philosophy; justice, guilt
i've been asking questions off and on the last few weeks about justice. nothing particularly incisive, just trying to get away from tired framings that left me wanting... justice has felt a fraught concept for me for some time and i want to elaborate why, and see what is salvageable in it.
who or what is the subject that can enact justice?
who or what is the object of justice?
what is the method of justice?
what is transformed by justice?
in our society, the Subject that enacts recognized and "legitimate" justice is The State. so what is the object of The State's justice? prison facilities are often called "correctional" facilities. what is being corrected? the actions of the individuals deemed guilty.
what is guilt? how is guilt determined? is the method of justice the determination of guilt? or does justice come when the guilty are punished, corrected, fixed?
here, i think is the first great mistaken thesis of justice in the modern world; the attribution of guilt to individuals, as if their soul is blighted by their actions. as if it's their soul that needs to be cleansed by the unmoving gears of the State's Justice System.
what is the object of justice? well, at minimum, the object of the State's justice is the soul of the individual found guilty.
so far, in looking at our own world as it is, we see Justice as The State mediating a transformation of guilty individuals' souls.
so what is the method of transformation? the correctional facility. the separation from outer-society, and the monitoring and regulation of individuals activities at all times. here, the hope of getting out is determined by those in charge. the violent and armed enforcers who are in coordination with one another to keep prisoners acting the way they want even when an enforcer isn't around.
the method of transformation: forced submission. violence til compliance.
the justice of our world aspires, at its best, to be transformative domination.
how can we ever hope to be free from the consequences of domination if our own justice starts from premises resembling these?
philosophy; justice, guilt
@exiliaex Speaking as a sympathetic critic of Transformative and Restorative approaches: I don't think you can all together escape these premises or questions no matter what your approach to justice. I agree, prisons and executions are off the table. So is domination.
But without the safety of the survivor and a transformation of the perpetrator, you pretty much bring us back to where we start.
philosophy; justice, guilt
@FinalOverdrive are there not times where the "survivor" or rather the "victim of a crime" is the one that needs to be transformed?
when settlers spread across north america, if an indigenous person attacked or killed a settler, do we really want to say that the indigenous person needs to be "transformed" by the "justice" of the settlers?
this is why i do not believe that justice is about the soul of individuals needing to be transformed. the most peaceful and law abiding settler can still perpetrate heinous acts just by their very existence within their own system of laws.
and sometimes, someone violent, someone transgressive can be, in their acts, aligned more in accordance with "justice" and "restoration" than any law abiding citizen.
philosophy; justice, guilt
@exiliaex I don't disagree, but this is a case of a higher law being involved; about the justice of a given situation. But once a just situation is established, you still come back to what needs to be done about the individuals involved. And two things become paramount: the safety of the survivor, and the transformation of the perpetrator, which may involve restoration of what they took from the survivor or from the survivor's family.