The frowning balance
Semiotic insinuations on the visual rhetoric of justice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10740010 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Massimo Leone (0000-0002-8144-4337, University of Turin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 2017 |
| Issue | 216 |
| Pages | 41-62 |
| Publication date | 2017-05-24 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Semiotica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-1998 • E-ISSN: 1613-3692 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/sem-2015-0071 |
| OpenAlex | W2606974955 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 21 |
Some symbols so skillfully traverse epochs and cultures that they are depicted as almost “natural” embodiments of abstract values. The balance is one of these symbols, adopted to represent justice from ancient Egypt until the present time. Power appropriates this “natural meaning” in order to construct a rhetoric of fairness. Yet, semiotics unveils that the balance, like every symbol, is not natural at all, but underpinned by a specific ideology. From the semiotic point of view, the balance is a device that produces indexes, i. e., causal signs that visually signal an invisible property, weight. Although this translation is not automatic, but based on specific indexical circumstances (such as the type of balance, the weighing techniques, and the measuring standards that are used), the balance is paradoxically turned into a symbol of justice precisely because it is depicted as a non-semiotic device, as an instrument that cannot lie, as a machine
Aesthetics · Balance (ability) · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Indexicality · Linguistics · Natural (archaeology) · Political science · Power (physics) · Property (philosophy) · Rhetoric · Semiotics · Sociology · Symbol (formal) · African history and culture analysis · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Psychology
Choosing Balance
La métrologie, voie nouvelle de la recherche historique
Kerostasia, The Dictates of Fate, and the Will of Zeus in the Iliad
Die Geburt der Aphrodite
Jugement de l'âme, Jugement dernier
Les mesures ont aussi une histoire
Sunken Imagery in Sophocles' Oedipus
Homer
Early Images of Achilles and Memnon
Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry
Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Götter im homerischen Epos
Homeric Soundings
Ma'at
The Communication of the Emperor's Virtues
Une image à deux temps. Jugement Dernier et jugement des âmes au Moyen Age
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |