Prison: Enemy of Justice

Modern society has a problem. The problem goes to the very core of society, the preservation and promotion of justice. At the center of this problem lies a prison system called to be a promoter of justice, but can only be its destroyer.
Society exists because it provides for the best possible life for individuals within it. Individuals join society, societies coalesce, or societies exist naturally because they provide a place for each individual. They enable the relationships and discourse, and opportunities that make for a fully human life.
 
Society emerges from relations. The organic or mechanical relations between individuals, groups, and institutions constitute a society. The relations of society and the contributions of each member to the society create rules of engagement for the society. Call it the social order. Order has more than its authoritarian meaning. It has biological meaning. An order naturally collects of smaller units (families) in the animal kingdom in natural, meaningful relationship.
 
Birthed in the relational nature of society, social order in turn creates authority. Social relation necessarily gives proper authority to the elements involved in the relation. Social order comprises the rules that govern behavior within society for each individual to live a fulfilled life. The proper social order best directs each individual to the best life, a fully human life in the society. Each elemental part of society has the duty to support the social order and the basic authority to defend it. Various elements, individuals and institutions, have various authority proper to themselves determined by the social order.

A Critical Survey of the Modern State, Part 3

As the modern state became the reality of modern politics, Hobbes' theory of the naturally sovereign state was enacted in different forms. Many thinkers after Hobbes held that reason also determined natural rights for each man beyond just self-preservation. States developed in combinations and balances of sovereignty and rights. For thinkers, this was the the struggle of nature and reason. The 18th century regime changes in England, France, and the United States show different combinations, birthed in differing conceptions of sovereignty and rights within the modern state. Most importantly, they demonstrate that the modern state reduces the players in the quest for power to two: the state and the individual.

Montesquieu studied closely the development of the British regime in the 18th century. He found it to be the best expression of a free, modern state. Montesquieu thinks that republics best preserve freedom but must adapt to the modern world (or the modern state idea). The state, for Montesquieu, must respect the individual's rights. Montesquieu sees the laws and constitution as the best expression of reason for the state. Laws are not reasonable in themselves as acts of a state. Instead, the laws must preserve the freedom of the individual within them as reason dictates they best can (128). Reason, for Montesquieu, does not belong exclusively to the state, but the state should use it.

In order for republics to survive in modern statehood they must confederate to provide external strength in addition to free institutions (126). Montesquieu follows the natural right theory of government. In external relations, rights belong to the state in terms of natural desire for self-preservation (133). Just war is rooted in natural right and defense of the interest of the state itself. Enlightenment, the development of reason, leads to peace as states respect rights internally and externally. Thus, conquering states owe a debt to human nature (137). States cannot claim an exclusive rationality to overrun the rights of other states or people.

Anna Karenina: The Need for Reality

*Note: This is my first book review on this blog. My reviews may contain minor spoilers, but I will try to refrain from sharing plot elements except the bare minimum necessary to make the review meaningful. I hope you will find that to be the case. Read on.

“There is less charm in life when one thinks of death, but there is more peace.”

-- Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina 

It all began the day Anna Karenina stepped of the train and the rail worker stepped in front of it. The sight of the rail worker’s death causes quite the disruption in Anna’s seemingly peaceful life. The beautiful Anna is the dutiful, if not loving, wife of the respected, but much older Karenin, a public official. Anna has resigned herself to this life, but she has not truly devoted herself to it. Anna imagines she has come to Moscow on a goodwill mission to reconcile her sister-in-law, Dolly, to Anna’s unfaithful brother, Stiva. After seeing the untimely and disturbing death of the rail worker at the Moscow station, Anna perceives a bad omen, but she cannot understand it. Her peaceful life is about to be run over by a train of its own, a train of her own making. 

Tolstoy’s study and critique of hypocrisy in his contemporary Russian society play a vital role in the novel. Anna’s undulating path begins with her own hypocritical choice to accept the advances of Count Alexei Vronsky even as she reconciles her brother to his wife after his own latest affair. Anna hypocritically refuses to halt Vronsky’s advances, allowing his attention to come between her and Karenin. She begins to compare him unfavorably to Vronsky, not Vronsky as he is, but Vronsky as she has come to create him.