520.
I spent much of my life believing that there was such a thing as justice, and in this I was not mistaken, for in so far as God has chosen to reveal it to us there is such a thing. But I did not take it in this way, and that is where I was wrong, for I thought that our justice was essentially just, and that I had the means to understand and judge it, but I found myself so often making unsound judgments that I began to distrust myself and then others.
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In this particular pensée Pascal's concern is the volatility and mutability of human justice. Can human justice ever be truly just? I'm put in mind of some reflections from N.T. Wright on the elusiveness of justice. Wright observes:
We all know that some things are fair, and some are not. Children know this without studying moral philosophy. When a country signs a treaty and then breaks it, we know it matters. If people think a criminal has 'got away with' a ridiculously light sentence, the hunger for justice may lead to vigilantism...Here is the paradox: how can something we all know matters so much be so hard to attain? We can't do without justice, but enacting it on a small or a large scale is harder than we might imagine...Though we all know [justice] matters, we all find it difficult--sometimes, it seems, impossible.
Ponder our criminal justice system. Does it produce justice?
We can despair here, but my takeaway from this pensée isn't resignation but this: "I found myself so often making unsound judgments that I began to distrust myself."
I think the scariest thing about our pursuit of justice is when we lose this sort of humility, when we become dogmatic about who deserves justice and who does not, along with what consequences people deserve. We should pursue justice, but we need to distrust ourselves more.
