Zeynep
@Zreads
Şu anda okuduğu kitap
Puan vermedi·630 syf.·
9 günde okudu
·Okunma: 22 Ağustos 2025 00:00
·2025 36. kitabı
“Kötü bir anıyı unutmanın en iyi yolu güzel bir tanesiyle değişmektir.”
The most decisive thing, however, that the higher authorities can invent and enforce against the even stronger power of hostile and spiteful feelings – and they do it as soon as they are strong enough – is the setting up of a legal system, the imperative declaration of what counts as permissible in their eyes, as just, and what counts as forbidden, unjust: once the legal code is in place, by treating offence and arbitrary actions against the individual or groups as a crime, as violation of the law, as insurrection against the higher authorities themselves, they distract attention from the damage done by such violations, and ultimately achieve the opposite of what revenge sets out to do, which just sees and regards as valid the injured party’s point of view –: from then on the eye is trained for an evermore impersonal interpretation of the action, even the eye of the injured party (although, as stated, this happens last). – Therefore ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ only start from the moment when a legal system is set up.
It is not impossible to imagine a society so conscious of its power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury available to it, that of letting its malefactors go unpunished. "What do I care about my parasites", it could say, "let them live and flourish: I am strong enough for all that!" Justice, which began by saying "Everything can be paid off, everything must be paid off", ends by turning a blind eye and letting off those unable to pay, it ends like every good thing on earth, by sublimating. The self sublimation of justice: we know what a nice name it gives itself -mercy; it remains, of course, the prerogative of the most powerful man, better still, his way of being beyond the law.