ABSTRACT
Socrates thought that, for the agent himself, doing wrong is more harmful than suffering wrong. Well, so long as it is merely a matter of ‘wrong’ done or suffered, thus a matter essentially existing in the perception of the parties, the proposition may stand…. But the objectified wrong creates a new, external causality, and we are inquiring about its moral harm to the suffering side. And we ask the question not, as Socrates did, for the single actions committed and suffered here and there, but for the constant effects on the victims of a system of justice. And there the main point is that, in a system of ruthless exploitation, those objective effects mean abject poverty with all the degradation, external and internal, which this entails. – Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility
