Antički koreni savremenih shvatanja pravde

Abstract

Paraphrasing Augustine (354-430 CE) and his deliberation on the concept of time it could be said that when no one asks the questions of what justice is everyone believes they know the answer. When an attempt is made to intellectually understand the answer somehow slips away. The problem arises from the relatively common, differentiated and uncritical use of the term justice, as well as the fact that the self-evidentness of a term is never enough, nor is widespread familiarity truly relevant, as it does not say much about the term itself or enable understanding. As such, it is not enough to assume what justice is, or have a notion of it; it needs to be understood and conceptually articulated. The goal of the author is to, through a series of essays, starting with this introductory text, present the representation, comprehension and understanding of justice and fairness from its first recorded traces from the middle of eight century BCE (the beginning of Archaic period) up to the last decades of the fourth century BCE (the end of the Classical period). The plan is to analyse and intellectually place the oldest recorded occurrence of justice in Ancient Greece, found in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, as well as its evolution and development up until the culmination in Aristotle's Politics, Rhetoric, Great Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics, and thus shine a light on the Greek influence on the modern comprehensions of justice and the spiritual inheritance of European civilization as a whole.