Christopher Rush

Justice is often considered today an abstract value, an intangible ideal of society and sundry impersonal amalgamations that governments and other anonymous congregations should pursue.  For many foundational thinkers of the classical Western world, however, justice is foremost a human quality that becomes the goal of the collective after enough individuals demonstrate a capacity for such a trait.  Such an emphasis on the individual responsibility of the person, whether as a citizen or more broadly as a free human being regardless of political ties, resonates throughout the book of Proverbs, the dialogues of Plato, and the treatises of Aristotle.

As Solomon begins his collocation of proverbs, he informs us he is a son before he is a king, a member of a one-to-one personal relationship before he is a leader of an impersonal political mass: “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel” (English Standard Version, Proverbs 1:1).  The lessons he learned as a son from his father he is now passing on to his son.  After a general overview of the purpose of this communication, to “know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight” (1:2), Solomon indicates the foremost quality for a son is to “receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity” (1:3, emphasis added).  Even if the order of these benefits (or possibly goals) of instruction are not an indicator of priority, though there is no reason not to presume they are, the issue remains: these are human qualities Solomon wants his son to have.  These are the words of a father (and mother, cf. 1:8) to a son, not a ruler and consort to the heir apparent responsible for a mass of humanity.

Solomon proceeds to describe justice and other virtues not as abstract ideals but as human moral qualities, personality traits as evidence of attaining wisdom in adherence to the law of the Lord: “he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice” (2:7b-8a).  The person who receives wisdom from the Lord will “understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path” (2:9).  Justice is a byproduct of living correctly as an individual in pursuit of the wisdom of God before it is a corporate trait of a community.  They are so necessary for the proper human life rightly lived that righteousness and justice are “more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice” (21:3).  Justice, the moral human quality, is more important to God than external shows of social decorum, a lesson a boy must learn before he expects it of his subjects.

Many of Plato’s dialogues deal with justice in a variety of human endeavors, individually and corporately, though the Republic is easily the most memorable, partly for its length and also passages such as the allegory of the cave.  Somewhat ironically, despite its advocacy for justice as an individual trait, the didactic nature of Proverbs does not allow for much discussion, yet the human interaction Plato employs through his dialogues enables the conversational Socratic method of engagement to define justice as a corporate, impersonal social trait, initially.  Cephalus, the host of the gathering in the Republic, is the first to offer a definition of justice, summarized by Socrates as “to speak the truth and pay your debts” (sec. 330).  The moral quality remains in Cephalus’ definition, though moral in terms of trustworthy social discourse and fulfillment of social obligations.  This does not satisfy either Thrasymachus or Socrates, and the Republic proceeds to explore justice and the ideal (or idealized) polis that embodies justice.

Thrasymachus attempts to define justice as a human quality but without the moral component altogether: “I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger” (338).  Might makes right; just acts are what the powerful declare to be just.  This is as wholly distinct a conception of justice from Solomon as one can get.  Justice is no longer an objective trait from God for the individual to embody; justice is now an effect subjectively denoted by whoever has the gaul, temerity, and muscle-power to whimsically declare a thing is just because it is beneficial or desirable (“I affirm injustice to be profitable and justice not” (348), he says).

Socrates does not allow Thrasymachus to get away with an unsubstantiated, outlandish definition, returning justice to an internal human trait, though he struggles at first to define justice beyond an effect or abstraction: “And we have admitted that justice is the excellence of the soul, and injustice the defect of the soul” (353).  After much discussion, Socrates eventually alights on a definition much more akin to Solomon’s definition, as a personal moral quality of the individual before it should be sought after by the community as an abstract value: “ … justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man … he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself” (443).  Only after the individual has achieved this inner moral quality of justice should the person “act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom” (443-44).  Justice is again an individual companion of wisdom, though Socrates’ definition is much more human-centric than Solomon’s understanding of justice as first originating from YHWH.  Still, Socrates concludes with his own eternal perspective on justice and its connection for humanity to the present and the future: “my counsel is that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil” (621).

Socrates adheres to this moral, supernatural quality of justice at the end of his life, though he discusses justice more in social terms in the Apology, victim as he is of dishonesty and injustice.  “Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all these years, if I had led a public life, supposing that like a good man I had always maintained the right and had made justice, as I ought, the first thing?  No indeed, men of Athens, neither I nor any other man.  But I have been always the same in all my actions, public as well as private” (32-33).  On his deathbed Socrates wonders if justice is too high a value to be truly embodied in mortal, fallible mankind after all, settling in a sense for Cephalus’ definition: he has always been the same person in public and in private, and he has always done right by his fellow citizens – honest and debt free, the justice of old age, yet still the individual human trait first, the corporate trait second.

Aristotle, as is his wont, disagrees with Platonic and Solomonic justice, agreeing more with the contemporary conception of it as a social ideal than a personal moral quality, though that is not surprising given Aristotle’s commitment to the wellbeing of the polis.  Still, even in his distinctions Aristotle acknowledges in Nicomachean Ethics the existence of justice as an internal human trait: “We see that all men mean by justice that kind of state of character which makes people disposed to do what is just and makes them act justly and wish for what is just; and similarly by injustice that state which makes them act unjustly and wish for what is unjust” (1129a.5-10).  Far removed from Solomon’s understanding of justice as a gift from YHWH, now justice is almost an impersonal circular force seeking its own quality.  Aristotle furthers that distance by exploring justice as a distinct virtue: “What the difference is between virtue and justice in this sense is plain from what we have said; they are the same but their essence is not the same; what, as a relation to one’s neighbor, is justice is, as a certain kind of state without qualification, virtue” (1130a.10-14).  Justice is still a moral quality, and somehow connected to virtue (“Justice in this sense [of establishing community], then is not part of virtue but virtue entire” (1130a.9), though it is not as personal a trait in Aristotlian philosophy, at least at first.

But Aristotle then does something unexpected with justice: he makes it a kind of mutual prerequisite with friendship, perhaps the most important social bond outside of filial love: “when men are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality” (1155a.27-29).  Justice, the pan-virtuous moral trait of society, enables the existence of friendship among equals, who then, driven by their mutual affection and camaraderie, no longer require the impersonal force of justice.  If they only have cold justice, the human trait of friendship is necessary to make that justice worthwhile, which then rekindles the connection of friendship and justice.  “For in every community there is thought to be some form of justice, and friendship too …. And the extent of their association is the extent of their friendship, as it is to the extent to which justice exists between them” (1159b.25, 29-30).  Justice and friendship create for each other a symbiotic relationship, enabling equals to enjoy both justice and friendship.  And this mutuality is a human endeavor before it is a social endeavor: though there can be no friendship between unequals, such as between a slave and a master, “[b]ut qua man one can; for there seems to be some justice between any man and any other who can share in a system of law or be a party to an agreement; therefore there can also be friendship with him in so far as he is a man” (1161b.7-9).  This human endeavor of friendship, enabled by justice, reciprocally allows for social justice: “Therefore while in tyrannies friendship and justice hardly exist, in democracies they exist more fully; for where the citizens are equal they have much in common” (1161b.9-10).

Before it is a social, governmental, political virtue, justice is a human quality.  Justice drives personal, intimate relations between father and son, teacher and student, friend and friend, before it drives still personal but less intimate relations among rulers and subjects, citizens and citizens.  When justice is sought by individuals as a desired human trait, righteousness, equity, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and friendship thrive and find their proper place in the human heart, and then, and only then, can they find their proper place in human society.

References

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. In The Works of Aristotle. Vol. 2. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler and Philip W. Goetz. Translated by W. D. Ross. Second Edition. Vol. 8. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles. 2016.

Plato. The Dialogues of Plato; The Seventh Letter. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler and Philip W. Goetz. Translated by Benjamin Jowett and J. Harward. Second Edition. Vol. 6. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990.