Chapter 10
In: Brill's Companion to the Legacy of Greek Political Thought
Search for other papers by Alan Cromartie in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Abstract
Aristotle’s careful treatment of diakoiosunē has continuously functioned as a natural reference point for theories of ‘justice’ the whole way down to Rawls. Hugo Grotius’s De jure belli ac pacis (1625; revised 1631) is nonetheless unusual in the explicitness with which it confronts the Greek theory. Where Aristotelian justice has reference to cultural facts, some of them not reducible to characteristics located in individuals, Grotius regards just action as a response to purely individual attributes that are derived from a God-given and pre-social order. He lacks Aristotle’s conviction that any rule-based order inevitably breaks down and must, in consequence, be modified by reference to epieikeia (equity or decency). He opens the way to the Hobbesian identification of justice with keeping of contracts and of ‘equity’ with an ethic for rights-holding contract-makers.