Great IdeasLiving together
Justice and fairness
Giving each person what is due to them, in a city and in a soul.
The question
What is justice? Is it built into nature, or is it something people agree on?
- 1 Aeschylus 458 BC
- 2 Thucydides 416 BC
- 3 Plato 375 BC
- 4 Aristotle 340 BC
- 5 Augustine of Hippo AD 420
- 6 Thomas Aquinas 1270
- 7 Thomas Hobbes 1651
- 8 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762
- 9 John Stuart Mill 1863
- Rooted in nature, reason or God
- Made by agreement or by power
- Partly both
Uncolored stops don't sit neatly on either side.
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
458 BC (the Oresteia); seven plays survive
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, and his other plays
Aeschylus tells how one killing in the house of Atreus leads to another, each one called justice by the person who strikes. At the end the goddess Athena sets up a court of citizens to judge Orestes. The cycle of revenge gives way to a public trial, and the Furies are given an honored place in the city instead of hunting the guilty on their own.
“Hear now my ordinance, people of Attica, as you judge the first trial for bloodshed.”
the debate at Melos, 416 BC
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Made by agreement or by power
In Thucydides' history, Athenian envoys tell the small island of Melos to surrender. They say talk of right only matters between equals in power; otherwise the strong take what they can. Thucydides reports the argument without cheering for it, and his readers have argued ever since about what he thought of it.
“since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
c. 375 BC
Plato, The Republic, Books I–V
Rooted in nature, reason or God
In the Republic, Thrasymachus claims justice is just a name for whatever helps the people in charge, and Glaucon asks whether anyone would stay just if a magic ring made them invisible. Socrates answers by picturing a city and a soul in good order. Justice, he argues, is each part doing its own work, with reason in charge, and it is a kind of health that makes the just person better off.
“I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.”
c. 340–322 BC
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V
Partly both
Aristotle answers Plato with careful distinctions. Fair sharing gives each person a share that fits what they bring, and fair correcting restores the balance when someone has been wronged. He also says that some of what is just in a city holds by nature everywhere, while some is fixed by local law and could have been settled another way.
AD 413–426
Augustine of Hippo, The City of God
Rooted in nature, reason or God
Augustine writes after Rome has been sacked. Without justice, he says, a kingdom is no better than a gang of robbers on a large scale. For him, full justice means giving God what is due to God, and he holds that every earthly city falls short of it.
“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?”
1265–1274
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part
Rooted in nature, reason or God
Thomas Aquinas teaches that a natural law, known by reason, stands behind the laws of cities. Good human laws apply it to local needs. A command that goes against it, he argues, is not truly a law but a corruption of law.
1651
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Made by agreement or by power
Hobbes disagrees sharply with the older view. In a state of nature, with no government, he says nothing can be called unjust, because there are no agreements yet and no one to enforce them. Justice begins when people make covenants and set up a sovereign strong enough to make everyone keep them.
1762
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Made by agreement or by power
Rousseau also starts from an agreement, but a different one. A rightful order, he argues, comes from a social contract in which free and equal people bind themselves to the general will, the will of the whole people for the common good. Force alone can never make a right.
1861–1863
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapter V
Mill admits that justice feels different from ordinary usefulness: it feels stern and binding. He argues that this feeling protects the most important parts of the general good, such as security and the rights that society should defend for each person. So for Mill justice rests on the happiness of all, not on a separate law of nature.
Go to the rung: Mill: Utilitarianism and Representative Government
For young readers
Justice is about being fair. If three friends share a pizza, it is fair for each to get the same number of slices. If one friend paid for most of it, some people think that friend should get a little more. Both ideas are about fairness, and the great books argue about which one fits when.
Justice is also about fixing a wrong. If you break your brother's toy, being fair means saying sorry and helping to fix it or replace it. Long ago, in a famous Greek play, people learned to settle wrongs in a court with a fair trial, instead of getting even on their own.
Talk about it
- Is something fair because the rules say so, or do we make rules because some things are already fair?
- Glaucon asks what you would do with a ring that made you invisible. What would you do, and why?
- When is it fair to give everyone the same, and when is it fair to give more to some people?
- Why might a trial be better than getting even?
- Can a law ever be unfair? How would you tell?
Where else on the site
- What Law Is
- Trial Courts and Appellate Courts
- Limited Government and the Rule of Law
- Natural Rights and the Social Contract
- Why We Have Government
- Judging Fairly
Every rung tagged with this idea:
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.