Everyday philosophy

American student Amanda Knox’s conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher may have won the headlines, but the trial of John Demjanjuk—accused of taking part in the murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor—has even more moral, and literal, urgency. At 89 and in shaky health, there is a risk he won’t make it to the sentence stage. Since he denies being there—like Knox—the trial centres on identity. But in Demjanjuk’s case it also raises questions of personal identity. The man on the stretcher in court could well be the same man, the same human being, who committed horrors; but are there any important senses in which he may not be the same person he once was?



In the 17th century, John Locke worried about the nature of divine justice. He argued that continuity of memory is what makes an old man the same person as his younger self—and, importantly, what makes him morally responsible for his youthful acts, despite the changes to his body and the evolution of his character. Locke couldn’t stomach the idea that God would punish an amnesiac for sins that he’d forgotten. If a memory transplant were possible, the man with the memories of the crime would be the one to punish.

Without the benefit of a window into Demjanjuk’s soul, the judge in the Munich trial would, in Locke’s view, have to assess both whether the right man was in the dock and whether he could still remember his crimes. Philosophically, this kind of certainty about another’s mind is almost impossible to achieve. Thankfully, justice is about more than individual recollection—it has symbolic and deterrent elements too, which society owes to those it wishes to protect and must enforce against those who harm. A murder committed when on drugs—like Meredith Kercher’s—is still owed punishment, even if the perpetrator claims forgetfulness. Similarly, perpetrators of genocide must never sleep easily, even if they happen now to be retired car workers from Cleveland. Hannah Arendt was surely right when she wrote that “most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” But that doesn’t mean they should get away with it.