In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee's Magistrate recalls lecturing a young offender. I will paraphrase some, but quote it at some length because I think the language is beautiful:
"You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know...all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. But we live in a world of laws...a world of the second-best...all we can do is uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade."
He says "a world of laws," but he may as well have said "a world of flaws." I think Coetzee's invocation of this Platonic system is interesting. I am accustomed to thinking of the "intelligible world" in terms of hard, scientific absolutes: triangles and such. An ideal triangle I can wrap my head around. Ideal justice is harder to conceptualize.
If our world is a world of the second-best, how do laws get us any closer to the world of the best?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Perhaps the right way to think about this is how much FARTHER away from the world of the best we would be WITHOUT laws?
ReplyDeleteAlso, can you imagine the destruction inflicted by Stabler in such a world?