What is the relationship between justice, retribution, resentment, hatred, and revenge? And what is the relationship between that set of behavioral and emotional responses and the seemingly opposed promptings of love, charity, and compassion? I opened an exploration of these questions in my earlier chapters, and I want to continue it in this chapter with a discussion of mercy – a virtue (if it is a virtue) that seems to engage all of the above issues in general and to raise in particular the issue of the degree to which, if at all, the demands of justice can be reconciled with the demands of compassion. If we think of a virtuous person as one lacking in neither justice nor charity, we will see this reconciliation project as central to an understanding of such matters.

Before beginning this project, however, I want briefly to consider where, in my view, I now stand with respect to the thoughts expressed by Jean Hampton.