by Redisca

Created on: July 07, 2008

As long as we are on the topic of justice, I'd like to point out that no fair debate can come from a question phrased as a forgone conclusion. Naturally, it's wrong to do wrong things, and since the question presumes that retaliation is wrong, what kind of monster would answer "yes"?

It is the kind of monster who would like to consider this issue a little less superficially than the question would suggest. Imagine a world free of restraints of modern law and order. If you took your neighbor's eye out, you would probably lose your life - for it is very unlikely he would stop at merely taking out your own eye. We can congratulate each other on our supposed enlightenment all we want, but the sad truth is, very few people are satisfied with merely getting back what was taken from them, or some moral equivalent. The same folks who get worked up about "an eye for an eye" being barbaric won't think twice about wiping the floor with someone who offends them, if they can do so. Go into a bar, walk up to a random patron and slap him in the face. Do you think a retaliatory slap is all you'll get? Perhaps - but it is far more likely that you will get punched and kicked; the punishment you receive will be greater than your offense by several orders of magnitude. Or, check out forums that deal with gender issues some time. There are plenty of reasoned, "liberal" people who think women have the right to kill their abusers; "reasonable" men who believe a husband is justified in murdering a cheating or uncooperative wife; self-appointed advocates for justice who believe that flogging should be used to curb vandalism and that castration is a fitting punishment for rape. We have no business looking down upon "an eye for an eye" (no pun intended) if for no other reason than because we simply have never lived up to that standard in the first place.

This verse from the Old Testament is routinely held up as a relic of barbaric, primitive Mesopotamian justice. In reality, however, this verse contains a concept which is still revolutionary, even today - it is about limiting the severity of the punishment to that of the crime, the recovery for the victim to the quantum of harm actually suffered. It is about imposing a strict limitation on man's most basic violent urges - so basic, in fact, that we still experience them on a daily basis without even registering that anything is wrong. Moreover, unlike the idea of turning the other cheek (whose real-world effect is to promote bullying), it addresses not only the need to curb revenge, but also the society's interest in disinsentivizing future offenses.

Does it mean that people who injure others should literally be maimed? Of course not. Even the most Orthodox Jewish rabbis do not see it that way. The true significance of this verse is not in its literal interpretation, but in the moral value that it encapsulates. It is a great moral value, perhaps the most benevolent in the Jewish and Christian Bibles combined. Contrary to what is suggested by the majority here, if more of us embraced this value, we'd have fewer blind people - and in general, fewer victims of sweet revenge than we do now.

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