Rethinking Justice Restoring Our Humanity

by Bell, Richard H.; Brueggemann, Walter

• ISBN13: 9780739122297
• ISBN10: 0739122290
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-04-08
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

In Rethinking Justice, Richard H. Bell lifts up and restores an idea of justice found in the works of classical writers such as Socrates and Seneca as well as in that of more recent thinkers. Justice, classically, has dealt with righting wrongs and restoring peace to individuals and human communities. Bell believes 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.

Author Biography

Richard H. Bell is Frank Halliday Ferris Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at The College of Wooster

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
The Concept of Justice: Some Recent Perspectives	p. 9
"Facing" our humanity: contextualizing justice and injustice	p. 9
Classical conceptions of justice	p. 14
Justice, power, and rights	p. 19
Obligations and reciprocity	p. 22
Justice: Human Dignity and Equality	p. 29
The idea of justice beyond fairness	p. 30
Seeing the other with equal respect through the injustice of colonialism	p. 33
Justice: Mercy and the Cultivation of Humanity	p. 45
Mercy and "the equity tradition"	p. 45
Mercy and forgiveness in practice: the South African case	p. 50
Justice Across Boundaries I: The Moral and Literary Imagination	p. 67
Sympathetic understanding	p. 67
The moral imagination	p. 69
The literary imagination	p. 74
Justice Across Boundaries II: Human Development and Obligation	p. 81
Poverty and social justice	p. 83
Capabilities and development	p. 86
Obligations	p. 88
Restorative Justice and Democratic Deliberation	p. 95
Restorative justice	p. 96
Deliberative democracy and justice	p. 105
Justice and Spirituality: A Testament to Our Humanity	p. 117
Spirituality's link with justice	p. 117
Justice and "the absolute horizon of being"	p. 120
Spirituality and justice in Simone Weil	p. 124
Epilogue	p. 131
Selected Bibliography	p. 135
Index	p. 141
About the Author	p. 145
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