Eye for an eye and the world goes blind4/20/2023 You might think that this kind of brutal retributive justice ended with the rise of Christianity. These examples, however, were fairly ad hoc and do not appear to have made their way into official legal codes. In another, Nero uses gouging to manufacture deformity in the world around him, and in another a contrite Hadrian attempts to compensate a slave after removing his eye with a writing implement for a minor offense. In one story from the historian Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Octavius, better known as the Emperor Augustus, gouges out the eyes of a would-be assassin. In an article on dismemberment, renowned classicist Glenn Most has shown that gouging seems to have been a feature peculiar to the Roman period, or at least of literature produced in the Roman period. The Romans do appear to have had a particular fascination with the removal of eyes. Monetary compensation was also an option: the Twelve Tables of Roman Law mentions that "if anyone has broken another's limb there shall be retaliation in kind unless he compounds for compensation with him." Under this philosophy, for example, arsonists in ancient Rome were frequently burned alive. Among many other prescriptions, the code stipulates that hand amputation should be performed with a bronze knife if a son strikes his father or if a physician performs either an operation that results in the death of the patient or an eye surgery that destroys the eye.įor the ancient Romans, the principle of lex talionis - the law of retaliation - was foundational to the Roman understanding of crime and commensurate punishment. But the earliest example of bodily mutilation as punishment comes from the Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian law code of ancient Mesopotamia that dates back to the 18 th century BCE. Even the least attentive Sunday school student is familiar with the saying “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Exod. The most famous example, from which the expression “eye-for-an-eye” comes, is found in the ancient Israelite laws encoded in the Bible. But when it comes to lesser crimes, the idea of losing a bodily member, including one’s eyes, gets more complicated. Execution for murder has most commonly been justified on the grounds that people who take life deserve to lose their own. Public commentators on the incident have condemned the punishment, describing the practice as " medieval." What critics often forget, however, is how many religious leaders throughout history have endorsed blinding as a form punishment - and for how long these punishments have been carried out.Īt one time or another, nearly every society has practiced capital punishment. In this case it seems that the victim and her family may have settled for partial retribution, as the accused woman was sentenced to lose vision in "only" one eye. Victims and the families of victims have the power to commute the sentences, and often they accept compensation (colloquially known as "blood money") in the place of corporal or capital punishment. The actual implementation of this punishment in countries where Sharia law is the law of the land is relatively rare. The head of provincial judiciary, Majid Karami, was quoted by the Tasnim News Agency as saying: “The sentence to blindness in one eye, payment of blood money (compensation), and seven years imprisonment have been confirmed by the highest court.” Now, under the Sharia legal principle of qisas (retaliation in kind), the condemned will receive the same treatment as her victim. Two years earlier, the unnamed woman had thrown acid in the face of young woman named Sima in the city of Dehdasht, roughly 500 miles south of Tehran. Iran’s supreme court ruled last week that a woman who blinded another in an acid attack would receive a literal eye-for-an-eye punishment for the crime. Resentment becomes our own liability: violence begets violence and vengeance begets vengeance. That’s when, before making any decision, we should ask ourselves: when is rancor or vengeance the answer? What if the situation were reversed? When other people disappoint or betray us, we feel a great emptiness that we feel obliged to repair. In any of these cases, it would be beneficial to keep in mind the phrase that started all of this “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Rancor and vengeance only have one direction We can make a mistake with ourselves, with others or it’s others who make a mistake with us. We’re especially aware of them when the people we’re referring to are family members, friends or our own partner. It’s complicated to maintain and conserve our relationships. Consequently, we often fall into situations in which we’re not up to the circumstances or we fail completely. Making a mistake, as we’ve said, is totally human. It might not be your mistake, but it could be
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |