Sigmund Freud writes in Civilization and its Discontents that “the
first requisite of civilization … is that of justice—that is, the
assurance that … no one [is left] … at the mercy of brute force.”
While every society arguably strives toward a civilization that will
promote fairness, equity and peace, it has rarely—if ever—been
achieved, because unjust suffering always enters into human
experience.  The question then becomes how a society ought to manage
and mitigate suffering in order to allow its citizens to live as
happily as they possibly can.
This course will look to the Hebrew Bible as a model text which
grapples with this precise problem of creating justice in human
society, examining how Israelites set up their ancient societies and
noting how their solutions to the problem of unjust suffering often
continue to be influential in Western society today.  We will look
at how the Hebrew Bible constructs justice within three different
spheres: law, religious ritual, and thought/belief.  While law is
the primary and intuitive medium for the formation of a just
society, the other elements, as we shall see, are necessary as well,
as law has a limited capacity to regulate human experience.
Readings will be selected from the Hebrew Bible (in translation),
and alongside these primary texts we will look at how more modern
thinkers—legal theorists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, biblical
scholars—understand the problem of justice and its biblical heritage.
Requirements: two midterm papers, oral presentation, final term
paper.