when there is no right to receive it. A judge, for example, cannot be justly compassionate. For a judge to show compassion for one party to a case is to treat another party unjustly. Showing compassion to a burglar by an unwarranted light sentence is to rob the victim’s family of their rightful claim that the burglar will be fairly penalized. And it puts at risk larger society, which has the right to expect that burglars will not soon be turned loose to rob again.Similarly, compassion for the victim’s family that leads to an overly harsh sentence - life in prison, for example, for a first offense when no one is injured - sets aside the rightful claim of the convict that his punishment will be consonant with the crime. Likewise, society has a rightful claim not to bear the burden of supporting him for a lifetime for commission of one, non-violent offense.
The fact that different groups have different interests that must be sometimes balanced and sometimes found to be right or wrong is what seems to escape many churches’ proclamations about public policy. The pronouncements tend to be personal compassion writ large, into state policy, then to be coercively enforced.
I agree that, in practice, Compassion would be a poor foundation for Justice. But this is due to the incredible rarity of compassionate individuals, as well as the general inability of mainstream society to recognize Compassion and thus empower those who wield it.
To say that Compassion is not a good basis for Justice is much like saying that Wisdom is not a good basis for Justice. Indeed, Compassion is a product of Wisdom applied. In theory, to say that either is a poor foundation for Justice is exactly wrong. But in practice, society cannot count on a reliable supply of wise and compassionate judges. So to structure a system of administering Justice around the assumption of such a supply would be foolish and inevitably counterproductive.
Again I see that I am too long-winded, so I will summarize: I agree with the general point, but only in practice.
But the point is that even with a compassionate judge, his only option is to forcibly take from one person and give to another. Such a solution can satisfy justice, but it isn't compassion. There's only compassion involved when the giver has the choice; therefore, socially-coerced giving (as mandated by a judge, for instance) can never be compassionate.
I was addressing the statement in Sensing's essay which claimed, "a judge, for example, cannot be justly compassionate." It sounds like you might be talking about whether forcing one party to be compassionate to another party is possible... which it certainly is not.
But I think that forcibly taking from someone, as in the case of a judge making a ruling, *can* be compassionate, if it is done in wisdom. I seem to remember a story about denying a little brother the freedom to play with shears. Such would be an example of compassionately forcing someone to give up self interest. That is just one instance of course, and does not describe the qualitative range.
Compassion is not zero-sum. Compassion is not just giving to someone more than he deserves; it is giving to someone, and doing for someone, what he needs. And discovering "what he needs" is done through wisdom, a prerequisite of compassion.
I'm sorry, but in the second paragraph above, I would replace "self interest" with "what he wants."
This is a very critical distinction when discussing wisdom and compassion. I'll try to be more careful in the future.