The Experience of Justice
Richard K. Sherwin
Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair in Law and Literature '14
Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University
Professor of Law, New York Law School
[email: rsherwin@nyls.edu]
The goal of this reading group is to explore how we experience justice and the ways in
which different emotions of justice constitute not only discrete publics in society, but
perhaps also society as a whole.
We begin with a simple query: what holds civil society together? Might it be that social
cohesion, at least in certain kinds of democratic, liberal societies, ultimately depends on a
shared love of justice? Or might this be love tout court, if justice is the form love takes in
politics? But what is an experience of justice? How do we recognize it when it occurs,
and what kind of meaning does it produce? In this group, we will pursue the experience
of justice the way the great American psychologist William James explored the varieties
of religious experience: by examining the experiences themselves. Since film is above all
else a generator of emotion, we will use movies (based occasionally on great literary
works and in one instance on actual events) to explore diverse experiences of justice –
from retributive rage to redemptive love.
William James’ seminal book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, will frame our
pragmatic/phenomenological method, and Martha Nussbaum’s timely new book on
political emotions will provide our exploration’s Ariadne’s thread. It is to be hoped that
participants’ own experiences of justice will also enrich the discussion as we seek out the
most powerful emotions that animate the experience of justice, and ask what kind of
society, and what kind of self, these experiences generate and maintain?
Reading List:
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (the Gifford Lectures on
Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh University in 1901-1902)1.
Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Harvard
University Press: 2013).
[Participants are invited to suggest additional readings. Contact Prof. Sherwin at
rsherwin@nyls.edu with recommendations for the relevant session(s).]
(available online in its entirety – UVA library at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080727010425/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Ja
mVari.html [text page references are to this site])
1
1
Week 1: Introduction (on method) and the first experience: justice as rage, pity (in the
service of revenge/retribution)
James, lectures I & II (pp. 3 – 52);
Nussbaum, pp. 1 – 24.
Film: Unforgiven (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1992)2.
Week 2: Justice as dignity, righteousness (in the service of social equality)
Nussbaum, pp. 27 – 53; 115 – 124.
Film: To Kill A Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)3.
Week 3: Justice as awe, terror, respect (in the service of order)
Nussbaum, pp. 314 – 332; 339 – 351.
[Suggested: James, lectures VI & VII (pp. 125 – 162); XI – XIII (254 – 292)].
Film: Billy Budd (dir. Peter Ustinov, 1962)4.
Week 4: Justice as guilt, shame, revulsion (in the service of memory [& forgiveness?])
Nussbaum, pp. 161 – 198; 276 – 288; 312 – 313.
Film: The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012).
Week 5: Justice as compassion/empathy (in the service of political obligation)
Nussbaum, pp. 137 – 160.
Film: The Tempest (dir. Julie Taymor, 2010).
Week 6: Justice as love (in the service of redemption)
James, lectures XVIII (pp. 421 – 427) & XX;
Nussbaum, pp. 200 – 203; 378 – 397.
Film: Three Colors: Red (dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994).
(excerpts available on youtube.com)
(excerpts available on youtube.com)
4 (available in its entirety on youtube.com)
2
3
2