As I discussed in my last post, the Greeks have a different conception of justice. The Greeks viewed justice as everything in its right place. What I found interesting is the divide among Greeks as to what the right order is. The difference can teach us a great deal about how different groups in society thought and what the political landscape was like a few thousand years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were primarily two factions in Greek politics, oligarchs and democrats. Similar to the optimates and plebeians, they were wealth and status divisions that would then inform political views. The optimates and oligarchs were similar; they were wealthy individuals wanting to keep power and wealth to themselves. The democrats and plebeians were similar, being the common crowd who wanted more rights and more wealth. But how did these two groups view justice or the proper order of the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the democrats, justice involved a society governed by the principle that men with the same political rights and status should have equal economic advantages. The essential argument is that if everyone is equal in terms of human qualities, then there is no logical reason that they should be different economically. So the goal of the democrat is to achieve economic equality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The oligarchs had a different conception of justice. Oligarchs believed in a fundamentally incompatible principle: that those who are economically superior ought also to be superior in all other areas. Many philosophers viewed this as the natural order. Nature would allot superior wealth or power to those with superior abilities. Essentially, those who were better would naturally attain better results. So the goal for oligarchs was to concentrate political power in those who have already concentrated economic power. The oligarchs sought to establish a monopoly on power, both political and economic, removing the common crowd from the equation entirely.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Modern society has a mixed view on the proper order of things. Most of the world is meritocratic, meaning that if you perform well, you will be rewarded. So in this way we have oligarchic justice. Nevertheless, we also have many aspects that would align with democratic justice. We have progressive taxation, for example, where taxes are heavier for more well-off individuals. We have social safety nets and support systems to protect those on the bottom rung and encourage upward mobility. I find it to be particularly interesting that we have managed to find a middle ground on the proper order of society and have largely agreed on a status quo. To be fair though, there are still constant battles today about where exactly the middle ground falls. We see daily quarrels in Washington about taxation, who should be taxed and how much, how much should businesses be taxed, and recently, we\u2019ve had battles over tariffs. But more or less, we have found a range in which the majority of the population is mostly content. We may argue over the details, but the larger idea is there, and I think that that\u2019s an amazing achievement, especially in such a large, complicated, and diverse society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I discussed in my last post, the Greeks have a different conception of justice. The Greeks viewed justice as everything in its right place. What I found interesting is the divide among Greeks as to what the right order is. The difference can teach us a great deal about how different groups in society […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-no-separators","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-history","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n