@Sevis,
Sevis;159296 wrote:The bold part is interesting. We seem to have different definitions of justice, mine being nothing but an afterthought, never a goal: I feel that when one does something ``for justice'', one does it because one has been wronged, and thus out of revenge. Thus, justice can only ever truly be a result, never a goal, for humans are too flawed to worthily pursue it.
All moral forms are subjective, and that is why in the ideal, two people in any dispute over justice work out for themselves what it is...and this is because, what it is for one, if it is just, is just for the other...In that sense justice is a form of relationship...
And justice is never more important to people than it is in an honor society... Now; for example, When the Trojan war was fought it was for honor... Helen did not have a face that launched a thousand ship, or a fine behind neither, and i can see that even at this distance...Those who pursued her had made a common oath, and it was for that honor that they went, and even for that reason that Achilles stayed when he justly felt dishonored...Honor was an economy just as money is today, and people were forever weighing intangibles, and no small numbers lost their life because they had their fingers on the scale...
It is wrong to think we can live without it, but it is accepted that in large societies and in the complexity of relationships that we may at anytime find ourselves short of justice, but we do not need it as primitives did, measured against an ideal...Instead, everyone needed enough...Even in the Illiad it is unlikely that what was portrayed was fact... Attila is Described, as an example, as having no expensive trapping on his horse, and nothing to mark him out as being special...Lawrence said as much of the Arab chiefs...
They took no more than was honorably theirs, and they erred on the side of modesty, giving spoils to their men, and credit to Allah....But vengeance only became necessary if other methods of finding justice failed... If a person killed one of yours, and escaped hot blooded justice, he might well survive with his life...The same was true of Germans, Native Americans, Anglo Saxon, and Celts... When two family groups or communities met to decide such issues, the peace of the two groups was on the line, and this was essential since feud violence invariably injured the innocent more than the quilty...Blood money was paid, and if a death for a death was required, then none but the killers own kin would crack his skull...And that avoided the need for further vengeance...This is why Electra told Orestes that if he did not Kill his mother that she would, to have peace and honor in the community...
It is something that cannot be understood and isolated outside of its milieu...Money changes everything... Before that, the need for justice and honor was balanced by the need for peace, and allies, and was moderated by the notion of fate, that no one could be struck down before his time, which led to mercy...
