Justice

And is not justice the specific virtue of man?

The advantage of the stronger is what you affirm the just to be.

It was a riddling definition of justice, then, that Simonides gave after the manner of poets;

After them we will treat Justice, distinguishing its two kinds—for it has more than one sense—and showing in what way each is a mode of observing the mean.

But just as there can be no excess or deficiency in temperance and justice because the mean is in a sense an extreme, so there can be no observance of the mean nor excess nor deficiency in the corresponding vicious acts mentioned above, but however they are committed, they are wrong;

Let us now speak of Justice.

True reason, therefore, calls the sound of mind to justice, fairness, and good faith;

And so one would not rightly call even justice desirable for its own sake, but because it brings the greatest measure of pleasantness.

But if some seem to themselves sufficiently fenced and fortified against the knowledge of men, yet they dread the gods, and believe that those very anxieties by which their minds are gnawed night and day are sent upon them by the immortal gods for the sake of punishment.

"Hush," answered Odysseus, "hold your noos in peace and ask no questions, for this is the manner [ dikê] of the gods.

but the blessed gods love not such shameful doings, and respect those who do what is lawful and right [ dikê].

I should have said that you were one of those who should wash well, eat well, and lie soft at night as old men have a right [ dikê] to do;

The boys go to school and spend their time in learning justice;

Cyrus answered, that is one thing that I understand thoroughly.

My boy, how will you learn justice here, while your teachers are over there?

In another conversation with Socrates Antiphon said:

To me at least it seemed that by these sayings he kept his companions from impiety, injustice, and baseness, and that not only when they were seen by men, but even in solitude;

Indeed, Hippias!

It would also be contrary to justice, and the social compact.

We have proved, then, that crimes are to be estimated by the injury done to society.

Observe, that by justice I understand nothing more than that bond, which is necessary to keep the interest of individuals united;

Now here, now there, they raven, rob and seize, Heedless of Justice and her stern decrees, Who silently the present and the past Reviews, whose slow revenge o’ertakes at last.

In those days, therefore, justice was so venerable, and the punishment of these crimes so meritorious, that the retribution of such offenders was honored with the same position as Pallas Athene’s own prize of victory.

For a just and equitable peace I would be grateful;

O Zeus, and Justice, child of Zeus, and sun-god’s light, now will I triumph o’er my foes, kind friends;

The curse of our sons’ avenging spirit and of Justice, that calls for blood, be on thee!

For hardly with all these aids can you be led to a better way of thinking.

For we shall not find terms of peace more just than these nor more expedient for our city.

You, however, do neither the one thing nor the other, but are in the utmost confusion of mind.

We can determine the former point—that is, how much positive injustice is done under the first of these two [129] systems—because the system is in full operation;

But this view of the two systems compares only the injustice done, and the justice omitted to be done, in the individual cases adjudged, without looking beyond them.

Under the trial by jury, justice can never be done—that is, by a judgment that shall take a party’s goods, rights, or person—until that justice can be made intelligible or perceptible to the minds of all the jurors;

dyed deep in justice;

At every hour give your whole attention, as a Roman and a man, to doing what is in hand with strict and unfeigned dignity, with affection, freedom, and justice, and to making yourself free from all other impressions.

If in human life you can find anything better than justice, truth, self-control, courage — than your understanding, in a word, content with itself in the things wherein it makes you act according to right reason, and content with its lot in what is allotted to you apart from your choice — if, I say, you can see anything better than this, then turn to it with your whole soul and enjoy this best thi …

Steer your men with the rudder of justice;

But as for the royal scepter and the throne, in which Aeson son of Cretheus once sat, and dispensed straight justice for a nation of horsemen:

Great prosperity surrounds you, as you walk with justice.

Justice, the sender of the omen, will come, winning the just victory of her hands’ might.

For, if we are to take blood for blood, you surely would be the first to die, if you were to meet with justice.

Justice took hold of him, not I alone—Justice, whom you ought to have supported, if you had been in your right mind.

An appeal to Liberty is as futile as an appeal to Justice, until we have defined Liberty.

One word more about Justice.

whereas to deduce good laws from the principle of Justice is impossible.

and acquit me as righteousness and justice require you to do.

It is thus that you will best serve justice and the will of heaven.

It is very rightly laid down that in cases of murder prosecutors must take especial care to observe justice in making their charge and presenting their evidence:

They say that among them are both the two causes—the better cause, whichever that is, and the worse:

Dramatis Personae Strepsiades Phidippides Servant of Strepsiades Disciples of Socrates Socrates Chorus of Clouds Just Cause Unjust Cause Pasias Amynias Witness Chaerephon Hermes

Justice is the virtue of the soul that distributes to each according to merit.

and the virtues of the soul as a whole are justice, liberality, and greatness of soul.

The first of the forms of justice is that toward the gods, then that toward the lesser divinities, then that toward fatherland and parents, then that toward the departed;

Yet this is the uttermost limit of injustice, if we are to believe Plato at all:

For to praise virtue brilliantly in public and to spin out long discourses about her, while privately honouring pleasure before temperance and gain before justice—this, I would say, is like the actors on the stage who often come on as kings and potentates, being neither kings nor potentates, nor perhaps even free men at all.

He began his career as an advocate at the age of twenty-five, and almost immediately came to be recognized not only as a man of brilliant talents but also as a courageous upholder of justice in the face of grave political danger.

but to men he gave justice, which is far the best.

But when those who have no rights enjoy rights at your pleasure, when villainy is honored and virtue spurned, when justice and expediency are sacrificed to personal spite, then we must suppose that the universe has indeed been turned upside down.

and before you cast your votes, each juryman must reflect that he is being watched by hallowed and inexorable Justice, who, as Orpheus, that prophet of our most sacred mysteries, tells us, sits beside the throne of Zeus and oversees all the works of men.

Debarred by every right that holds good in Athens, by the decisions of three tribunals, by the registers of the archons and of the collectors of taxes, by the indictment for wrongful entry in which you yourself are the plaintiff, curbed, I might almost say, by chains of steel, you wriggle and force your way through all and imagine that by weaving excuses and trumping up false charges you can overt …

but he never robbed him of his claim to justice;

but hold fast to what you are convinced is just, and bear it in mind until you vote, so that true to your oaths you may cast your votes against the counsels of the wicked.

For on many occasions, men of Athens, the justice of the case has not been brought home to you, but a verdict has been wrested from you by the clamor, the violence and the shamelessness of the pleaders.

Therefore for all the reasons that I have urged, and above all for the honor of the god whose festival he has been convicted of profaning, punish this man by casting the vote which piety and justice alike demand.