Judgment And Guilt

Judgment is a dualistic approach to making a simple choice: we judge two in order to choose one. We judge one course of action to be right, and another to be wrong, in order to choose rightly. When judging two aggrieved adversaries, one person must be found guilty in order to vindicate the innocence of the other. You might think that the guilty are guilty, even before we judge them to be so; however, guilt does not exist prior to our judgment. Until then, there is a presumption of innocence because guilt has not yet been determined. You may have assumed that the process of judgment discovers the truth, or that it uncovers the guilty party, when in fact, it decides guilt and innocence in question. Judgment discerns and determines guilt.