Justice is the ideal pursuit of equity that involves the negotiation and maintenance of autonomy within spheres of politics and ethics. Throughout Connections and Conflicts I/II, we have discussed several realms where justice is strived for such as protests, courtrooms, and artworks for memorialization. Each reading and lecture exposed the scale in which justice functions. I find that the transformative nature of justice is best understood when analogized with Capoeira—a physical activity that is a dance, game, and martial art. Justice is not easily confined or categorized as one particular ‘thing,’ it is an amalgamation of the several factors listed above. Justice is constantly mutating and subjecting itself to the circumstances in which it is called to, never allowing it to reach a state of being sufficient. It is constantly “moving.”
Justice as presented in philosophical theories exemplifies its versatile quality through its different interpretations of distributive justice. This type of justice is particular to the way human beings interact with one another under the presumption that we hold property and, therefore, how property is ascribed. Dr. Jankovic lectured on several philosophers, two of which are John Rawls and Jeremy Bentham. Rawls defines justice to be fairness while Bentham views justice as the maximization of happiness (or pleasure) of the majority. Rawls’s view of justice deciphers a distinction between equality and equity while Bentham’s aims to null these distinctions. Are we all deserving of the same resources regardless of status and circumstance? Or, are we only deserving of the resources we need based on status and circumstance? Utilitarianism takes a different approach that is much more calculative. Bentham’s theory of justice strips justice of its adaptability and instead subjects it to be measurable against context. While justice is malleable, it also holds the potential to be stabilized when posed against the desires of a collective.
This rigid potential of justice is explored in Dr. Lipskers lectures on the Nuremberg and Eichmann Trials. When the autonomy and natural rights of individuals in a society are threatened, justice becomes a system. Justice becomes procedural and retributive in attempts to reconcile with the harm and devastation that may have arisen from violations of basic human rights. It is here that justice can take on the harsh appearance of punishment or the comforting appearance of memorialization and reconciliation. The Nuremberg and Eichmann Trial resulted in the punishment of perpetrators of injustice while the sculptural installation of Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves), by Menashe Kadishman, provides a broad plane of reflection. Criminal procedures against instances of injustice reveal how small the scale of justice can become when the situation is dire, and in some cases, irredeemable (unfixable). Monuments, on the other hand, magnify the scales of justice by existing informally—outside of a judicial system. They make room for emotional reconciliation. A reckoning is forced onto the collective in the space of a memorial whereas criminal trials reduce the scope in which we can conceptualize what justice is.
To better imagine justice outside of its rigidly structured form, we can turn to written works. Sophocles’s Antigone—taught by Dr. Boyer—provides us with examples of divine justice and its interaction with human law. Divine justice is a category of justice that is incomprehensible to the human mind as it operates outside of our control. Antigone only wishes to bury her brother, Polynices, properly. Creon’s refusal to allow her to do so eventually leads to her treason and eventual suicide. Antigone’s death forces Creon to reckon with the consequences of upholding human law without the account of moral obligations—burial rites in this case. For Antigone, her obligation to Polynices extends beyond the rigidity and ‘justice’ provided by human law. Justice without flexibility for such imperatives results in more harm. Similarly, Euripides’s Medea provides an account of when violence is enacted against other people as a result of this inflexibility. Medea, seeing no way out of her condemnation, seeks out revenge against her husband Jason and kills their two children. Her actions are an extreme example of when justice becomes entirely detached from morality.
Tragedies as a result of this rigidity also occur in real life as seen in William Cheng’s chapter “Jordan Russell Davis” from Loving Music Til It Hurts. Dr. Pyle’s lectures on this reading explained how and where justice fails for minority communities. In this case, black boys, like Davis are targets of systemic racism and police brutality that stem from formidability bias. People that belong to vulnerable groups—women, children, and people of color to name a few—are often never able to experience justice while sustaining their role in society prior to the injustice(s) they have experienced. Davis’s death is not justified in a moral sense, but in a legal one. The act of having killed an innocent and unarmed individual is overlooked because systemic oppression allows it. The 1999 film Garage Olimpo proves the same point. Maria, the protagonist, experiences torture that is sanctioned by the military dictatorship (authoritarian state) that overtook Buenos Aires, Argentina. These two forms of media reveal how limiting legal systems can make it when striving for justice because of pervasive notions of inequality that are embedded in them. Typically, only those in power are able to experience justice while remaining virtually unharmed. For those not in power, pursuing justice can end in death.
One of the last things we discussed in class was solidarity. Solidarity and justice are inextricably linked. Solidarity can be defined as the physical movement of the masses towards justice. Our bodies, something we strive to protect and keep control of, are the ultimate passageways to reaching justice. It is through the loss of bodies (in both erasure and displacement) that we figure an unforgivable crime has been done. The mobilization of bodies is the first indication that we have agency, especially when bodies move against injustices in the form of a protest. Justice cannot be static, or fixed, as it is prescribed by the judicial system. There is a necessity that individuals break pre-established systems and routes of circulation through movement to remain autonomous beings and pursue justice. Action is ingrained in the definition of justice.
Sources
Bentham, Jeremy. McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, 1781st ed., Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2000, pp. 14–31, https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/bentham/index.html. Accessed 2024
Boyer, Patricio. “Justice and Obligation.” Humanities 103, 17 September 2024, Davidson College. Lecture.
Boyer, Patricio. “Mass Death, Genocide and the Law.” Humanities 103, 26 September 2024, Davidson College. Lecture.
Browning, Barbara. “Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions.” Samba: Resistance in Motion, Indiana University, 1995, pp. 86–126.
Cheng, William. “Jordan Russell Davis.” Oxford University Press, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2020, pp. 173–226.
Euripides, et al. Medea. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Garage Olimpo. Directed by Marco Bechis, performances by Antonella Costa and Carlos Echevarría, Wanda Films, 1999.
Jankovic, Marija. “Justice and Equality, distributive justice, Rawls’ difference principle.” Humanities 103, 10 September 2024, Davidson College. Lecture.
Lipsker, Yaakov. “Seeking Justice after WWII and Defining the Nazi Holocaust.” Humanities 103, 15 October 2024, Davidson College. Lecture.
Lipsker Yaakov. “Power, Trauma, and Vengeance in the Shadow of Genocide.” Humanities 103, 17 October 2024, Davidson College. Lecture.
Pyle, Marcus. “Ideologies of Justice.” Humanities 103, 24 October 2024, Davidson College. Lecture.
Rawls, John, and T. M. Scanlon. A Theory of Justice: Original Edition. Harvard University Press, 2020.
Smith, Clint. “Monuments to the Unthinkable.” The Atlantic, Dec. 2022, www.theatlantic.com.
Sophocles, et al. Antigone. Penguin Classics, 1984.
