Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 10:30:06 -0500 (EST)
From: sheila lafountain <slafoun-AT-emory.edu>
Subject: Re: Pinochet and disappeared



The problem with social justice (especially some forms of the Hegelian
variety I suppose) is that there are always consequences.  If it's the
alleviating of suffering that you're after then the game is off.  If it's
the alleviating of suffering for a particular group you're after then you
haven't escaped the problem you may have become part of the problem.  
Jean Val Jean recognized this problem in Les Miserables and when Javerre 
saw it for himself he no longer wanted to live in such a world.  Some
might say there are only choices but I think some choices are better than
others.  As for putting ideas into practice, perhaps we used 
have a choice in such matters but what if the world has already begun to
practice.
Sheila

On Sat, 14 Nov 1998 kjrufo-AT-bellsouth.net wrote:

> 
> 
> 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
>