ABSTRACT
If Hegel is right about the ‘slaughter bench’ of history, what does this mean for our understanding of justice for acts of wrongdoing, even of the worst kind? On his description, humankind’s destiny is to reproduce time after time, by both the judge and the judged, the most terrible excesses. In such a situation, what can the ethical status of justice be? Can endless, systemic, acts of egregious violence be requited morally where nothing is learned and nothing in essence changes? In such a light, does justice not appear as vain repetition and false consolation, as the illusion practised by the barbaric victor over the vanquished? Writing in the 1820s, Hegel retained a redemptive optimism, suggesting that even if we regard history as the slaughter bench, ‘the question involuntarily arises – to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered’ (ibid: 21). For him a path of progress, a reason beyond the unreason, could be discerned. Two hundred years later, having experienced horrors that might have given even him pause for thought, is there any consolation through principled justice for history’s slaughter bench?
