Justice

Justice should not be confused with revenge. Moral rightness determined by a balance of law, ideology/religion, ethics, rationality, fairness, and equality is integral to the concept of Justice. Whereas someone seeking revenge probably knowns their actions are illegal and is disconcerned enough about the other qualities involved to act contrary to them. Moral rightness is distinct from the concept of moral justification (in the sense of declaring one's immoral actions to be moral in comparison to another's). Revenge is also a self-involved motive, failing to consider or just ignoring the needs of others. Many societies consider compassion and mercy to be just integral to justice (they are considered weakness to the vengeful), but some societies do not. Justice is not an ideology unto itself, though it may be treated as such sometimes. Justice can many times involve benevolence, charity, generosity, and prudence. An important consideration of justice is limits to suffering when administering justice. Not just for the person sentenced to justice, but the suffering of the non-guilty caused by the justice administered to the guilty. Often the limits come from law, religion, and/or ideology. Limits always involve equality. The ancient concept of eye-for-an-eye is often interpreted as vengeful when in fact it is specifically a limit to suffering and part of justice. At that time in human history, many societies, even lawful ones, considered justice for destroying an eye (for example) to be the destruction of two eyes, or an eye and an ear, basically punishment for the eye and some other additional punishment for the wrong done which also is not to be confused with punishment and restitution for the same damages and wrong doing.