Justin Coates sent me this great quote from Williams' "Morality, The Peculiar Institution" that expresses my worry from this post.
""There are, equally, various negative reactions to [vicious persons], from hatred and horror in the most extreme cases, to anger, regret, correction, blame. When we are not within the formal circumstances of the state's law, there is the further dimension of who is reactive: not everyone can or should sustain every complaint. It is another consequence of the fiction of the moral law that this truth does not occur to us. It is as if every member of the notional republic were empowered to make a citizen's arrest."
I love that italicized part. Thanks Bernard!
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