Now, it is clear to me, that while justice does in fact seem to incorporate all of these things, it also incorporates something else, that at least until now, we have neglected. This is the issue of personal responsibility. While I do not intend to propose that any of these aspects are greater or more important than the others, it is clear to me that personal responsibility is a key aspect in the execution of justice.
Responsibility in Borges' story was nearly nonexistent. In the final stages of the lottery, people were forced to participate,
therefore, they preformed no personal actions to be held accountable for. In Plato's city, the people
were given their place and were intended to stay within it. This position also limited personal responsibility,
by reducing the decisions that people within the society could make. Both of these examples, it seems to me,
solve the problem of personal responsibility by removing it from the equation. However, I would argue
that personal responsibility is the key to a just system.
If we define personal responsibility as synonyms with accountability, then we have a definition that also includes choice.
It seems to me imperative that in our examination of justice we not neglect responsibility. I think we could
all safely agree that it is not fair that one person be punished, or held accountable for someone Else's actions.
If someone is not held accountable for their actions isn't that considered injustice?
Lets take another look at the lottery. In class we mostly agreed that the lottery was fair. For the most
part everyone agreed that it was fair in the sense that it measured every man by the same scale. Rich or poor, he was subject
to the same rules, and limitations of the lottery. But, we could still not come to the conclusion that this
system was "just". It seems to me that the reason for this hesitation, is that we cannot accept a system
lacking personal accountability as "just". For this reason i would label personal responsibility not only among the
things we should examine more closely but as a key element in our search for "justice".
I think what I liked most about the Borges piece are the points that you brought up about Babylon being a city without personal responsibility, as a result of the lottery. One of the reasons I liked it though, was because of the questions it raised about responsibility in the first place. If the world is chance, with no one choosing what they do, then I agree with you that in that system it seems hard to find someone personally responsible for their actions- they did not have a choice.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, what would the world have to be like in order to give us the accountability that we look for in personal responsibility? If the world is not like Babylon, in being driven by chance and without personal responsibility, then what is it like? Even if we believe that we are free agents and as a result can choose and can be held responsible for whatever we do, there are cases where this also seems more difficult to argue as justice. Like if a persons kills another, it would seem fair to hold them accountable- they are personally accountable for their actions. But then what if you looked through their past, and in their childhood they were abused, and in their adolescence they were abandoned, and they had a whole list of mental illnesses, and it seemed like the murder was less a choice of their own than an unstoppable consequence of their life direction, would that murder still be as cut and dry responsible as it looked the first time? I agree that personal responsibility is very important for the search for justice, but also think that the search for what it means, and when it is clearly the case, that people can be held personally responsible for what they do might be just as difficult.