Themis and Dike – Justice in Greek Myth and Tradition

The understanding of law in Ancient Greece was based on the religious interpretations of human nature and natural laws. Two Greek goddesses were representatives of justice and fairness. In the ancient sources Themis is presented as a goddess and prophetess, one of the Titans and the daughter of Gea and Uranus. She is a symbol of divine order, justice, natural law and good customs. Dike, the daughter of Themis, is the goddess of justice and truth, the protector of rights and courts of justice, the arbiter, the symbol of honor, the goddess of revenge and punishment. In early Greek culture and poetry, the terms themis and dike represented justice in the meaning of cosmic order, natural law, and legality. The paper analyses the Hellenic notions of justice, fairness and legality embodied in the phenomena of themis and dike. Nomos (law) is just only if it is in harmony with themis, and law is valid only if it is just. The paper presents the doctrines of Hellenic writers, poets and playwrights on justice and law, with special reference to the influence of mythology on Hellenic law. Publius Ovidius Naso’s work „Metamorphosis”, which speaks about Themis’ role in the creation of the world and the salvation of the human race is one of the greatest sources about this goddess. In Homer’s „Iliad” and „Odyssey”, epics that sing of the heroic spirit, justice is shown in the motives, intentions and behavior of the participants in the event, mostly heroes. The poet Hesiod, famous for the poems „Theogony” and „Works and Days”, moves away from the heroic virtues of people and portrays the gods as bearers of moral power and guardians of justice. In the light of legislative reforms, Solon’s dike represents the progress and well-being of society through economic reforms, which is why justice and injustice refer only to legal and illegal acquisition of wealth and its effect on the community. Aeschylus’ „Oresteia” shows the principle of justice based on talion, according to which the punishment has to be identical with the committed crime. One of the greatest Ancient Greek playwrights, Sophocles, based his play „Antigone” on the conflict between the laws of men and the laws of gods. According to Herodotus, the greatest Ancient Greek historian, the actions of the gods govern human destinies and historical events. The idea of justice in Ancient Greece was all throughout its transformation based of the universial concept of natural balance.

The Sacred in the Everyday

An appreciation for the sacred, including a deep sense of reverence, awe, and solemnity concerning particular things and people, is expressed throughout the Analects in its discussion of a rich variety of experiences, virtues, and practices that are regarded as special, distinctive, or set apart from other things, and yet very much a part of our daily lives. This chapter focuses on everyday activities that are not directly or primarily related to spirits or spiritual entities or forces, but which are clearly sacred. It explores the virtues of ritual propriety and filial piety, the concept of de (“moral power”), and the virtues of humility and gratitude in the Analects. It goes on to examine the presentation of Kongzi as an exemplar in the text.

The concept of “aesthetic education” of F. Schiller: philosophical system in historical perspective

This article analyzes the fundamental principles of the concept of "aesthetic education" of F. Schiller, which remain relevant in solving the crisis challenges of the modern era. The subject of this research is the concept of “aesthetic education” described in Friedrich Schiller's “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”. The goal consists on analysis of the concept of “aesthetic education” for more profound understanding of the development paths of German philosophy, as well as in assessment of the philosophical and sociopolitical importance of the philosopher’s ideas in the current context. Detailed analysis is conducted on F. Schiller's “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”, highlighting the key features and major contradictions the concept of “aesthetic education”. The novelty of the research lies in the relevant analysis of the concept of “aesthetic education”, and assessment of its value for the development of philosophy and society. The central concept of aesthetic theory becomes the concept of play drive, which balances the sense drive and the form drive, which ensures the ability of perception in all kinds of interaction between a human and the world, and the rational independence from perception. The aesthetic freedom, on the one hand, is determined as state of harmony between the sensual instincts and the laws of reason; while on the other hand, it is the freedom that arises from the sense of exalted belonging to the category of pure spirit and revealing the absolute moral power beyond feelings. According to modern philosophers, the aesthetic way of creating the “composition of the world" lies in the sphere of transcendental. The advantage of Schiller’s concepts is the expansion of its boundaries from the sphere of art to sociopolitical sphere. In addition to intellectual and ethical path of human development, Schiller offers the aesthetic path. The idea of “aesthetic education” implies the communicative and societal power of art, which is capable to comprehend the overall nature of modern politics.

The moral power of the word: Ethical literature in Antiquity

According to an old legend, during the Messenian Wars in Laconia in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, the Athenians sent the poet Tyrtaeus to the Spartans who were close to being defeated; he aroused in them the fighting spirit and renewed Spartan virtues. Philosophers in antiquity believed in the psychagogical power of the word, and this belief provided the foundation for ancient ethical literature, whose main purpose was to call for a spiritual transformation and to convert to philosophy. In this paper, I would like to demonstrate what tradition philosophy referred to in these efforts; what concept of man supported that belief; finally, what literary genres were used by ancient philosophers in ethics.

The Problem of Authorization

This chapter addresses the question of authorization on whether there are limits to what a democratic government can validly authorize private actors to do on its behalf. It contends that there should be aggregative limits to what private actors can be validly authorized to do and decide on behalf of a democratic government. It also clarifies the claim that privatization, beyond a certain threshold, should be regarded as an abdication of the collective right to democratic self-rule. The chapter explains how a democratic people lack the moral power to abdicate their own self-rule, while a government lacks the moral power to validly engage in the systematic privatization of public functions. It discusses delegations that should be regarded as lacking the authorizing normative power that the government purport to have in societies where privatization is already pervasive.

“Any Leadership Would Have to Be the Type of Frederick Douglass”

The inspiration for twentieth-century activist-artist Jacob Lawrence’s multipart narrative series Frederick Douglass (1938–1939), a thirty-two-panel work he painted while he was living in Harlem, emerged from his exposure to the stories of “strong, daring and heroic black heroes and heroines.” Whereas it had been an act of philosophical and political liberation for Frederick Douglass to focus on the “multitudinous” possibilities of textual experimentation and visual reimagining when it came to his own face and body, let alone his life story and his intellectual and moral power as an orator and author, for social justice artists such as Jacob Lawrence who were building new languages of liberation from Douglass’s activism and authorship, it was imperative that he become a point of origin, a Founding Father in a Black revolutionary tradition, and a steadying compass point for acts of radicalism, reform, and resistance in the African Atlantic world.

Introduction

According to John Locke, all people are morally equal self-owners. This commitment introduces a tension at the heart of Locke’s property theory. Since all people own themselves and, consequently, their labor, individuals have the moral power to acquire private property from the common world. But the use of this moral power threatens to generate concentrations of economic power capable of subjecting some people to others’ wills, in violation of equal moral standing. The thesis of this book is that four largely forgotten nineteenth-century Lockeans developed two distinct, internally consistent, and mutually incompatible resolutions to this tension within Lockean property theory. In one camp, Thomas Hodgskin and Lysander Spooner—the libertarian radicals—argued that although we each hold an equal negative liberty to claim pieces of the world, there is no positive common right to the world. Consequently, the demands of moral equality can be satisfied under conditions of enormous economic inequalities. In the other camp, John Bray and Henry George—the egalitarian radicals—argued that since all people are morally equal, each of us has a positive right to share the world with everyone else. Consequently, the demands of moral equality cannot be met except under substantially (though not totally) egalitarian economic conditions. It is important to work through the argumentative successes and failures of these relatively unknown thinkers in order to understand how contemporary arguments about equality and property developed and, consequently, how we might apply them to contemporary problems.

Spinoza and Property

Though Spinoza did not write much explicitly concerning the subject of property, Matheron, in this essay, makes the convincing case that Spinoza nonetheless had a rich and compelling view on the matter as it was understood in the context of the 17th century. Spinoza’s decisive innovation, against Hobbes and all of his other predecessors is to conceive of right as a physical power, as opposed to a moral power. In other words, right is coextensive with the real power to do whatever one desires to do, which is, quite simply, whatever they actually do in fact do. The inevitable human desire to possess external objects, be they land or money, serves as the basis for Matheron’s analysis of Spinoza’s political philosophy. Matheron concludes with a number of striking claims about Spinoza’s communism, which he suggests is very present in such discussions of property.