수자원공사 웹진 물, 자연 그리고 사람

What is Justice?

As we walk down the street and see someone in distress, our bodies often move before the thought "I should help" even occurs. We instinctively step forward to protect others—sometimes even for something greater than ourselves. It may be for family, for a community, or for the voice of an unnamed other. Sometimes, our behavior is dictated by a sense that cannot be explained in light of gain or loss. It is a sense rooted deep within us—a sense of responsibility for what has already gone by, and a gesture toward a future that has yet to come.

Our sense of justice cannot be fully grasped by laws or institutions as they exist. Justice always comes from outside the established framework. Because it cannot be completely articulated in the language of the present, it remains as something that is not yet reached. And paradoxically, it is within its very absence that we feel justice most vividly. In the face of suffering or injustice, we immediately recognize what is not just. Such recognition arises from the traces of the past etched into our bodies and from the call of a future that must come, even if it is not yet realized.

In this sense, a righteous mind is sensitivity that responds not to what exists, but to what does not. It comes in the form of a dream, or a sense of guilt, or an inexplicable feeling of responsibility. We are gripped and moved by it as if telling us that something remains unfinished or as if whispering to us that something has yet to be resolved properly.

Thus, the righteous mind emerges from the gap between a call from the past and a premonition of the future. Only those who can endure this in-between gap come to harbor the resolve to preserve something. Such resolve shines not in certainty, but in hesitation and doubt. And it is precisely within such hesitation that true justice begins to grow, for justice is the act of listening to voices not yet heard.

A Question Cast Like a Ghost

Whether for individuals or societies, the past is never truly gone—it continues to live and move in the here and now. As history repeats itself, events that we thought were over or moments that we believed were forgotten inevitably return. Some voices remain alive even in silence, and some wounds—though seemingly stitched up—still linger unhealed. Justice, therefore, is not something concluded by a single event; it comes back unexpectedly as something we must face again and again. It confronts us in the language of what was left unsaid—in times that return like uninvited guests—and asks:“Are you listening? Will you respond?” Justice presents itself like a ghost between the returning past and an unforeseen future. And we must listen closely to the whisper of such ghost, for it carries the weight of deaths never fully mourned, of pain erased from history, of voices still waiting for a name.

Justice becomes possible only when we allow those ghosts to return, and when we respond to their return with a sense of ethical responsibility. The question “Are you listening? Will you respond?” is not merely a call to reflect on the past. It is a reminder that even now, in this very moment, the voices we have forgotten or excluded are still lingering among us. To attune ourselves to such silence, and to make the ethical decision to live with it—that is the foundation on which justice can take root.

An Attitude of "Not Knowing" Toward Justice

The call to eliminate something “for the sake of justice” can be a dangerous one. Ethical superiority born out of self-righteousness easily gives way to a logic of exclusion—where those who think differently are labeled as enemies. Under the noble banner of “what is right” and “a better society,” violence is too often justified, and ideologies claiming order and justice take hold. But history has shown us time and again how such pursuits have, in fact, obliterated justice itself. As Milan Kundera writes in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “Totalitarianism is not only hell, but also the dream of paradise—the age-old dream of a world where everyone lives in harmony, united by a single will and faith, without secrets from one another.”

In such a world, justice must not become a binary game of good versus evil, right versus wrong. Rather, justice becomes possible only by listening attentively with humility with an attitude of not knowing. What we need is not the force to impose what we believe is right, but the willingness to admit that we might be wrong.

A mind inclined more toward listening than asserting, more toward hesitation than conviction, opens space for reflection and allows truly hearing the pain and voices of others. Justice is not a finished state, but a process that is always incomplete. In such process, we must continue to question, to listen, and to stumble as we move forward. Justice is not about sealing the world with predictable order, but about keeping it open to questions and responses. After all, every confusion may be a possibility not yet fully understood.