Daniel F. Vukovich wrote:
> Justice, like Truth, is but a mobile army of metaphors. Surely we all know
> this, and surely we can all agree that -- therefore -- politics should be
> kept separate from this concept-metaphor, at least politics in a social,
> institutional sense. Dont we all realize how inherently dangerous, if not
> evil, it is to actually try to put into practice ideas or values like
> Justice? Mixing politics and justice is a recipe for the Gulag, esp if you
> throw some Hegel into the mix.
>
> As Hayek and Foucault and of course Nietzche have definitively shown, there
> is no such thing as social justice. To think that there is, let alone to
> desire to see Pinochet tortured unto death, is in the last analysis part of
> a primitive, herd or tribal mentality that we ought to leave out of
> eternally recurring history/time.
>
> Daniel Vukovich
> English; The Unit for Criticism
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
While I have mixed (and rather inconclusive) feelings about the Pinochet
discussion, I do take some exception to a general Nietzschean disregard for the
potential of social justice. Not attempting to be overly argumentative (well,
yet, at least :P), but doesn't that sort of thinking open oneself to a rather
unimpressive nihilism? Maybe I misunderstand the use of "social justice" as
terminology... Is it your contention that a "moral" justice cannot exist or that
an "ethical" justice cannot be imposed without consequences?
Ken Rufo
Speech and Communication
University of Georgia