"Two wrongs don't make a right"

[Clutch Munny]

I can't see any redeeming feature in this saying.

What is the point of asserting that two wrongs don’t make a right in a discussion? Notice that, for the most part, this platitude is said to (or said about) someone who doesn’t think the act in question wrong at all, given that some previous wrong has been committed already. So the point in dispute ought to be whether that act is wrong, not whether two admittedly wrong acts amount to a right act.

For example, to someone who believes in retributive justice (i.e., putting someone in prison as a form of punishment, and not just for rehabilitation or to protect the public) there is no point in explaining that depriving someone of their liberty is wrong, and that even though a criminal has committed a wrong, two wrongs don’t make a right. That person’s position, after all, is that depriving a convicted criminal of liberty, at least for a time, is not a wrong. So the cliché is simply irrelevant.

The advocate of retributive justice doesn’t believe that two wrongs do make a right; she believes that an act of retributive justice is right. Saying to this person that two wrongs don’t make a right really amounts to a way of saying: “This act is wrong, whatever you may think.” But that pronouncement doesn’t carry any of the satisfying weight of folk wisdom that the cliché seems to possess. A substantial argument in such a situation will focus instead on the speaker’s reasons for thinking that the act in question is wrong, rather than on an empty slogan that simply presupposes this.