benlehman

I cannot agree that justice = revenge. Even our own justice system, which heavily involves force or the threat of force, does not adhere to 'an eye for an eye', and does not demand violence in response to violence. Violence is one possible means to force people to adhere to the system of justice of the society, but it is not a necessary or constant 'righting of the scales' in and of itself. At least according to our justice system, a civilian choosing to perform a vigilante shooting of a (suspected) murderer is not justice; a suspected wrongdoer entering court without having been beaten up by the police and paying a fine to the person he wronged is. You personally may not agree and would rather than anyone who broke someone else's leg have their own leg broken, rather than being locked up, but I think that is a matter of your personal view rather than the definition of what is just. Societies have historically done rather better when they managed to move from a never-ending bloodfeud standard to a wergelt standard.

I do not think one is incapable of being 'just' if one refuses to commit violence, nor that 'being just' = 'enforcing justice', nor that 'enforcing justice' can only be done with physical violence. Humans are social and mindful creatures as well as physical, and thus can be influenced or punished by nonphysical means: shame and community exclusion, for example. I don't claim that the threat or use of physical violence is never useful or possibly even necessary to deal with particular people and situations, but I absolutely disagree that it is always intrinsicly necessary to any example of justice. It also thoroughly disregards how much of an effect 'carrot' may have rather than or in combination with 'stick.'