What Is Justice?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Justice exists for a couple or so reasons if we look at it neutrally without abstract biases and the foolishness of morality:

  1. It exists for the interests of other people beyond the defendant in order that they may enact their revenge out of selfishness of themselves.

  2. It exists to protect society’s collective biases, prejudices and active segragational procedures in commerce or economical factors.

  3. It exists to protect the elite’s power, manipulation and control as most of them are too weak to protect themselves when their slaves revolt in marching against them.

  4. It exists to protect the weak especially laboring slaves since the lower classes are deemed the elite’s and aristocracy’s commercial property needing safe guard against the attack of others in order that they may be utilized for commerical or constructive purposes constantly as the pawns that they are.

  5. It exists to protect the structure of the government and state who sits in the background pretending to be omnipotent with their idealistic yet failing construction of social order all the while they monopolize other people’s lives at the same time.

What is nature’s justice? No mercy without impunity, justification, and care with indifference.

2

Natural justice is purely subjective retribution to whichever length our will shall take us.

3

Precisely. :slight_smile:

4

You’ve taught me well! :smiley:

=D>

:evilfun:

5

You only address corrupted morality and justice. And justice is a human/sentient institution, therefore there is no such thing as nature’s justice. Nature is nature and exists without malice, mercy or sympathy–so I guess I agree with that part.

6

Justice serves two purposes:

  1. It is part of a social contract that protects us from a state of nature - chaos - what things were like before society was formed.

  2. It satisfies needs for retribution. You claim that this is “selfish,” but if, in reality, someone took everything that you ever had, wouldn’t you want them to suffer? Selfishness is defined by concern or care only for oneself. Sure, in the case that someone steals from you, you’re only concerned with yourself and not their well-being, but it makes no sense to be concerned with the perpetrator’s well-being. It is simply unnatural. If someone was severely raped, how can you expect them to feel satisfied with the other party possibly not suffering?

Also, for some of the problems that you point out, couldn’t someone just as easily call these “injustices?” There seems to be a contradiction there. If justice is bad, then how can these be “injustices” that need to be corrected?

Jason

7

Revenge.

individual vs. society

If the individual does not conform to “societies morals”, the individual is shunned.

8

Balance of interests.

You don’t pee on me, I won’t pee on you. If-you-pee-on-me-I-will-cut-your-dick system of laws.

society vs. powerful individuals

9

Yes

And…

Yes.

10

I’m under the impression that all laws and forms of justice are hypocritical derived from hypocrites.

Explain to me how it isn’t. [-X

The institution of humanity is a religious fanatical idealism where nature is without and absent of all religion.

Explain that. [-X

11

The social contract is no contract at all.

Because the state is a deceiving monopoly on people’s lives.

Because civilized people have become weak and sheltered over a period of time where they would rather embrace weak nurture while denying their instinctual nature.

Obviously.

Of course I would. It is called selfish retribution but fortunate for me I am not so naive to confuse retribution with idiotic ramblings of morality or ethics.

Indeed.

K.

That’s my entire point. Justice is a illusion or fraudulent fabrication.

12

Hello Joker:
Two quick points:

You say: “Justice exists for a couple or so reasons if we look at it neutrally without abstract biases and the foolishness of morality”
You are already loading the scales. Justice is morality. Once you consider morality as a sort of foolishness you distort the concept of Justice.
Then you say: “What is nature’s justice? No mercy without impunity, justification, and care with indifference.”
But are we human beings not part of “nature”? Often what goes unsaid is that there are natural explanations for the existence of human morality. But we must look at the right places for it. Men are not actual lions or wolves. That is a metaphor, so in order to understand what Justice is or what morality is, you must not limit yourself by nature’s examples, but excluding man as if he was an alien to nature.
In between you say:

  1. It exists for the interests of other people beyond the defendant in order that they may enact their revenge out of selfishness of themselves.
    O- Not always. There are countless trials done that I could care less about and others which I feel that affect me or my loved ones. I think what you have in mind here is the idea of judgment as a deterrent to future offenders, or making an example of a defendant because it is for the good of society that such behaviour be discouraged. But Justice is not just about this. There are civil suits, not just criminal ones and some will argue as to the issue of desert: That is, a criminal’s punishment is not just passed with consideration to setting a deterrent but as to what “fits” his/her crime. That is what his/her counself has to argue for.

  2. It exists to protect society’s collective biases, prejudices and active segragational procedures in commerce or economical factors.
    O- We have laws because of and not for these. Being discriminated to a position? Problems with collective biases? Get a lawyer and remember to tell the judge about that quote from the Constitution that it is self-evident that all men are created equal.

  3. It exists to protect the elite’s power, manipulation and control as most of them are too weak to protect themselves when their slaves revolt in marching against them.
    O- Law exist to protect the people from the elite. I can sue whomever I want, even if they are part of the elite. It is often they who have to pay up due to a legal process, which you say was meant to protect them.

  4. It exists to protect the weak especially laboring slaves since the lower classes are deemed the elite’s and aristocracy’s commercial property needing safe guard against the attack of others in order that they may be utilized for commerical or constructive purposes constantly as the pawns that they are.
    O- So many unsubstantiated value-judgments and subjective opinions that it is not worth going into. You speak of bias? Certainly a projection of yours in this case. Why do you immitate that with which you disagree with?

  5. It exists to protect the structure of the government and state who sits in the background pretending to be omnipotent with their idealistic yet failing construction of social order all the while they monopolize other people’s lives at the same time.
    O- At this point I have many questions as to how old you are and where you live. You write as a very young man with very little experience of the real-world and are basically acting like a “rebel without a cause”. You rebel but against a mythological beast that does not really exist. I am not saying that there are NO injustices, but that you focus solely on the negative aspects or possible effects of a justice system and willfully ignore the benefits (possible or actual) which just may explain the existence of and ubiquity of judicial systems, without having to rest on the denigration of the entire human race.

13

This post deserves it’s own space:

I’m 21 and I live in the south midwest of the United States. I live in poverty, social isolation and alienation in a constant world of daily ongoing desensitization working a dead end job that pays peanuts because I don’t fit in the status quo not to mention I don’t fit in the intellectual standardization of a productive citizen framework with my lack of quantifying intellectualism in education as I forever remain cursed in this quantitative mechanical era as a qualititative thinker who disregards monetary greed of a capitalistic system gone astray.

( This age disregards quality for quantity and me being a qualitative person am screwed because of it.)

It also doesn’t help that I don’t play well with others and I don’t like being ordered around by other people in that at many instances of my life I remain uncontrollable which displeases all those who would try to dominate me.

So as you can see I have a great deal of expiriences of course they might not at all seem very ideal to others but then again my life is of inequality outside of idealism which those in similar situations like myself people choose to ignore and turn their faces away from us as if I along with similar people in my situation was some terrible public inconvenience.

Now, what exactly does this have to do with the subject at hand which talks about justice?

Quite the contrary. I have alot of expiriences of this world and what I have felt in this little word of ours is it’s cruelty, indifference, coldness, malice, humiliation, indignity and spite along with every form of suffering you can possibly imagine.

I eat, sleep, and stay awake in cold sweats every night through vicious forms of insomnia from high stress of a life that should be mine but isn’t as my life is one of hardship and inequality where others control most of my life more so than myself.

(I suffer from chronic pain everyday because of stress and uncurable insomnia where sometimes I spend hours in agonizing pain and I have no health care because of my poverty.)

I live like a biological machine in isolation and alienation without pleasure or happiness.

( The only time I have any form of social contact is the internet. How clichely modern of me in this impersonal post modern world of ours.)

I am merely a manifestation of what the world has transformed me into over the years through it’s bitter cruelty so if people and society as a whole do not like my beliefs or how I live they merely have to look at themselves in the mirror to see the very people who have created me.

My cause is my own selfish interests. I care not for useless crusades or holy wars of other people.

Such as?

Show me the positive aspects in which you speak of. Many days I wish I could find such instances that people speak of but in my search of it all I find only hypocrisy.

Show me somthing beyond the world’s hypocrisy that I can believe in.

In my world I don’t benefit at all. In my world I feel like a slave bombarded by other people’s selfish interests where other people control most of life more so than I control my own.

I haven’t benefitted from anything in a long time.

Slowly my resentment is turning into rage which leaves me with thoughts of violence in that if society keeps pushing me around pretty soon people will see a side of me that they will never want to see in that I will not be responsible for the chaos that will come out of me through the consequences of their own actions pressing against me.

You have no idea where I come from and if most people were in my place right now they would probally wonder why I haven’t taken my own life in death yet if they could only expirience the pain or trauma that I have felt.

You simply assume too much.

I have no idea what you are talking about here but whatever…

14

  1. Yourself.

  2. Philosopher Kings. (which don’t exist yet)

15

I already have that down. :wink: :laughing:

My pessimism makes me doubt all of that.

16

Well Joker, eventually more and more people are going to realize that they have no reason to lie about anything (this is my prediction based off of personal evidence/experience) and will also pinpoint all the delusions/illusions that we’ve been induced under over the past 2000 years. You’ve woken up. I have too. A few others on ILP also seem to be headed in the same direction.

The system is out to destroy people like us, which is to be expected. However, as ideas become more and more powerful, an enlightened individual also becomes strong in the same sense. If I can pollute the cess pool with my own ideas–they just may spread as my will allows and fits them to be.

17

In every opinion or statement there is biasness. Basically what I was trying to do was express my beliefs without the biasness of socio constructed coceptualized forms of justice.

If you want to accuse me of biasness that’s fine since it is unescapeable in everyone to some level but know that it is the same for those who support conceptualized forms of justice in that whole systemizations illustrating justice are merely expression of society’s collective biasness.

And what is morality?

And how is one able to not distort justice?

We are apart of nature but unlike all other creatures we are not content with just being apart of it where instead over our span of history through innovation we have come to supplant all meaning in existence in erasement by replacing it with our own conjectures and ideals entirely.

Such as?

What is right? What is absolute?

A apt one from my own perspective.

Which equals selfish retribution.

I see nothing in that post that doesn’t illustrate selfish retribution.

Isn’t interesting how there exists litigations to keep inequality, classism and collective segragation in place?

Isn’t interesting how there exists litigations to protect the master from being usurped by his slaves in a corporation or place of business in which they exploit others?

I can just imagine it now… " Hey lawyer and judge I am tired of being oppressed living in a state of inequality, can I sue the government?" :sunglasses:

Nobody is going to listen to that simply because noone in the world frankly gives a dam which only illustrates my belief in man’s inherent selfishness or for his appetite in participating around malice.

The elite and government go hand in hand. And since people supposedly need protection from the elite which acts governmentally it only reaffirms my belief that the government is a giant monopoly guided by other psychological egoists.

Oh please… Everybody knows the government owns the courts.

Explain.

18

Hello Joker:

— I’m 21 and I live in the south midwest of the United States.
O- You’re very young then and living in a land of “opportunity” where thousands risk their life to get to, if only to work at a farm.

— I live in poverty
O- How do you get on-line? Local Library? Or Home PC? If the later then you are richer than I. But why do you live in poverty? Is it the govt’s fault or is it your fault? If it the “Man” that is keeping you down then I will agree with you, but if it is no one but yourself then I will not agree with you. Fair?

— social isolation
O- Again, why? You have a skin-disease like leprosy or just a hyper-sense of self? Just as poverty, isolation can be a choice.

— and alienation
O- Alienated from what and by whom? You rail against society and then bitch about being isolated from the herd, pretty much. If society is what you say it is then “alienation” is just merely good sense.

— in a constant world of daily desensitization working a dead end job
O- Work is part of life. “Dead end”? Then apply for a student loan and get a better education and a better job. What will you like to do to earn a living?

— that pays peanuts because I don’t fit in the status quo
O- And so you want the status quo to change rather than doing the changing yourself, is that right? Are you withing for the world to come around? The staus quo is a very subjective thing. You can change yourlife regardless of the status quo of a particular job. And if you’re making peanuts because you don’t fit the status quo, why don’t you change so that you can make the big-bucks? But perhaps you hold that to be true to yourself is of higher value than money. Then shut up and accept the price of your principled living, as you rather be paid peanuts than to be a hypocrite.

— not to mention I don’t fit the intellectual standardizatin of a productive citizen with my lack of quantifying intellectualism in education as I forever remain cursed in this mechanical era as a qualititative thinker with disregard to monetary greed.
O- You don’t fit because you either choose not to fit or lack the ability to fit even if you wanted to. Which is it?

— It also doesn’t help that I don’t play well with others and I don’t like being ordered around with other people.
O- You want your cake and eat it too huh? Start your own bussiness then…

— Now, what exactly does this have to do with the subject at hand?
O- It explains the gross misrepresentation of Justice as a system. Your conditions have compromised your dispassioned study of the subject. You can only project, because of the extremity of your condition, negative elements and cannot see any possitive. I am not surprised. In fact, the interesting thing would have been to hear that you were a 49 year-old doctor making 75,000 a year. Everything you’ve said simply comfirms the theory that a person’s perspective is created by his/her circumstances and does not necessarly reflect the objective reality of the thing in view.

— Quite the contrary. I have alot of expiriences of this world and what I have felt in this little word of ours it’s cruelty, indifference, coldness, malice, humiliation, indignity and spite along with every form of suffering you can possibly imagine.
O- At 21 years of age you have not lived long enough to pass judgment on the reality of the world. It is like writing your life’s autobiography at 21 years of age, as if nothing else could be added to your life and the rest, the next 60 years will be exactly like the first 21. You’re like a person complaining that there is no work to be done just because he is not willing to go work at a McDonald’s flipping burgers, neck and neck with Ramon Beltran Rodriguez. Ramon, who was actually poor, who was actually humiliated and who lived in injustice sees the opportunity of advancement, even from fries tender to order taker as a revelation that this world is good.

— I eat, sleep, and stay awake in cold sweats every night through vicious forms of insomnia from high stress of a life that should be mine but isn’t. I live like a biological machine in isolation and alienation without pleasure or happiness.
O- Again whose fault is that? You cannot lay everything that is wrong with your life at the feet of the state or govt. You have to accept responsibility for the improvement of your own life. It is your responsibility to make what should be what actually is. Don’t make up excuses that another is holding you back.

— I am merely a manifestation of what the world has transformed me
O- This is a poor attempt to escape your responsibility and make your situation the inevitable result of powers outside of yourself. You ever heard of Sartre? He would say that you’re suffering from Bad Faith.

— into over the years through it’s bitter cruelty
O- It’s bitter cruelty…was it condensed solely around you or is it far and wide in it’s reach? Because many are the people who from even worse situations make something of themselves. The world, they realize, does not owe then a thing and they rise up to make opportunities for themselves.

— so if people and society as a whole do not like my beliefs they merely have to look at themselves in the mirror to see the very people who have created me.
O- Earlier you spoke of “slaves”. Are you a slave or a master? Do you know what separates the two?

— My cause is my own selfish interests.
O- That is not a cause but a natural disposition you don’t even have to think through.

— I care not for useless crusades or holy wars of other people.
O- Part of the problem. Doing things for others might make you aware of the good things in your life by seeing those less fortunate, the truly poor, the truly abused, thus bringing a clearer perspective, a higher perspective of what the situation of your life actually is.

— Such as?
O- Your idea (if it is yours and not something you lifted from some ideologue) of Justice for example.

— Show me the positive aspects in which you speak of. Many days I wish I could find such instances that people speak of but in my search of it all I find only hypocrisy.
O- You are going to have to change yourself before you can see beyond the color goggles of your own self-importance. Go to hospitals and homeless shelters. Visit the blind and the deformed. But as far as justice is concerned I can only wonder if you have ever used the system which you criticise. Have you ever been in court as a defenant or as a plaintiff?

— Show me somthing beyond the world’s hypocrisy that I can believe in.
O- You want me to show you what you cannot see right now. First of all, I don’t have a duty to show you anything. It is you who have a duty to yourself. I can go on living rather happily without a further care about Joker and his angst. You are again passing the buck, expecting someone else, someone other than yourself to pick of the tab of your life, thus continuing the victimhood mentality of Joker. Nothing I can show you will change matters for you because the problem is not the world but yourself. The hyprocrisy you see or detect is your projection. A change in yourself and that means taking reins of your life, will lead to a change of opinion about the hypocrisy of the world. Only a change in your life, self-effected, will do the trick.

— In my world don’t benefit at all. In my world I feel like a slave bombarded by other people’s selfish interests where other people control most of life more so than I control my own.
O- I know. Again, this is expected from a frustrated mind. My question is what are YOU going to do about it? Stop looking around for someone else to change the situation of your life.

— Slowly my resentment is turning into rage which leaves me with thoughts of violence in that if society keeps pushing me around pretty soon people will see a side of me that they will never want to see in that I will not be responsible for the chaos that will come out of me through the consequence of their own actions upon me.
O- Be careful with your thoughts least the are raped by your rage. You need to channel that violence into yourself. I don’t mean that you have to punish yourself in order that you will not punish the world, but that you must direct that severity through yourself and wage war against the part of you that is lazy and uncommitted to the battle ahead for the future of “You”. You must deny your self and descend from this high-horse of vanity-for-nothing. Learn, I hope, that to lead you must first learn and practice following orders and following others. You must sacrifice something to gain something. Look around you and see how X-individual thrieves and leaps ahead of you. Because he is a suck-up? But he is not impotent. If from the sky fall lemons then learn how to make lemonade. If the status quo is such and such then learn how to work the status quo in your favor.

— You have no idea where I come from and if most people were in my place right now they would probally wonder why I haven’t taken my own life in death yet if they could only expirience the pain or trauma that I have felt.
O- I can tell that there is frustration, pain and many disappointments…I can only speculate as to the character of your first 21 years of life, but you’re not a child anymore. People overcome pain and trauma to live better, though challenging lives. People channel, they use their pain and and trauma creatively…why can’t you? Or why won’t you?

19

( Edited)

I do not have to explain myself to you.

20

Dam it all. I can’t stand bigots and people who claim to know best for other people.

Omar you know nothing about me and contrary to this idealistic fantasy world of yours where people work hard and supposedly succeed through obedience is far from actuality which is filled with inequality upon suffering.

I will not sit here infront of feel great societal propaganda and perverted treacheries with you speaking them to be absolute truths of wisdom as they are all too common in my expiriences. I will have none of it!

It is instances like this where I become enraged and filled with thoughts of violence which undoubtedly in the future I will be compelled to act out upon them.

( I fucking hate this absurd world.)