Justice
Hypomnemata
The sentiment in the Hippocratic Oath and in what Marcus Aurelius states in Meditations 9.1 implies a priority of justice - that one should first, and foremost do no harm; that one should never harm. One can soundly presume the harm to avoid is both physical and moral.
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'Justice for all' seems aspirational, unless the bar is set fairly low. Can we secure a safe life for all? Can we secure a life without tyranny for all? Can we allow people to pursue freedom and happiness responsibly? Even with the bar set this low, the task seems enormous and will demand individual responsibility and accountability to ensure justice.
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For your part, teach your children to do no harm to others. Teach them to secure the life and safety of others who are in need. Teach them that many governments and institutions, with the free participation of its citizens and members, are seeking justice as well.
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Meting justice requires rationality, patience and wisdom.
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Thoughts
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Quotes
[15] For as a general rule—and one should have no illusions on the matter—there is nothing that a living creature is more strongly attached to than its own benefit. So whatever seems to him to be standing in the way of that benefit, be it a brother, or father, or child, or lover, or beloved, he will proceed to hate, reject, and curse. [16] For there is nothing that he loves so much by nature as his own benefit; for him this is father, and brother, and family, and country, and god. [17] Whenever we suppose, then, that the gods are standing in the way of our interest, we revile even them, and throw down their statues, and burn down their temples, as when Alexander ordered that the temple of Asclepius should be burned because of the death of his beloved.* [18] For that reason, if one identifies one’s own benefit with piety, honour, one’s country, one’s parents, one’s friends, all of them will be safeguarded; but if one places one’s benefit in one scale and one’s friends, country, and parents, and justice itself, in the other, the latter will all be lost, because they will be outweighed by one’s benefit. [19] For on whatever side ‘I’ and ‘mine’ are set, to that side the living creature must necessarily be inclined; if they’re in the flesh, it is there that the ruling power will reside; if in choice, the ruling power will be there; if in external things, it will be there. [20] It follows that if I am where my moral choice is, in that case alone will I be the friend, the son, the father that I ought to be. For then it will benefit me to preserve my trustworthiness, my sense of shame, my patience, my temperance, my cooperativeness, and to maintain good relations with others. [21] But if I place myself in one scale, and what is right in the other, the saying of Epicurus then acquires full strength when he declares that ‘the right is nothing at all, or at most, is what is valued in common opinion’. (Epictetus, Discourses 2.22).
Every hour of the day give vigorous attention, as a Roman and as a man, to the performance of the task in hand with precise analysis, with unaffected dignity, with human sympathy, with dispassionate justice - and to vacating your mind from all its other thoughts (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.5).
tolerance is a part of justice (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3).
Injustice is sin. When universal Nature has constituted rational creatures for the sake of each other - to benefit one another as deserved, but never to harm - anyone contravening her will is clearly guilty of sin against the oldest of the gods: because universal Nature is the nature of ultimate reality, to which all present existence is related (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.1).
he has devoted his entire self to justice in his own actions and to the nature of the Whole in all things external (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.11).
Don't hope for Plato's Utopian republic, but be content with the smallest step forward, and regard even that result as no mean achievement (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.29).
Particular qualities too of the rational soul are love of neighbour, truthfulness, integrity, no higher value than itself. This last is a defining quality of law also. There is thus no difference between the true principle of philosophy and the principle of justice (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.1).
All that you pray to reach at some point in the circuit of your life can be yours now - if you are generous to yourself. That is, if you leave all the past behind, entrust the future to Providence, and direct the present solely to reverence and justice. To reverence, so that you come to love your given lot: it was Nature that brought it to you and you to it. To justice, so that you are open and direct in word and action, speaking the truth, observing law and proportion in all you do. You should let nothing stand in your way - not the iniquity of others, not what anyone else thinks or says, still less any sensation of this poor flesh that has accreted round you: the afflicted part must see to its own concern (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.1).
If you say that each one should look out for his own interests alone, you represent man as no different from a wolf or any other of the wildest beasts which are born to live by violence and plunder, sparing nothing from which they may gain some advantage, having no part in a life in common with others, no part in cooperation with others, no share of any notion of justice. If you will agree that man's nature most closely resembles the bee which cannot live alone (for it dies when left alone), but bends its energies to the one common task of his fellows and toils and works together with his neighbors; if this is so, and in addition you recognize that for man evil consists in injustice and cruelty and indifference to a neighbor's trouble, while virtue is brotherly love and goodness and justice and beneficence and concern for the welfare of one's neighbor-with such ideas, I say, it would be each man's duty to take thought for his own city, and to make of his home a rampart for its protection. But the first step toward making his home such a rampart is marriage. Thus whoever destroys human marriage destroys the home, the city, and the whole human race (Musonius Rufus, p. 93).
Furthermore, luxury begets injustice because it also begets covetousness. For no man of extravagant tastes can avoid being lavish in expenditure, nor being lavish can he wish to spend little; but in his desire for many things he cannot refrain from acquiring them, nor again in his effort to acquire can he fail to be grasping and unjust; for no man would succeed in acquiring much by just methods. In still another way the man of luxurious habits would be unjust, for he would hesitate to undertake the necessary burdens for his city without abandoning his extravagant life, and if it seemed necessary to suffer deprivation on behalf of his friends or relatives he would not submit to it, for his love of luxury would not permit it. Nay more, there are· times when duties to the gods must be undertaken by the man who would be just toward them, by performing sacrifices, initiatory rites, or some such other service (Musonius Rufus, p. 127).
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness (United States Declaration of Independence).
Citations and further reading
Aurelius, M., & Hammond, M. (2014). Meditations.
Epictetus, ., Hard, R., & Gill, C. (2014). Discourses, fragments, handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Musonius, R. G., & Lutz, C. E. (1947). Musonius Rufus - "the Roman Socrates". New Haven, Conn: Yale Univ. Press.