This book insists upon a re-thinking of Western theories of Justice. For 2500 years, philosophers have subordinated the concept of injustice to the concept of justice, as if injustice were only a secondary, derivative notion. This book summons literary classics, notably Shakespeare, to argue that injustice, not justice, should be the focus of our attention. A long line of thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle through to Kant, Hegel, Marx and Rawls, have overlooked the central problems of injustice. The book identifies two elements – unity and measurement – that are constantly assumed to be essential to justice. It shows how, in landmark literary classics, it is precisely those two elements that end up generating injustice. Western justice theory, it is concluded, cannot advance until it takes a new approach to the concept and the realities of injustice.
Author(s): Eric Heinze
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge | Taylor & Francis Group
Year: 2013
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF | Full TOC
Pages: 223
Tags: Justice; Justice (Philosophy); Justice In Literature
Cover
Half title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Table of Contents
Sources
1 Nietzsche’s echo
1.1 Introduction
1.2 A mutual exclusion?
1.3 Plan of this book
Part 1 Classical understandings
2 Injustice as the negation of justice
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Typical expressions of mutual exclusion
2.3 Injustice within isolated contexts
2.4 Injustice and anti-rationalism
2.5 Injustice within systemic contexts
2.6 A dialectic of injustice
2.7 Historicist dialectics of injustice
2.8 The partial incommensurability of justice and injustice
3 Injustice as disunity
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Disunity as the primary cause of injustice in Plato
3.3 Disunity as a major element of injustice in Aristotle
3.4 Disunity as metaphysical injustice in Christianity
3.5 The dialectic of unity and individuality in modernity
4 Injustice as mismeasurement
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Suum cuique as an empty formalism
4.3 Suum cuique as a decisive element
4.4 Injustice as failure of reciprocity
4.5 Transition to a post-classical concept of justice
Part 2 Post-classical understandings
5 Injustice as unity
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Antigone: conventional versus critical contexts
5.3 Macbeth: unity as the source of disunity
5.4 Talbot: merit and myth
6 Injustice as measurement
6.1 Introduction
6.2 ‘Will much impeach the justice of the state’
6.3 ‘Pageants of the sea’
6.4 ‘Like a golden fleece’
6.5 ‘Mine own teaching’
6.6 ‘The complexion of a devil’
6.7 ‘Kindness’
6.8 ‘As swift as yours’
6.9 ‘As much as he deserves’
6.10 ‘Le plus beau, le plus fort’
7 Measurement and modernity
7.1 Introduction
7.2 ‘I’ll counterpoise’
7.3 ‘To set a gloss’
7.4 ‘If things be measured equal to their worth’
7.5 ‘My spirit’s split in two’
Bibliography
Index
