Justice and Moral Regeneration: Lessons from the Treaty of Versailles

Abstract

n the opening pages of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the hopes and promise of a new world are stillborn as it suffers steady moral degeneration in four successive ages. The golden age is defined by moral purity: law / and no compulsion then were needed; all / kept faith; the righteous way was freely willed. With the introduction of natural and human adversity in the silver age, this utopia gives way to the third age of bronze, prone / to cruelty, more quick to use fierce arms, and culminates in the final age of iron, when earth becomes a vast cabal of crime. Consumed by righteous anger over this decline, Jove, the divine ruler, is able to effect moral renewal only by decreeing the destruction of humanity through a global flood.2 From Ovid's tale to the contemporary world, moral regeneration is a persistent theme in human affairs. Jove's response mirrors a common human reaction to moral violation: outrage accompanied by the drive to recreate a morally coherent world. In the aftermath of violent domestic and international conflicts, aspirations for justice and reconciliation dominate the political agenda. Victims and their loved ones typically seek ways to right the wrongs that they have suffered. Political leaders must respond to this demand at the same time that they seek to effect peaceful political transition and social reconciliation. The path to regeneration seems fraught with moral difficulty, partly due to a conflictual model of the relationship between justice and reconciliation. On the one hand, demands for justice typically involve a backward-looking process of moral accounting that assigns responsibility for wrongdoing, which is the basis of determining punishments for perpetrators and reparations to victims. The process of reconciliation, on the other hand, is a forward-looking endeavor aimed