"Justice" and its implementation in the Forgotten Realms
Kamigoroshi
Member Posts: 5,870
There has been numerous threads about alignments on these forums, especially questions like "what is lawful" or not. This time, I want to ask something slightly different however; what the heck is "justice"?
No, seriously, I have no idea!
There is a saying that justifying ones action is only for the just. But what does "being just" entail, exactly? Being a lawful aligned person(or worse, a paladin 
)? Working in a court as advocate, barrister, or judge? Being a follower of Torm, Amaunator, Bahamut, or Kelemvor... who all four have the Justice domain? Does that mean that neither people nor deities with other alignments than lawful good or lawful neutral can't be just as well? Does the mental construct of justice not function with, say... evil?
Most important of all, whose justice is the setting even talking about in the first place?
Is it some fundamental outer force of existance like the rule of three (good, neutral, evil)? Is it the country's justice? The religion's justice? Or the self administered justice of individuals?
When does one draw a line between justice and retribution? One could argue they are one of the same, depending on whose justice we're talking about. Yet they're two separate portfolios when it comes to deities.
Questions, questions.
No, seriously, I have no idea!
There is a saying that justifying ones action is only for the just. But what does "being just" entail, exactly? Being a lawful aligned person
)Most important of all, whose justice is the setting even talking about in the first place?
Is it some fundamental outer force of existance like the rule of three (good, neutral, evil)? Is it the country's justice? The religion's justice? Or the self administered justice of individuals?
When does one draw a line between justice and retribution? One could argue they are one of the same, depending on whose justice we're talking about. Yet they're two separate portfolios when it comes to deities.
Questions, questions.
5
Comments
That's easy.
You see, first....
[insert roughly 3,000 years of philosophical discourse]
...and that, I think, should give you a rough idea on the starting points. We're currently taking it from there, I'm sure it can't be much longer until we have a clean, definitive answer.
Honestly, though, you won't get far in this debate. Sooner or later you either accept the above, or a cursory deux-ex-machina answer like "cause deity X says so".
As with any metaphysical concept like love, freedom, and peace, justice has a myriad of meanings that depend on context and the people involved. To a paladin, justice is usually defined by the teachings of their god. For a barrister, it's mostly likely defined by the laws of the society they serve. To a common civilian, their higher concept of justice may be defined by laws, gods, personal ideals, or some combination thereof.
All of these things can of course be twisted to rationalize acts of selfishness and evil, but I think it's worth pointing out that the common denominator of any action taken in the name of justice is that the actor believes that what they are doing is right. It is their definition of right that is the point of contention. To a paladin of Bahamut, right is whatever protects the innocent and punishes those who would do them harm. To a destitute thief, right is probably whatever puts food on the table. To a Wizard of Thay, right is maintaining their place at the top of society and keeping their slaves in check.
Retribution, I think, is a much more simple concept. Is it just an action taken in response to harm done. Whether it is good, evil, or neither is a matter of context. Retribution carries with it no inherent consideration for what is right, unlike justice. Retribution can be a facet of justice, however, though it is not a necessary one in the context of good.
For example, what if an evil druid destroyed a farm, but died before a good druid could seek them out and punish them? What is left for justice to do but undo the damage done by the evil druid? In this case, the just act is defined by charity and kindness, with the good druid helping the farmer rebuild.
That is what I think is in mind when goodly gods are given the Justice domain and not evil gods.
Kelemvor is a slightly different circumstance. In his case, Justice is clearly defined by the eternal, immutable law that all things must die eventually.
Which makes it even harder for me to distinguish both concepts from one another. When it comes to D&D, I feel that the concepts of justice and retribution are indeed two sides of the same coin which cannot be separated. Really, it would be less confusing to just fuse them together and be done with it.
For now, I think that justice should not be tied to the forces of good only. As this concept really is more of a grey area than a white and black one. If we interpretend "justice" as being "the right thing for each person individually", it varies too much from person to person. In that case, it cannot be guaranteed that the right thing is also a good thing. At least not when it involves others.
I have AWAKENED. I am VHAILOR.
Welcome! Please tell us why we should listen to you on this topic.
I am Vhailor. I am a Mercykiller. I am justice. It is my past. It is my present. It is my future.
Vhailor, what is justice?
Justice purges evil. Once all have been cleansed, the multiverse achieves perfection.
I...I see. But doesn't justice and mercy go together hand in hand?
Mercy is for the weak. Punishment breaks souls and makes them worthy of service to their superiors. When the number of martyrs is great enough, rebellion crumbles.
That doesn't sound particularly good. I-
Let my words carry you: JUSTICE is a TEACHER. In your PUNISHMENT, gain STRENGTH. Through your PUNISHMENT, achieve PERFECTION.
Wait, what? My punishment? But I've done nothing wrong.
JUSTICE shall be served. You shall FALL beneath my blade, Grum, even if I have to stand over your struggling remains for ETERNITY.
Vhailor, everyone! Please give him a round of applause and thank him for this interview. But we really must be moving on...
You will not escape my axe again. YIELD!
Degrees and forms of punishments and rewards are a matter of time\law\traditions and so one, but general principle is as universal as the common definition of "bad" - "something I do not wish upon myself".
I feel like there are many stories in the FR where a person feels wronged (note, they may not necessarily actually be wronged) and goes to the traditional source of justice to mete out an appropriate punishment on their transgressor. When their request for justice is interpreted as vengeance and denied, they may go to an "evil" god who will give them the power to enforce their own set of ethics. To the person who thinks they have been wronged, the evil god is a source of justice. The good gods get labelled with justice because they fit the definition by a widely accepted standard of ethics.
The topic is treated in a myriad of crime dramas, soap operas, science fictions, etc., on television and in movies. The story usually goes that someone, either a civilian or an officer of the law, wants "to take the law into her own hands", and see that a (usually violent) criminal is punished, because "the system" is failing in some way, either to "bring justice" to the perpetrator at all, or else is being too slow about it, because of due process.
The story then sets up a contrast between "justice" and "vigilantism" or "revenge", where justice is right and good, but vigilantism is wrong and evil. Often the perpetrator of the crime must be let go or left unpunished rather than allowing the "good" characters in the story to "descend" into "evil" vigilantism.
A lot of this kind of story conflict is based on, for us Americans, our Constitution. So, does it apply to the D&D universe?
To some extent, I think it does, where "the Constitution" is replaced by "the teachings of Tyr", or "the teachings of Helm", or Torm, or the "God of Justice" of your choice.
So the fanatical paladin, or the Flaming Fist who acts as though "I AM the Law!" all the time, may be a bad stereotype created by thoughtless D&D players and writers, and a failure of imagination.
I think Keldorn's stoic, quiet, and thoughtful nature was a step in the right direction in creating a character who is a thoughtful servant of Justice, although he betrays his principles (maybe) with his hatred of Drow and willingness to kill all Drow on sight. It can be argued that his hatred of Drow is completely rational in that world, but that's another discussion.
The well-imagined "servant of Justice" in most good stories always walks the line between Justice and Revenge. That's what makes those characters interesting to play, to watch, or to read about.
I suppose the reason for this is that justice is a philosophical concept, while laws and their enforcement must be observed more concretely. My society is decreasingly in accord on the subject of right and wrong. In fact, my country seems split down the middle on the constitution that is supposed to be the overarching law of the land.
Although laws may be written to underscore a concept of justice, that concept will not be universally accepted, especially over time. Beyond that, the implementation of a system for enforcement will tend to favor those with the greatest power and influence.
Ultimately, justice requires an objective code laid out by an arbiter of complete authority. Without this, we must rely on the only form of justice we can hope to know in a world divided by so many different philosophies and agendas:
The Batman.
In a sense every paladin order, every merchant group, as well as the majority of traveling adventure parties can be definited as voluntary associations of persons who organize themselves for the purpose of protecting a common interest. Be it liberty, property, or personal security... a.k.a quests. Which, when we believe the dictionary, is a prime defination of vigilantism.
That being said, it would be folly to just use real world definations of justice, retribution, or vigilantism and paste/copy them directly into a fantasy setting such as the Forgotten Realms. The same wouldn't work with super hero standards either, I'm afraid.
Does anyone know how Ed Greenwood, R.A Salvatore, Jeff Grubb and the various other authors of the franchise define the game world's concept of "justice"? This may help to narrow down its implemented meaning quite a bit.
The principle of justice is therefore reasonably straightforward, but the (considerable!) philosophical difficulties lie in defining wrongs, in evaluating (non-monetary) harms and gains, and in assessing equivalent prices to be exacted.
It's a beginner's error to suppose that justice derives from law; at best, it's the other way around. Law is an organised society's attempt to enact justice on a collective basis, but law is inevitably imperfect and sometimes (especially when filtered through fallible bureaucracies) bears very little relation to actual justice.
Since the Forgotten Realms are a very different environment from RL, justice is applied differently. The same meaning of the word applies, but the wrongs are different, the evaluations of harms are different, the scales of equivalence for punishment are different, and the societal mechanisms are different, so it's very difficult to compare to RL justice.
In particular, most enactment of justice in FR is by what (in RL) we'd call vigilantism (but that's treated as good in FR), and the punishment judged appropriate for almost every harm is death (although that's not quite such a big deal in a world where resurrection is available). How wrongs are defined and how harms are evaluated is left pretty much unexplained in-game, although perhaps (IDK) other lore of the FR addresses this issue to some extent.
It is true that a complete theory of justice would have to take a position on punishment, but it could easily come out against retribution. Classical utilitarianism is neutral on the question, "should the guilty be punished?" They would ask instead, "in the situation, will such punishment increase general utility?", that is, will it increase happiness and minimize pain for the largest number of people? Further, they would generally ask, wouldn't it be better if we focus on rehabilitation, rather than retribution? After all, if we can turn a criminal into a productive member of society, then everybody benefits ( including the criminal). And, infamously, they would say that we sould punish the innocent if such leads to an increase in utility ( though, most would say that punishing the innocent would never, or generally never, lead to increased utility).
But this question is not central to any theory of justice. Rather, a theory of justice more generally asks, who should get what, and why? Do we have natural rights (e.g. the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"); how much of a distance between the various sectors of society should we tolerate; when it is permissible to go to war; what makes an authority or law a legitimate authority or law, etc.
Let's give a more concrete example. Say you discover that your family benefited from the slave trade way back when. Say they owned a slave that happened to be a very skilled silversmith, and they made a fortune selling this slaves wares. And let's say further that you have found a decedent of one of that slave and they are living in squalor. Do you have any responsibility to them? You are not guilty of hurting them directly, so that's off the table. Would it matter if this person's current situation could be traced back to that time of slavery? Would it matter if you or your family has benefited from past injustice? Would it matter, in terms of who owed who what, if slavery was codified in law or implicitly accepted by the authorities at the time? Even if you owe them nothing, a ( complete) theory of justice would articulate why you owe them nothing...
The answer to the question is dual, for there are indeed two answer.
The first is the commonsense anwer, that the meaning of justice varies with the time and place. Which is true, and therefore the first amswer, if you define justice as the popular vote.
However, this view is deeply flawed, since it does not account for the SENSE of justice. For instance, a society might view the stoning of a raped girl as justice, since she had extramaritial sexual intercourse which goes against that cultures view of right and wrong. However, the sense of the average Joe is that this is contrary to the ruling in fact a deep injustice. Even arbiders have this sinking gut feeling something went wrong, that something is rotten, perverted. The judges will jump at any excuse to avoid passing the sentence their society have deemed just: she was underage and cannot be held responsible, the law has technically not beem ratified by the proper instance, she is pregnant and the fetus is innocent of her crime and so on and so forth. This innate voice of justice is weak however, and can easily be overpowered or silenced by the antagonist. We are the most blind to our own failures of innate justice, thus, it is easier to read the innate justice in the reactions of a third part not socially vested in the rotten, perverted justice the own society contains; endless thumping on the chest "We are NOT that society, we are of a higher moral fiber!' Taken out of the enforcers of the own cultures sense of justice eventually reveal what the innate justice is; the churchs power was broken, we then shed the mental shackles of the church and we slowly but surely, inevitably, drifted toward the innate justice, and find no fault with the raped girl. However, due to the need for law or at least order, there is no nor can there be any truly free society in this sense. There will always be a king of the hill, and depending on the king and on the hill, new rotten, perverted views on justice will prevail, and we are as blind to our own flaws as are the judges who sentenced a raped girl to death by stoning. This is not to say one society cannot have less and / or less severe flaws than another - there is indeed a grayscale - but it is to say the written law is always imperfect.
In order to fully understand this complex issue, one need to understand three concepts: 1) the concept of the collective unconsciousness, 2) the concept of the antagonist and 3) the concept of the struggle.
The collective uncosciousness is the end sum of species specific instincts and phylogenitic memories mixed with the logical conclusion of several dilemmas and the collective experience, among other factors. It is the origin of the innate sense of justice.
The antagonist is rationality and logic in the hands of a thinker with dishonest intent. To better understand this concept, consider the following joke; "Women equals time and money. Time is money, thus women equals money^2. Money is the root of all evil, thus, women are evil." It is a witty joke, and it perfectly illustrates the antagonist. Using rationality and logic, most any thing can be "proven" and given the relative rhetoric skill of the thinker utilizing the antagonist, a great deal of many minds can be persuaded.
Thus, combining concept 1 and 2, we are forced to accept the conflicting conclusion that an outcome can be considered just in any sense of the word, we simply cannot argue against that a certain course is just, we have no argument of value against this particular course - yet, we feel with every fiber of every being that the outcome is unjust. This is the eternal struggle between moral justice and divine justice, and it takes great courage to admit that the divine justice is more true. Especially since we can easily delude ourself into believing the moral justice IS divine (even when it is not. They can coincide, and do so often.) (You need a VERY high wisdom score to determine whether your divine justice truly is so, or if are deluding yourself.)
This conflict is not made easier by the struggle. To understand the struggle think of this example. A fox hunts a rabbit. Is it not injustice if the fox starves? Is it not injustice if the rabbit dies? Thus, is it more just if the rabbit is caught, or if the rabbit escapes? The answer is VERY hard to swallow; BOTH are justice, and BOTH are injustice! So, how would a third party who could influence the outcome, say by casting a blindness spell on the fox, ensuring it escapes, or casting a slow spell on the rabbit, ensuring it is caught? How are you expected to act on the information that BOTH actions are just? Or is passivity just? The answer to the latter is, no, passivity is not just. Consider another example; two suitors are equally in love with the same girl, and that girl loves both suitors equally. Neither party in this triangle drama is content with 'a household of three'. Passivity leads to both suitors growing frustrated and abandon the girl, the end result is that none finds love, when two could have found love. Perhaps tossing a coin is the most just action? A choice is necessary, chosing is justice, but justice cannot say which choice is most just. Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand why the third party is willing to listen to the voice of the antagonist.
Even so, the only true justice is divine justice.
If I am wrong and justice does exist, just there is no criteria for people to objectively decide what it is, then at least it's equivalent to not existing. If there is a sound that no one (even non-human observers) can hear it makes no difference whether that sound exists or not.
I will be convinced that justice exists only if it can be explained in other manner than "people believe that [insert something here] is justice", because perhaps people are just delusional in believing so.
JustRetribution(Sinner) = HarmDone({Circumstances, Intentions}) - RestitutionAchieved(Sinner, {Society});
Justice({Circumstances}) = Equiv(RetributionImposed({Circumstances}, Sinner), JustRetribution(Sinner).
However, as I already noted, the philosophical problems are intractable and we can't reduce them to precise formulae in this way. Nevertheless, the attempt to struggle towards such a solution case by case, both philosophically and in practical action, constitutes the "search for justice", which is a worthwhile attempt to maximise quality of life for the generality of people, even though (obviously) we never fully achieve it ... or a lot of the time, not even remotely achieve it.
I believe there could be something immeasurable.
I don't believe there could be a state of balance between two or more immeasurable things.
And the reason that we never achieve it is because we're pursuing an imitation of something not existing. There isn't even a glimpse of clue that it exists.
For instance, what is your stance on necrophilia?
On cannibalism?
Yes, yes, some people do not object to one or both, but others yet are born with a tail or six fingers. One mutant does not disprove the existance of a universal sense of justice, which is reached through spontaneous drift when there is no strong cultural antagonism telling you otherwise.
Likewise, the existance of cannibalistic societies does not disprove divine justice - they do have a strong cultural antagonism telling you cannibalism is a-ok.
Consider a small child upon seeing a beggar and for the first time realising that man or woman might not eat well or sleep in a comfy bed. This child - again, ignoring the mutants - will suggest we do leave some food or some money for the beggar. Who told the child to do that? The collective unconsciousness did - the same collective unconsciousness that is part of forming divine justice.
Why do the UN declaration of human rights just feel so damn right as you read it for the first time, before you have truly intellectually considered the validity of each point?
Why are you rooting for Luke Skywalker and not Darth Vader?
Realize, that we often first form opionons and then later attempt to justify them intellectually, and realize that the opionons you formed are very similar to those of your neighboor - if we look at the broad spectrum. We will of course have different opionons on whether tax A should be 20 or 30%, but we will not have different opionons on whether unprovoked murder should be legalized. Divine justice exists. Suck it up and deal.
And what good does a gesture like that do it in these grand scale of things? Small ammount of food won't help that beggar. He will still be hungry tomorrow. All you have given him is false sense of hope. And now what about other beggers? Why help this one instead of them? Is he more worthy than the hundreds of other poor sods in the same situation? Are you going to be giving food to them as well?
There are some, however, that by nature do not possess an inner divine voice, such as sociopaths. This is what I meant; the existance of such individuals do not disprove divine justice, it only proves some are deaf to it.