There are two levels to the question at hand, the first one, I believe, lies more in the realm of human dispensed justice. I would say that the punishment and of evil-doers and the exaltation of the good (generally) would be a responsibility of societal structures, governed by rules which are based on the second part of the question: the philosophical vantage point of an inherently inconsistent justice system and its ethical ramifications. I would say the very nature of humanity’s conception of justice, that is an innate subjective and limited epistemological view of good and evil, brings up issues when it comes to dispensing justice (i.e. punishing the evil and praising the good). I think then, that if our perception and use of justice, punishment, and praise are going to be inherently flawed, we ought to at the very least be consistent in our flawed standards so as to ensure judicial equity as far as we can conceivably extend it. I don’t mean to entirely echo Hobbes’ view on justice as a method of definitively controlling the human “leviathan,” as that deals more with the basis of the justice set up by the system. I’d like first to discuss the systemic function of justice and morality in society, and why there is a need for consistency.
One of the essential questions raised by the Book of Job, and a question I’m being asked in this blog, is why we should punish the evil and praise the good? Why, if we will never know in any objective sense what true morality and ethical practice is, or what proper justice should be, why should we bother at all? Fundamentally, I think that the necessity for some attempt at dispensing justice and encouraging good is an attempt at order. The one universal I will acknowledge is that humanity can accomplish nothing without order. Our minds are programmed to understand order rather than chaos. It’s in our nature to classify, identify and categorize our world to better fit our understanding. There is a likewise social functionality of the order created by having a consistent system of good and evil. Once a society has made some strides in establishing precedent for what constitutes good and evil (which is a whole other essay), enforcing the rule of law becomes essential in uphold some sense of order. How can humanity function if there is no precedent to ethical behavior or morality in any way. I make no claims about the malleability of the values to which humanity are held, however when such values are in place, they should be upheld and upheld with consistency as it provides a safeguard to societal function. It isn’t necessarily the productiveness or the societal benefit of what society deems good, although that plays a significant piece, but rather is the sense that the consistently established value of goodness, however fallible and changing it may be, is upheld. The punishment of evil and the praises of good provides a system in which society is trying its best to create a meritocracy where one clearly doesn’t exist at a universal level. The artificial meritocracy is important in its upholding of orderly, anti-entropic justice, however more important than the system itself is the basis of ethical behavior.
Another central theme of Job is acting good while there still is an inconsistent and to our understanding, arbitrary nature of reward and punishment for our actions. I think the reason for ethical behavior in spite of the entropic nature of morality that we see is beyond just participation in the societal meritocracy. I can’t say I really have the answer, per se, to the moral dilemma that has laughed in the face of philosophers and justices alike for thousands of years. However, in my limited observation, I think the human experience is a social experience. It is an experience of inclusion, cohesion and cooperation. I know that this explanation is familiar, however ethical behavior at a level of morals beyond mere societal value is indicative of a dedication to a deeper sense of human connection. Humans ought to be ethical, in my view, not necessarily because being ethical is, well ethical. We don’t know that it is, we can’t know the true nature of ethicality. We must act righteously in the face of possible whimsical castigation because it is part of the human experience. To be part of the human experience one must engage with the world around them. It is uniquely human to change the environment around them, especially at a metaphysical level. When we act ethically, we are interacting with a sort of “meta-human” network of attempts to engage with the physical, social and philosophic world. We are acting a part in the pageant of human existence as we participate in somewhat of a grand, futile, social experiment with the world around us as we incessantly poke and prod the unknown to find its true nature. We must be ethically to do this. We must be ethical in the face of almost certain failure to be human.
Not totally irrelevant to the idea of futile efforts is the act of God punishing Job. We can certainly recognize the intentionality of the act, but nothing more. We can only know that it was not by accident that Job’s health, children, crops and herds were taken from him. That is all the story gives us. If I were to take a guess, I would venture to say that the punishment was a lesson. While God seems to have a reason for punishing Job in the beginning plot, to test his faith, in the whirlwind, God reveals to Job and therefore the reader that the true intention of the punishment cannot be known and should not be known by mere mortals. We had talked in class about how Judaism in a way encourages questioning as God seems to be a willing participant in our lives enough to answer when an answer is due. The Book of Job would seem as though we may question, but the answer will always be an overpowering whirlwind who berates humanity for thinking that it may know the ways of God or that is may question them based on that knowledge. Furthermore, God insists that these questions, even if based on no assumptions at all, have no answers that humanity may know as only God can know them. The last lesson that can be extrapolated, I believe, is that life must go on after such arbitrary acts of punishment. Life technically doesn’t have to go on, one can commit suicide. However, more than likely, humans are unlikely to commit suicide and therefore must just acknowledge the fact that their lives are 100% malleable to the unforeseen and unknown will of God or any authority figure. Perhaps life is arbitrary in the absence of a divine power, but no matter the instigator, or the lack thereof, the consequences of punishment or praise must just be lived with.
