The Ontological Fragility of Retributive Justice

The provided text, "The Ontological Fragility of Retributive Justice," argues that disagreements over concepts like justice and retribution are not technical but ontological, meaning they stem from fundamentally different background assumptions rather than simple miscommunication. The author employs the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis (LIH) to explain how clarifying terms such as choice, agency, responsibility, and desert often fractures their meaning instead of leading to consensus, as these terms rely on incompatible, assumed moral universes. To illustrate this fragility, the text uses a set of five Magic: The Gathering-themed cards representing these concepts, showing that retributive justice is a structure that collapses if its supporting metaphysical assumptions (like contra-causal choice) are removed. Ultimately, the essay concludes that retribution persists not because it is inevitable, but because its core premises are left unexamined, operating as non sequiturs when viewed from an alternative, system-based ontology.👉 https://philosophics.blog/2025/12/18/justice-as-a-house-of-cards/