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Notes -
"Justice" often just means "revenge". Nietzsche wrote some great takes on this, I can dig them up if you want, from a psychological perspective his takes were really good as far as I remember, and I could probably defend them.
For now, though, I want to say that I do see the logic in murdering the murderer of your father if the system fails you. But this would be a personal revenge. Those that I find the least justifiable are those who take "revenge" on others behalf - "cancel culture" is one manifestation of this, but there's more, and they're all based in aspects of mob culture/herd morality/social dynamics which are closely tied to malice and which can be prevented by the slightest bit of wisdom and self-understanding. It's a simply form of stupidity, holy simplicity if you will. I know that the left are not religious, but they're bigger moralizers than those on the right, and their values come from the bible even if they do not realize it. Or at Nietzsche said:
"We see: an authority speaks - who speaks? - One may forgive human pride if it sought to make this authority as high as possible in order to feel as little humiliated as possible under it. Therefore - God speaks! One needed God as an unconditional sanction, with no court of appeal, as a "categorical imperator" -: or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. Now suppose that belief in God has vanished: the question presents itself anew: "who speaks?"- My answer, taken not from metaphysics but from animal physiology: the herd instinct speaks. It wants to be master: hence its "thou shalt!"- it will allow value to the individual only from the point of view of the whole, for the sake of the whole, it hates those who detach themselves-it turns the hatred of all individuals against them"
And this would explain why the death of god has not lead to the death of morality to the extent that one would expect. The morality was grounded more in instincts than it was grounded in religion. Religion merely served to legitimize it
Textbook descriptions of the reasons for criminal punishment are deterrence (general and specific), incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retribution. That last is pretty similar to revenge, and it bothers a lot of people who feel themselves to be somehow above that sort of thing to include it. But it's important. Without it, you are addressing the needs of some abstract "society" but you are not addressing the needs of the person actually victimized.
I do agree with your take if we stress "The person actually victimized". I dislike it when people are offended on other people's behalf. Some take it further, and look for signs of flaws in others, scanning them for traits that they can "expose" to the world, as if they were "moral police". The Nietzsche quote I'd choose here is "And some who cannot see the high in people call it virtue that they see the low all too near, thus they call their evil eye virtue" In either case, I consider revenge to be rather imperfect. Even if you had a society in which one could always get the perfect amount of revenge, I'd still not want to be there if the crime rate was high. Rather live in a country with little crime. Prevention is simply better. I can only speak for myself though - maybe there's people who enjoy revenge so much that it makes up for the events for which they take revenge.
What is best in life?
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