JUSTICE AS TRADE

(With this entry I have once more returned to the justice theme of my Wishful Thinking section. Quite a few of its sisters have been posted on my blog already and it would be too cumbersome to identify them all. The reader may look up a whole cluster of justice entries posted in November, 2011, including the entry Nostalgia For The Old World Order, mentioned by title below.)

I can see why Hobbes sees justice in obeying the law, and he would have bequeathed to us a perfect definition of moral justice, had he referred to the ideal, or God’s Law. But, considering that most national laws in history (or should I say, more accurately, all of them?) have been… well, man-made, and far from perfect, a reasonable alternative and a much more down-to-earth definition of justice is required, to reconcile the idea of justice with morality. Otherwise, “justice” is just another empty word, unusable in building up the concept of international justice, which, as I said before, is unthinkable in separation from the conception of the ideal.

Therefore, I find what Nietzsche has done about it supremely commendable, even if his idea of justice cannot stand unchallenged. He basically opens up a philosophical discussion on the origin and meaning of justice, creating the tools for probing deeper into the matter than anyone had gone before. Here is Nietzsche in Human, All-Too-Human (92):

“Justice (fairness) originates among those who are approximately equally powerful: where a fight would mean inconclusive mutual damage, there the idea originates that one may come to an understanding and negotiate one’s claims. The initial character of justice is the character of a trade. It has gradually come to appear as if a just action were unegoistic; but the high esteem for it depends on this appearance.”

Having written my brief initial comment, which I am still keeping intact in my entry Nostalgia For The Old World Order, coming later in this section, I am disappointed how little exuberant praise has been given to Nietzsche for this masterpiece of political and psychological insight into the nature of human society, and the future of its world order, if, of course, that future be world peace and a continuation of the human race, and not its self-destruction through one superpower’s will to hegemony, and the other’s compulsion to manipulate behind the scenes, even if such shadowy reactivity, rather than a forceful and direct self-assertion in the limelight of history, be to the peril of all and to the benefit of none.

I will soon return to this important Nietzschean passage, which will provide me with a bridge between the theme of International Justice and my next theme, dealing with the concept of geopolitical bipolarity.