ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a historical inquiry into the origins, in the Western tradition, of the close connection between equitable judgment – judgment that attends to the particulars – and mercy, defined by Seneca as "the inclination of the mind toward leniency in exacting punishment. It deals with a puzzle in ancient Greek thought about law and justice. Solving this puzzle requires understanding some features of the archaic idea of justice that turn out to be highly pertinent to Andrea Dworkin's project. This sort of justice is soon criticized, with appeal both to equity and to mercy. Equity, like the sympathetic spectatorship of the tragic audience, accepts Oedipus' plea that the ignorant and nonvoluntary nature of his act be duly acknowledged; it acknowledges, too, the terrible dilemmas faced by characters such as Agamemnon, Antigone, and Creon, the terrible badness of all their options.
