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Justice
- Thread starter SmellsLikeCurlyFries
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GrowingSmaller
Muslm Humanist
IIRC etymologically the term "justice" stems from symmetry.
IIRC in kabbalist mysticism 'gerebah' is justice and 'chesed' is mercy in the tree of life. I think in Jewish mysticism without G*d's mercy all would be damned.
For me as a Christian Jesus represents mercy, but His law of love is also one of justice to the human soul. Created in God's image, it is appropriate for man to love man because the soul is something dignified, valuable and therefore to be esteemed and respected. This brings justice and mercy together as one, as love is merciful too. It is both just and merciful to love.
I think that holding life sacred to a degree means acting on an understanding of the potential for Gods communicable attributes like mercy, wisdom, understanding, love, truth, holiness (instead of ones we cannot share like infinity) to be realized in humanity, and setting them aside as something special and inviolate.
So in a sense we are (or can be) realizations of Godliness in our better nature, and as we can respect God or such a concept of supremity we ought to respect and nurture what is good in us and akin to it. If we do this, what we get in return is benign itself, for we develop our humanity and this is intrinsically rewarding and has good feedback as a social algorithm. Thus goodness and holiness are reflected, in a 'symmetrical' sense, back to us in action and in development of that which is good in ourselves individually and socially. Sowing and reeping.
Thus again divine justice (here "giving what is deserved" because it is said life deserves to be treated as holy in proper accord with it's spiritual and God like essence) when applied to relations to self and others - through an appreciation and development of the "divine within" - is merciful, wise, edifying, and soul enhancing. Our actions and their consequences are reflected in our relations with self and others, and it is this formal symmetry in the existential structure of human life which allows justice to be understood and to unfold as it needs must do. Things that happen to us are a reflection of the free choices we take.
I think seeing this is the key to making practical sense of the idea of righteousness and sinfulness. That is they are to be understood as respectively deserving punishment and reward because as a rule that is what they bring about. That which preserves and enhances life is the "good" and "holy", and that which takes it away or darkens it is sin. To put it poetically: dark actions beget and are begotten of darkness, light ones beget and are begotten of light. I think this general idea works equally well for the more secular concepts of right and wrong.
By the way I am very much anti nihilist, where that is to be understood as negating or denying all morality. Morality for me is grounded in the experience of value in personal and human history. Even dismay at life is a form of experiencing this. It is the general domain of value that sets the stage for morality, and makes considerations of justice more than mere and trivial mechanical equations.
IIRC in kabbalist mysticism 'gerebah' is justice and 'chesed' is mercy in the tree of life. I think in Jewish mysticism without G*d's mercy all would be damned.
For me as a Christian Jesus represents mercy, but His law of love is also one of justice to the human soul. Created in God's image, it is appropriate for man to love man because the soul is something dignified, valuable and therefore to be esteemed and respected. This brings justice and mercy together as one, as love is merciful too. It is both just and merciful to love.
I think that holding life sacred to a degree means acting on an understanding of the potential for Gods communicable attributes like mercy, wisdom, understanding, love, truth, holiness (instead of ones we cannot share like infinity) to be realized in humanity, and setting them aside as something special and inviolate.
So in a sense we are (or can be) realizations of Godliness in our better nature, and as we can respect God or such a concept of supremity we ought to respect and nurture what is good in us and akin to it. If we do this, what we get in return is benign itself, for we develop our humanity and this is intrinsically rewarding and has good feedback as a social algorithm. Thus goodness and holiness are reflected, in a 'symmetrical' sense, back to us in action and in development of that which is good in ourselves individually and socially. Sowing and reeping.
Thus again divine justice (here "giving what is deserved" because it is said life deserves to be treated as holy in proper accord with it's spiritual and God like essence) when applied to relations to self and others - through an appreciation and development of the "divine within" - is merciful, wise, edifying, and soul enhancing. Our actions and their consequences are reflected in our relations with self and others, and it is this formal symmetry in the existential structure of human life which allows justice to be understood and to unfold as it needs must do. Things that happen to us are a reflection of the free choices we take.
I think seeing this is the key to making practical sense of the idea of righteousness and sinfulness. That is they are to be understood as respectively deserving punishment and reward because as a rule that is what they bring about. That which preserves and enhances life is the "good" and "holy", and that which takes it away or darkens it is sin. To put it poetically: dark actions beget and are begotten of darkness, light ones beget and are begotten of light. I think this general idea works equally well for the more secular concepts of right and wrong.
By the way I am very much anti nihilist, where that is to be understood as negating or denying all morality. Morality for me is grounded in the experience of value in personal and human history. Even dismay at life is a form of experiencing this. It is the general domain of value that sets the stage for morality, and makes considerations of justice more than mere and trivial mechanical equations.
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Thanks for asking!
I have never really understood this concept.
Must have been years ago when I started a thread with this very question. It didn´t help me much, though.
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Resha Caner
Expert Fool
There is sometimes an interesting link between irony and justice. For example, Greek plays liked the idea of a prophecy where the son of so-and-so would kill the king. The king proceeds to commit crime after crime in an attempt to thwart the prophecy. Instead, he ends up enabling it, and so he is punished for his crimes by a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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True love waits in haunted attics
Indeed, and the division of justice from mercy is one of the classic fallacies of Protestantism. Only complete love can appropriately administer justice; only complete justice can ever render love. Yet justice and love aren't quite symmetrical, the first being the cold objective facets of the deal that the latter animates through a spiritual engagement with the other. Love leaves justice in its tracks, and expresses justice in the moment; but love is more than justice, much like the act of breathing is more than breath.
Aristotle makes a great distinction between justice as a general rule and justice that gets in the cracks and consider particulars. That's a gross paraphrase (don't have the Ethics with me), but I think his conception at least goes a large way toward what you're talking about. Morality, especially if conceptualized deontologically, is too massive in its application and often for this very reason misses the particulars that really, if you think about it, are all that reality is made of (moral maxims tend to reflect ideal situations). Importantly, even if morality were able to hit every single crack and crevice of reality, the lack of a loving spirit behind it is all the difference between coldness and warmth -- between an animated life directed by love and a life that's structured and fair played by the hands of morality or justice.
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True love waits in haunted attics
As a counselor, I'm working with a client with very fertile grounds for anger management. Anger is the "get even" emotion based in the interpretation that you have been wronged, whether in a basic biological sense (as with animals who have had their spaces trespassed), or more in terms of consciousness, where one's rules have been violated. Typically anger is the "hard emotion" that covers the "soft emotion" of hurt. That is, anger is a response to the interpretation that not only have one's rules been broken, but that another person's actions have signified to them that they are of little or no value to the other.
Justice is thus the basis of anger, the extension of a will-to-survival. In the primitive world we have used anger first to prevent danger through going the extra step and neutralizing any threats, even unto death. Justice is the finer tuned expression of this will-to-neutralization. If I want to throw down revenge, this assumes there is something worth seeking revenge for -- some wrong that has been instilled, which in being corrected is the act of justice. This is based in a very basic biological drive (the drive for physical security, for holding down one's own physical space, which when broken signifies an attack), which has become "spiritualized" (in a secular sense) through consciousness, which allows for a future, and with it the possibility of setting up implicit or explicit rules we project onto others and use to evaluate these others.
The problem is that if anger is based in an essentially biological will-to-survive, yet we're still using this primitive emotion for even very trivial rules, and we've forgotten that the rules (trivial or not, so long as they're not conducive toward protecting our physical life) we have for others or the world can easily result in a state of anger (or its smaller expressions, such as frustration or irritation) that's far too much trouble for the thing we're trying to prevent. It's not worth it to get ticked at people while waiting in traffic, or even to get mildly frustrated at what appears to be a non-cooperative spouse. After all, the anger emotion is entirely superfluous because we're often capable of acting in ways that get us what we want that we have used our rules to aid us in getting, and even change our rules when they don't suit us. If we want respect from everyone and don't get it, we have the choice between riling in rage toward everyone who slights us vaguely, or changing how firmly we hold our rules.
Yet justice isn't simply another rule, even if it's the basis in some way of our initial anger response. Justice is the stuff that keeps you from getting too much more than me, and I can use society to aid me in this endeavor. Without justice, we risk getting the short end of the stick; with justice we can pay attention to our emotions of frustration, anger, or indignation and try and seek out whichever way we can to better our objective lot.
Justice is thus the basis of anger, the extension of a will-to-survival. In the primitive world we have used anger first to prevent danger through going the extra step and neutralizing any threats, even unto death. Justice is the finer tuned expression of this will-to-neutralization. If I want to throw down revenge, this assumes there is something worth seeking revenge for -- some wrong that has been instilled, which in being corrected is the act of justice. This is based in a very basic biological drive (the drive for physical security, for holding down one's own physical space, which when broken signifies an attack), which has become "spiritualized" (in a secular sense) through consciousness, which allows for a future, and with it the possibility of setting up implicit or explicit rules we project onto others and use to evaluate these others.
The problem is that if anger is based in an essentially biological will-to-survive, yet we're still using this primitive emotion for even very trivial rules, and we've forgotten that the rules (trivial or not, so long as they're not conducive toward protecting our physical life) we have for others or the world can easily result in a state of anger (or its smaller expressions, such as frustration or irritation) that's far too much trouble for the thing we're trying to prevent. It's not worth it to get ticked at people while waiting in traffic, or even to get mildly frustrated at what appears to be a non-cooperative spouse. After all, the anger emotion is entirely superfluous because we're often capable of acting in ways that get us what we want that we have used our rules to aid us in getting, and even change our rules when they don't suit us. If we want respect from everyone and don't get it, we have the choice between riling in rage toward everyone who slights us vaguely, or changing how firmly we hold our rules.
Yet justice isn't simply another rule, even if it's the basis in some way of our initial anger response. Justice is the stuff that keeps you from getting too much more than me, and I can use society to aid me in this endeavor. Without justice, we risk getting the short end of the stick; with justice we can pay attention to our emotions of frustration, anger, or indignation and try and seek out whichever way we can to better our objective lot.
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GrowingSmaller
Muslm Humanist
I think that biblical verses that say the good will have God's mercy might speak to "adam kadmon" of the essensce of man, archetypal man or the structure of humanity as opposed to particular people situated historically. For as we see in Job the good can suffer. But if man as such understands that as a general rule of conduct goodbness is itself rewarding than divine justice can be understood in that sense. The good are rewarded in the sense that if people as a rule, in general act virtuously so there will be benefit in it.
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