Justice and Discourse, Part II

Both extremes are to be completely avoided; the first of accepting everything one reads – this is the state of being an easy prey to eloquence and dazzling and elaborate presentations of those who pretend to know or actually are recognized as world-renowned experts in a given field. The second is to criticize continually and instinctively everything that contradicts one’s own views or ways of phrasing or thinking about certain concepts than what one already has narrowly defined for one’s own self. Rejecting everything new is wisdom for turtles. Women and men of genus homo and species sapien are rich, confident and capable of considering something new, grasping its fundamentals and novelty, and disseminating and applying  new insights and knowledge to various tasks of human endeavor. The extremes mentioned above are in connection with Justice as it exists in application to the endeavor known as discourse – the present undertaking of the current forum you, the reader and we, the contributors, are taking part in. Neither of these extremes is in accordance with the principles of justice as accepted in our discourse.

We wish to demonstrate how subtle and profound the discussion of justice can be and how much there is to learn from theories such as the ones elaborated by the contributors and commentators. We also hope to demonstrate how numerous truths are lost when one insists on keeping references to God and Revelation out of the discussion of justice. Our avowed aim in discourse is to be concerned with the advancement of humankind towards a novel world civilization.  However important an open and sincere consultative process is here, regarding justice and other foundational concepts of our dialogue, such a discourse will not produce answers to the worlds problems if its is limited to material reality and consideration of within materialistic presuppositions and reductions. We wish to avoid the anathematic posture of  Western secular thought towards transcendental, evolutionary, and teleological interpretations of reality, drawing upon aspects of human consciousness capable of experiencing and knowing spiritual reality. For the vast majority of the world’s inhabitants it is consciously, culturally and empirically self-evident that human nature and human civilization with its rituals and kindness, schooling and organization, indeed all of reality, including the beauty of the natural world and the mystery of evolutionary origin – for these reasons and for most of the worlds (unspoken for) population: reality is fundamentally spiritual.  If discourse is to be relevant to the needs of humanity in this day, it must consider the concept of the spiritual reality of humankind as the pivot of its interactions, consultations, and deliberations. We aim as part of this discourse to demonstrate how reflecting on the Writings and ideas of certain powerful social thinkers as well as guided or Revealed truth and spiritual meditations will teach us to avoid the two extremes mentioned in the previous paragraph.