Ambiguities of justice in the works of Friedrich Dürrenmatt

The Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) is famous, at least in German-speaking countries, for his comic plays and crime novels. Virtually all of his works are political. By applying a wide range of humorous instruments, from dark and grotesque satire to light-hearted slapstick, Dürrenmatt aims “to trick the audience into thinking about its case, which is always a political one”. Being strongly influenced by the Cold War and its era of ideology, Dürrenmatt opposes all absolute truth claims in politics, philosophy and art. He believes in a complex and chaotic social world, and any attempt to capture it in absolute truth claims must lead to emotionalised ideology. As soon as this ideology clashes with the world’s complexity, he concludes, ideology turns into violence. Therefore, Dürrenmatt applies the opaque and ambiguous language of literature to portray political and ethical questions without clearly answering them. According to his concept of “dramaturgical thinking”, Dürrenmatt’s plots highlight his topics’ ambiguities and inner contradictions, thereby provoking critical and self-critical thought in the audience. In my paper, I will interpret two of Dürrenmatt’s most famous works to show how he portrays justice and what political theorists can learn from this account of the ambiguity of justice. In the crime novel (and movie) The Pledge, Dürrenmatt deconstructs the logical world of the classic crime novel. He tells the story of police captain Matthäi, whose unrestrained fight for order and justice fails because of a coincidence. This destroys him completely. The novel demonstrates how the radicalisation of a justice defined as order and security causes not an authoritarian excess of order but madness and chaos. At the same time, Matthäi’s mad fight for justice appears reasonable and only his inability to accept the unavoidable lack of logic and justice in the world causes his downfall. The theatrical comedy The Visit presents still more approaches to justice. It tells the story of billionaire Claire Zachanassian, who returns to the now destitute town of her youth willing to donate the sum of one billion to the inhabitants if they kill the man who once betrayed her. The townspeople reject the offer, experience how their greed takes over, and finally kill the man. While the different ideas of justice clash (traditional morality, the retaliator’s justice, entitlement etc.), the comic elements of the play make it impossible to take anyone’s side. Some positions are more wrong than others, but each one leads to another injustice, and finally, the audience must wonder whether a clear definition of justice is possible at all. Both texts aim for a maximum of moral confusion about the ambiguities of justice. This is meant to make the audience members think: about justice in general and about everyday injustices in their own lives. And it tells political theorists about the dangers of provoking new injustice when they write about justice.