After Auschwitz, absolute justice has no meaning; the Nuremberg trials did not bring a single murdered child back to life. We do not expect absolute … - Shulamith Hareven

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After Auschwitz, absolute justice has no meaning; the Nuremberg trials did not bring a single murdered child back to life. We do not expect absolute justice today, perhaps not an absolute anything. The preferred term now is "beneficial justice," one that would do most reasonable good to all parties concerned. Conflict management has taught us that presenting each other with lists of grievances will not bring about any justice at all, and that it is the feasible, rather than the absolute, to which we should aspire. The astute listener will of course understand that the moment we use terms like "cooperation" and "conflict management" we have given up the old or neo-Marxist vocabulary of power struggle as the sole human motivation. Thus do linguistic changes, new semantic habits, usher in a different era.