Eye for an eye / William Ian Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, William Ian, 1946- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lex talionis--History.

Lex talionis.

Law, Ancient.

Customary law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 266 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book is a historical and philosophical meditation on paying back and buying back, that is, it is about retaliation and redemption. It takes the law of the talion - eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth - seriously. In its biblical formulation that law states the value of my eye in terms of your eye, the value of your teeth in terms of my teeth. Eyes and teeth become units of valuation. But the talion doesn't stop there. It seems to demand that eyes, teeth, and lives are also to provide the means of payment. Bodies and body parts, it seems, have a just claim to being not just money, but the first and precisest of money substances. In its highly original way, the book offers a theory of justice, not an airy theory though. It is about getting even in a toughminded, unsentimental, but respectful way. And finds that much of what we take to be justice, honor, and respect for persons requires, at its core, measuring and measuring up.

Contents:

Preface : a theory of justice?

1. Introductory themes : images of evenness

The scales of justice

Just about words

2. The talion

Getting even?

The compensation principle

The euphony of eyes and teeth

3. The talionic mint : funny money

Body parts and money

Paying gods in bodies and blood

Cutting up bread, cutting up the body

4. The proper price of property in an eye

Property rules and liability rules

Life is cheap?

5. Teaching a lesson : pain and poetic justice

Instruction on feeling another's pain

Deuteronomy's artful talionic lesson

Coda : mixing metaphors : paying back and paying for

6. A pound of flesh

Shearing fleece and eating (human) flesh

Have mercy

The humanizing force of vengefulness

7. Remember me : mnemonics, debts (of blood), and the making of the person

Burning in the memory

Bloody tokens and the relics of the unavenged dead

Remembering the dead and not forgetting oneself

The happy dead

Grief, guilt, and tormenting ghosts

The mnemonics of wergeld and the fragility of well-being

8. Dismemberment and price lists

Slave values

The sum of the parts

Flipping the bird

9. Of hands, hospitality, personal space, and holiness

Hospitality and Mund

Hands and reach

Wholly holy

10. Satisfaction not guaranteed

Release of pressure, or filling the void up full?

Serving up revenge : bitter or sweet

The mind of the vengeance target : regret, remorse, cluelessness

Killing him or keeping him alive for scoffing, and other fine points

11. Comparing values and the ranking game

The politics of comparing values, or what's eating the incommensuralists

The ranking game

Ranking at a Viking feast

12. Filthy lucre and holy dollars

Dirty dollars and the making of pricelessness

Buying back and the sacred

Everything for sale

Conclusion.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-257) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-15582-7

1-280-43189-X

0-511-18377-1

0-511-13770-2

0-511-20189-3

0-511-31201-6

0-511-51105-1

0-511-13553-X

OCLC:

475964895