Is Justice Revenge?

The way the question is expressed leads us to think we should limit ourselves to the realities of justice and its application, which leads me to say that, sadly, justice is undoubtedly revenge, at least in a great number of cases.  I think, however, that we should also consider what justice should be, what we can try to make it, so that it does differentiate itself from revenge.  What can probably be agreed upon is that revenge is private.  It takes place between two individuals, or between an individual and the group (of individuals) that caused offense.  The justice system, on the other hand, is public.  It draws the attention of society to a crime or offense, not just a few, select people.  For this reason, trials are open to the public, more or less, and executions and physical punishments used to be public spectacles as well.  They were meant to convey the idea that the authorities take crimes seriously, society ought to trust them, and individuals ought to avoid criminal activity.  Of course, they were also entertainment because people are horrible, but the structure of the justice system is one of making an offense impersonal.  Criminal cases in the United States go "The People Vs. (the defendant)" and the victims of the crime, or the victims' families aren't even mentioned.  In the eyes of justice, a crime is committed against every member of society, not just one, so not only must the examination and possible punishment be public, it must be impersonal and objective.  Revenge is neither of those things.  It is extremely personal, and enormously subjective.  The "eye for an eye" style of vengeful "justice" cannot even be said to be objectively fair, since the conditions of the "equal" treatment are never the same.

The Thinker agreed that the terms should be separated, saying that while we don't know things and only have ideas, "justice" just sounds like a good thing.  He used the word "vengeance" rather than "revenge", but considered it to be emotional and Shakespearean, a dark word.  Another difference to his mind is that justice requires professionals; the law is often complicated, and even specialists may not be able to absorb the entirety of a country's law code.  He used Spain as an example, saying that since each autonomy has its own code, it's impossible for any Spanish lawyer to practice effectively in a region other than the one s/he studied in.  Revenge, on the other hand, needs no professionals, and is in fact usually "better" without them, given its personal nature.  The Thinker ended his first contribution by saying that justice is an invention to create balance, but later on decided that justice doesn't actually exist.  As concepts, justice and truth should be the most important things for human beings.  Justice, in particular, merits the gaze of a suspicious eye, because where it has been invented, it is meant to protect the power structure more than any one member of society.  Rather than being objective and fair, the justice system drags behind changes in social values because of delays in changing unfair laws, which makes revenge necessary.  It becomes the justice of the people.

The Philosopher provided us with his usual essay on the topic, and in the meeting began by insisting that despite the distance between justice and revenge as ideas, they are always connected.  He commented on the evolution of justice as seen in the Christian Bible, where in simple terms Old Testament justice is more like revenge (in fact, "'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord") and the New Testament instructs believers to turn the other cheek.  By not taking personal revenge, we leave the way open for objective and impersonal justice.  This idea came in response to a question from another participant, who asked the group to ponder why Christian countries punish criminals, given the instruction from their savior.  The Rights Crusader mostly gave examples of revenge being worked into the justice system, in the form of people who physically attack robbers or rapists not being prosecuted, or more disturbingly, criminals like terrorists being tortured in prisons.  The Actress was strident in her opposition to revenge as an activity, insisting that it meant deterioration and regress in society.  Her quote for us was, "Revenge is evil, forgiveness is god."  Later on, this statement appeared to cause some confusion for the Insufferable Clod, as he smugly droned that she must be Christian since she mentioned god, and even if she insists she isn't, other people can only logically draw that conclusion.  After being admonished that there are many faiths and gods, he snidely rattled off some names of Roman deities, leaving his narrow-minded and arrogant interpretation of belief and spirituality unquestionably clear.  This exchanged must have left him riled and unsatisfied, since he started a meaningless argument with the Organizer about house ownership and economic policy soon after, taking the side that buying property is absolutely the best investment ("It worked in Spain for 40 years!") and that US conservatives are absolutely correct in wanting to remove money from the economy.  His feeling of uncoddled Christian supremacy would not allow him to let any disagreement pass.

The Organizer also gave his customary written opinion for pre-meeting analysis, and in his first contribution also highlighted the connection between justice and revenge, but specifying that it was only valid in criminal situations.  In most other circumstances, justice should seek to restore the previous conditions as much as possible.  While tribal societies of only a few hundred or thousand people, justice and revenge can be more intimately linked because of the relationships between all members of the society.  Even in large societies, the social goal of justice ought to be to restore social relationships.  He repeated the idea the justice does not express emotion, although he believed that it still existed in an unstated level.  Revenge will develop from injustice, then, as a sort of "interest" accumulating in the emotional sense.  To bring us to a more philosophical realm, he introduced his opinion that, although justice is considered as related to ethics and morality, it might not actually belong there, but rather with philosophy of mind.  The reason is that justice arises with conflict, and when faced with those conflicts we have the balance of "Kill the bastard" versus "Don't do something stupid."  Choosing the not-stupid leaves restoring social balance up to the justice system.  Another strike against revenge is that not every injustice requires punishment, which is inherent in taking revenge.  Harkening back to the beginning and the public displays of justice, punishment is used to control people, sometimes only as a show of force and warning, sometimes by punishing the good along with the bad.  Another participant disagreed slightly, saying punishment and the threat of punishment are used as deterrence, and really had no connection to justice.

Maybe the concepts of justice and revenge are more closely intertwined than I thought before the discussion.  For sure, taking revenge on people who use an unfair allotment of time to ramble should be justified.