Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: A Theory of Justice?
- 1 Introductory Themes: Images of Evenness
- 2 The Talion
- 3 The Talionic Mint: Funny Money
- 4 The Proper Price of Property in an Eye
- 5 Teaching a Lesson: Pain and Poetic Justice
- 6 A Pound of Flesh
- 7 Remember Me: Mnemonics, Debts (of Blood), and the Making of the Person
- 8 Dismemberment and Price Lists
- 9 Of Hands, Hospitality, Personal Space, and Holiness
- 10 Satisfaction Not Guaranteed
- 11 Comparing Values and the Ranking Game
- 12 Filthy Lucre and Holy Dollars
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: A Theory of Justice?
- 1 Introductory Themes: Images of Evenness
- 2 The Talion
- 3 The Talionic Mint: Funny Money
- 4 The Proper Price of Property in an Eye
- 5 Teaching a Lesson: Pain and Poetic Justice
- 6 A Pound of Flesh
- 7 Remember Me: Mnemonics, Debts (of Blood), and the Making of the Person
- 8 Dismemberment and Price Lists
- 9 Of Hands, Hospitality, Personal Space, and Holiness
- 10 Satisfaction Not Guaranteed
- 11 Comparing Values and the Ranking Game
- 12 Filthy Lucre and Holy Dollars
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
I have talked of scales, of talionic equivalence, and of getting even, of revenge and redemption. I thus introduced “oddmen” (the arbitrators) and “unevenmen” (those who refused to submit to arbitration and refused to pay for their wrongs); we have seen how people equilibrate, commensurate, evaluate, and price pretty much everything when called on to do so. Redemption, the foundation of their moral edifice, requires no less. We have seen them mint coin in the strangest of substances: in living flesh, dead flesh, animal or human, parted or whole, in blood, grain, and peppercorns, as well as in what we have come to think of as traditional money substances like silver and gold. I have spoken of the play in the joints of actual instruments of measurement, and the play, the ambiguities, in the conceptual joints of payback and redemption so that peace and “satisfaction” could be achieved, at least for a while.
Justice and obligation are treated by political, moral, and legal philosophers so abstractly. They lose sight of the fact that matters of justice and matters of obligation are concrete, practical, and homely: justice was first a matter of paying back, of buying back, of determining the amount of the obligation owed or the value of the thing or person to be redeemed. In the end it was never far from being a matter of blood, flesh, and bone.
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- Eye for an Eye , pp. 197 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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