5.2 Justice

What is justice? Is it a moral, ethical concept or does it reflect more practically a legal and political practice? And when was the concept of justice theorised in Western society? And how far the ancient debate on justice reflect on contemporary philosophical and political thought and practice?

EPQ Suggested Questions

In your EPQ project you may want to focus on one of the following questions:

How did the notion of human and divine justice change in Greek tragedy from Aeschylus to Euripides?
How was the notion of justice debated in ancient philosophy?
How far has ancient Roman law influenced Western legal jurisdiction?

Sources

Aeschylus: Oresteia
Sophocles: Antigone
Euripides: Medea
Plato, The Republic
Plato, The Laws
Aristotle, Politics
Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis

References

Arnaoutoglou, I., 2008. Ancient Greek laws: A sourcebook. Routledge.
Gagarin, M. and Cohen, D.J. eds., 2005. The Cambridge companion to ancient Greek law (p. xiii480). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gibert, J., 2012, Greek drama and political thought, in Balot, R.K. ed., 2012. A companion to Greek and Roman political thought. John Wiley & Sons: 440-455.
Goldhill, S., 2000. Greek drama and political theory. The Cambridge history of Greek and Roman political thought, pp.60-88.
Harries, J., 2007. Law and crime in the Roman world. Cambridge University Press.
Harris, E.M., 2013. The rule of law in action in democratic Athens. Oxford University Press.
Harris, E.M., Leão, D.F. and Rhodes, P.J., 2013. Law and drama in ancient Greece. A&C Black.
Johnston, D., 1999. Roman law in context. Cambridge University Press.
Justice in https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/
Stein, P., 1999. Roman law in European history. Cambridge University Press.
Tzanetou, A., 2012. City of Suppliants: Tragedy and the Athenian empire. University of Texas Press.

Online resources

Perseus digital library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
The Grove Art Online: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/