The Gap Between Fairness and Law

This chapter explores the gap between the abstract ideal of fairness and the bodily materiality of retribution. The aim is to suggest how embodied versions of current cognitive science afford a helpful way of talking about the breach between abstractions, or thoughts of fairness, on one hand, and the judgments and punishments produced by actual legal systems on the other. It turns out to be remarkably easy for creatures with brains like ours to leap over the gap, to close the rift produced by evolved brain physiology between abstractions and their physical manifestations. The cognitive theory engaged here is the hypothesis that the grounds of morality and social decision-making—both the feeling of fairness and the institutionalized court systems—can be understood as produced by the structures and processes of human brains in their bodies. My inquiry rests on the co-occurrence of the highly popular revenge tragedies of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century (such as Hamlet) and the conflicts and arguments over the authority of the Chancery, or Equity Courts in London. Was equity, as John Selden later called it, “a roguish thing” that simply reflected the chancellor’s own feelings, in which case the judgments of the court were “above the law,” or was it, as Saint German claimed, grounded in sinderesis, the human mind’s natural understanding of right? The performances of revenge on stage, it is hypothesized, may have helped their audiences understand the direction of change that was needed.

The Study of Revenge Tragedies and Their Roots

Tragedy has its roots in man’s life. Tragedies appeared all around the world in the stories of all nations. In western drama, it is written that tragedy first appeared in the literature of ancient Greek drama and later in Roman drama. This literary genre later moved into the sixteenth century and Elizabethan period that was called the golden age of drama. In this period, we can clearly see that this literary genre is divided into different kinds. This genre is later moved into seventeenth century. The writer of the article has benefited from a historical approach to study tragedy, tragedy writers and its different kinds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. The author has also presented the chief features and characteristics of tragedies. The novelty of the article is the study of Spanish tragedy and its influences on revenge tragedies written by Shakespeare and other tragedy writers. Throughout the article, the author has also included some of the most important dramatists and tragedy writers of these periods including Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, John Marston, George Chapman, Tourneur and John Webster.