"Every action pertaining to Justice references an ideal of justice, falling short of but in relative degrees pointing toward this ideal"
When people speak of justice they do so from a personal perspective of fairness. They are not referencing a "perfect justice" and they are not referencing an "ideal form". Most of us believe that "perfection" or "ideal" are simply human concepts...ideas. Granted, there are religious people whose particular dogmas persuade them that the universe has an Absolute Ruler and that this Ruler has created Absolute Forms of human ideas such that these ideas have actual IDEALS (PERFECT TEMPLATES) in back of them. I cannot argue against this view. I can only say, "show me". It seems obvious to me that there are no perfect rabbits, no perfect liars, no perfect stones, and no perfect vices or virtues. It seems obvious and unquestionable to me that a definition (an idea) is entirely apart from a thing.
"theoretically human beings could realize an ideal of justice"
If human beings could be perfect, perhaps they could realize other perfections. But that begs the question of whether perfection is actual or merely a 10 letter word in the English language.
"Surely you agree we can be aware of things we can't fully explain, don't you?"
Well, I can be aware of a wolf even though I can only guess at why he is in my living room.
"Human beings are discomforted in the presence of what they perceive to be injustice"
Many people. Also, discomfited when they are hungry.
"It is assumed in questions of justice that normal human beings just have a sense of right and wrong as an a priori circumstance of the human condition."
Our adversarial court system is based on the exact opposite assumption: That people know nothing about right and wrong except as their own well being is either advanced or retarded. The court process is a process of exhaustively educating the judge or jury and persuading them to a particular view. Both teams have an entirely different idea as to what is fair. The outcome will be broadly decided on some points of jurisprudence coupled with (unfortunately) a rather arbitrary finding heavily influenced by emotion and prejudice.
"Most educated people agree absolute justice cannot be applied to the imperfect human world, and by coming to such a conclusion they give reference to absolute justice."
We can talk about perfect justice or perfect rabbits--or whatever--but most people understand that they are referencing a defined idea created in language and not existing in actuality anywhere in the universe. We know this because there has never been any evidence that there is a "form" for a rabbit or a "form" for graft or a "form" for honesty or a "form" for lust or a "form" for perfect gluttony. Indeed, it is senseless to most people, I would think. How would an ideal glutton act? What would ideal INjustice be like?
We also talk about the perfect spouse, the perfect soul mate, the ideal husband, the ideal teacher. We reference these things (as you truly say) but we do not believe they are other than defined ideas--mere constructs of language. After all, a perfect wife would have at least a million hands but she would not be as perfect as a wife that also had a million legs and supersonic hearing. Or does a perfect wife merely have a small head, short legs, and no larynx? Who is to say?
"Not entirely unlike Newton’s laws of motion, any injustice acts as a force to compel an equal and opposite reaction usually required of human participants"
So we can tell if the judge ruled correctly (or justly) by whose reaction???
"In fact justice in the world is often an illusory word which practically produces coercive power systems serving the elite and oppressing the weak."
The best we can do to make justice "rational" is to promote reason as the tool of jurisprudence. Even so, justice will always remain a human and subjective evaluation because it always rests on human premises. And humans operate from self interest. In every event that ever occurred in the life of any human being they were always shortchanged (if only by a smidgen) as to justice. Just ask them.
If they were rightfully punished (is that justice?), then they were punished too much or too little (survey SAYS...)and they can sleep with the three bears. |
