[lbo-talk] The lex talionis: senseless reason

[andie nachgeborenen]

"An eye for an eye" is actually a very sensible
principle -- not "a life for an eye," but punishment
proportional to the wrong. I realize retributivism
(the idea that bad things should be done to people who
have done bad things because of the bad things they
have done) is widely regarded here by people who, when
pushed, don't really believe it, as a barbaric
principle that licenses bloodthirsty revenge,  Dirty
Harry violence, and the cruelties of the inquisition.
That's wrong, but I don't want to get into that here.
However, it is worth pointing out that a principle of
retributivism (unlike the more humane consequentialist
view . . .) is that only the guilty should be
punished. So what is wrong with invoking the "eye for
an eye" principle in the context of terrorist attacks
is not that there is revenge or senseless violence
being done, but that those harmed are innocent.  That
is, unless you buy the Ward Churchill line, on which I
guess we area ll guilty, except for Ward. jks

--- Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:


> On 7/12/05, Charles Brown wrote:
> > Principle of senseless violence that Americans
> might be familiar with, a
> > version of which principle may have been a
> senseless motive of the recent
> > London bombers:
> > 
> > an eye for an eye
> 
> was it Gandhi who said that "an eye for an eye makes
> one blind"?
> JD
> 
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