Who Counts as a Victim?

How injustice harms the wrongdoer

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

While reading Pieper’s book on The Four Cardinal Virtues I came across this quote from Socrates on justice and suffering that struck me:

Any wrong done to me and mine is at once more shameful and worse for the wrongdoer than for me the sufferer. [From the Gorgias]

It reminded me of a similar sentiment found in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, when he recounts the way slavery also deformed the soul of slaveholders, particularly in his interactions with Sophia Auld. Douglass doesn’t say that being a slaveholder is worse than being a slave, but he does describe the profound moral degradation that happens to people when they enslave.