Rethinking Justice: Restoring Our HumanityIn Rethinking Justice, Richard H. Bell lifts up and restores an idea of justice found in classical writers such as Socrates and Seneca as well as in more recent thinkers. Justice, classically, has dealt with righting wrongs and restoring peace to individuals and human communities. We have lost sight of this in our modern political and legal dealings and must find a way to return it to mind and to practice. Each chapter looks at ways to restore such reconciliatory practices to the idea of justice that can be found in our contemporary life and literature and focuses on numerous recent cases of abuse of justice among individuals, groups and nations. Bell approaches justice as a concept that goes hand in hand with compassion, mercy, and trust. Rethinking Justice reminds us that we have an obligation to foster peace, be merciful, and promote reconciliation with our brothers and sisters in humanity. |
Contents
The Concept of Justice Some Recent Perspectives | 9 |
Classical conceptions of justice | 14 |
Justice power and rights | 19 |
Obligations and reciprocity | 22 |
Justice Human Dignity and Equality | 29 |
The idea of justice beyond fairness | 30 |
Seeing the other with equal respect through the injustice | 33 |
Justice Mercy and the Cultivation of Humanity | 45 |
Poverty and social justice | 83 |
Capabilities and development | 86 |
Obligations | 88 |
Restorative Justice and Democratic Deliberation | 95 |
Restorative justice | 96 |
Deliberative | 105 |
Justice and Spirituality A Testament to Our Humanity | 117 |
Justice and the absolute horizon of being | 120 |
the South African case | 50 |
Justice Across Boundaries I The Moral and Literary Imagination | 67 |
The moral imagination | 69 |
The literary imagination | 74 |
Justice Across Boundaries II Human Development and Obligation | 81 |
Spirituality and justice in Simone Weil | 124 |
Epilogue | 131 |
Selected Bibliography | 135 |
| 141 | |
About the Author | |
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