Can Something Be ‘Indefensible But Understandable’?

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The “Indefensible But” defense works like this: You declare the Jan. 6 mob invasion of the Capitol indefensible, but quickly pivot to why it was nevertheless understandable. “The invaders were “frustrated” and “angry,” Edward O’Boyle, a retired economics professor in West Monroe, La., wrote in an emailed Jan. 11 article headlined, “Attack on Congress: Indefensible But Understandable.”

In reaction to arguments like this, it’s tempting to conclude that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t call something indefensible but also say it’s understandable. If it’s understandable, it’s not really indefensible, and if it’s indefensible, it’s not really understandable.

But Colleen Murphy, aprofessor of law, philosophy, and political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says it’s not only possible but essential to understand acts that we consider beyond the pale. Murphy is an expert in transitional justice, which is what countries like South Africa do to come to terms with societal wrongs. A key element of transitional justice is a truth commission that documents what happened and seeks to understand why.

“You want to know, how did this become possible?” Murphy says in an interview. “You can do that without condoning it.”

In anessay last month for Ms. Magazine, she and Kelebogile Zvobgo, founder and director of the International Justice Lab at William & Mary, recommended that the U.S. begin a transitional justice process to deal with racial discrimination. 

“You don’t get very far if you think about evil committed only by psychopaths. You need a lot more than psychopaths for atrocities to happen. You need ordinary folks,” Murphy says. Those are the people she seeks to understand. “Dehumanizing perpetrators of atrocity doesn’t contribute to preventing atrocity.”

The slippery slope, of course, is that if you regard the perpetrators as perfectly normal, you might conclude that they must have been driven to their acts by forces beyond their control. No, Murphy says. “I don’t want to rob people of their agency. People have choices and acted on those choices.”

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