by Tom Koecke

Created on: November 18, 2008   Last Updated: May 10, 2010

"Nothing is to be preferred before justice." - Socrates

Justice is a concept that is difficult to consider objectively, and far more difficult to apply objectively. We are hindered by our perceptions and prejudices to consider justice applying to those we hate, disregard, or consider unworthy. It is because of our subjective natures that we often confuse justice with revenge, apathy, or neglect. If we accept simple platitudes such as justice is punishment for breaking the law, reward for services performed, or receiving only what is due each person, then we must also accept that justice may have equally simplistic meanings to others who hate, disregard, or consider us unworthy.

If that is the case, then there is no true concept of justice. Revenges such as the Holocaust and flying airplanes into buildings were both merely acts of justice from other subjective viewpoints despite being injustices from our subjective viewpoints. It is not justice that people throughout the world may be enslaved simply because we do not care. There is no justice in starving those who cannot work, nor any more justice in feeding those who cannot work but starving those who cannot find jobs. Even when we consider those who can work, but will not find jobs, there is no justice in starving them. Each of these scenarios are only revenge, apathy, or neglect.

To understand what Socrates said of justice, it helps to know that he placed more emphasis on purifying his soul than he did on earning a living. He was a man of conscience who defied authority by teaching others to consider righteousness over lawfulness, but who also drank his punishment of hemlock despite having the means to escape his sentence. His protege', Plato, described individual justice as a "human virtue that makes man self consistent and good," and social justice as a "consciousness that makes society internally harmonious and good." This description stood in contrast to prevailing thoughts on justice that lacked objectivity allowing subjectively for the aforementioned revenge, apathy, and neglect. Plato's thoughts are the closest we can come to an explanation of what Socrates meant since the master did not record his thoughts.

If we are to learn from the greatest minds, then we must consider the concept of justice as pertaining to our souls and not to our immediate circumstances or self-interests. It does not lie in an eye for an eye, for that, as Ghandi noted, "makes the whole world blind." Justice is better described as loving your neighbor as you love yourself, praying for your enemies, and forgiving your persecutors. If we each did that, then, in turn, our neighbors will love us, our enemies will pray for us, and we will be forgiven by those who regard us as persecutors.

Justice is a high principle, not a nature inherent in humans. If we are to be just people, then we must abandon our natures for the principle of justice consistently and for good so that society can be internally harmonious for good. Only then will we as individuals and society have preferred nothing over justice.

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