Eye for an Eye » (ANN)

William Ian Miller is the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He has also taught at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and the Universities of Bergen and Tel Aviv. Professor Miller holds a JD and a PhD in English, both earned at Yale. His various books, including most recently Faking It (2003), The Mystery of Courage (2000) and The Anatomy of Disgust (1997), have enjoyed critical acclaim throughout the world.

This book is a historical and philosophical mediation on paying back and buying back, that is, it is about retaliation and redemption.

Publishers Weekly

Getting even, as the biblical precept implies, is the essence of justice, according to this engaging essay. It's a simple idea, but Miller, a University of Michigan law professor (The Anatomy of Disgust), finds a world of social complexity in humanity's efforts to get the accounting right. He explores the inventive methods people have used to assign a concrete valuation to body parts (in the seventh century, King Aethelberht of Kent prescribed 10 shillings' compensation for a lost big toe), to whole human beings, to injuries and intangibles like pain and humiliation. Miller considers the fine weighing of debts and even our intrinsic value as humans (he's big on rankings and 10-best lists) to be nuanced and even poetic. Drawing on history, philosophy, linguistics and cultural anthropology, Miller pursues these themes down many byways, meandering from Hammurabi's code to cannibalism themes in The Merchant of Venice and the eternal frustration of Wile E. Coyote. He doesn't have a thesis, but he has a decided admiration for "honor cultures," where justice is structured by personal obligation, payback and revenge rather than a modern regime of abstract rights conferred by an impersonal state. Miller offers a discursive, erudite, idiosyncratic but illuminating reappraisal of our urge to settle scores. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Preface: a theory of justice?;

1. Introductory themes: images of evenness;
2. The Talion;
3. The Talionic mint: funny money;
4. The proper price of property in an eye;
5. Teaching a lesson: pain and poetic justice;
6. A pound of flesh;
7. Remember me: mnemonics, debts (of blood), and the making of a person;
8. Dismemberment and price lists;
9. Of hands, hospitality, personal space and holiness;
10. Satisfaction not guaranteed;
11. Comparing values and the ranking game;
12. Filthy lucre and holy dollars; Conclusion.