Charity as Just Deserts

Abstract The principle of charity (PC) is widely discussed in the philosophy of language and argumentation theory. Typically, in these disciplines, it is considered justified for prudential and epistemic reasons. However, the limitation of such arguments lies in their dependence on the goals of the individual interpreter and the usefulness of PC to facilitate them. Ethical reasons based on broadly accepted principles of fairness and rights offer more universal justifications. Stevens (Charity for moral reasons?–a defense of the principle of charity in argumentation. Argumentation and Advocacy 57:67–84, 2021), divides those into the deontological, which refer to respect for dignity, and the consequential, which rely upon the duty to avoid harm. The goal of this paper is to provide a systematic conceptual framework, rooted in the Socratic conception of justice, which strengthens and elaborates these ethical reasons for PC. On a psychological view of harm, the consequential argument seems to suggest an obligation to interpret even the most extreme and harmful claims charitably. To avoid this problematic outcome, we propose an approach to harm as unjust damage, originating with Socrates and refined by Feinberg (The moral limits of the criminal law, vol 1. Oxford University Press, New York, NY; Oxford, UK, 1984). We also apply the distinction between compensatory justice and the principle of equal measure that Ajdukiewicz (On justice. Philosophy of Science 30(1):119–130, 2022) draws from Aristotle (Nicomachean ethics. Oxford University Press, London, UK,1966) to show that the charitable interpretation of arguments is the just desert of a dignified human being, due to their status as a rational subject. In this way, the deontological and consequential arguments put forward by Stevens are united into one ethical support for PC and the potential paradox of charity raised by Lewiński (The paradox of charity. Informal Logic 32(4):403–439, 2012) is dissolved.