Guest Author - J.L. Wells

There are many interpretations of justice. Aristotle defined it as a balancing act of moderation toward oneself and others. For example, if one gives too many things away to the poor one is being unjust toward oneself. Plato took the just to contain many other virtues summed up as the good. However, when justice comes to play in the area of laws and the way people approach those laws, less abstract interpretations are necessary. In his dialogue Laws Plato makes this statement “when they (the laws) favor particular sections of the community, their authors are not citizens but party-men; and people who say those laws have a claim to be followed are wasting their breath.” This view of law has the inherent claim that if a law isn’t in line with the more abstract view of justice it is not a law that should be obeyed.

This is essentially what is at the heart of satyagraha, a system of truth-force, used by Ghandi to free India from the British. Ghandi claimed that not only are these type of laws that fly in the face of justice not be obeyed but it is our moral duty to disobey them. This lead to his and his followers acts of civil disobedience. This is also another example of something that Plato discusses in his longest dialogue, that a true leader or lawgiver must be a moral exemplar. The Greek argued that if the person or people with the most power in a state are not morally upstanding then those below them would imitate the immoral behavior of those above them. Thus the state would fall into injustice and collapse. Ghandi, like Martin Luther King Jr. and others throughout history, was a moral exemplar to his people. This method of civil disobedience is an attempt to persuade the rest of the citizens and the powers that be that a given law isn’t morally upholdable.

Some may ask if this method of persuasion is in itself just. After all it is protesting the actions of a state that many of us were born into and perhaps we should appreciate what it has given us. However it is the duty of each generation to improve upon what we were bequeathed. The only way that we can do this is to question all of our laws and practices to find if they stand the test of reason. If a law in particular, such as the legal rights of marriage or the exclusion of women from combat units, are found to include some citizens but not others it cannot rationally be held to be just. It gives more to some then to others and is therefore a special interest which doesn’t have the good of all the state included within it.

What do these views, ancient and modern, mean to those of us alive today. It must mean that we as a people must demand more ethical and moderate behavior not only of our leaders but of ourselves. Because we are attempting an individualistic society we must not let our freedom be unchecked, we must control ourselves in order to live in balance with the six billion other people we share our world with. It is obvious to many Americans that our leaders, on both sides of the aisle, are not citizens but party-men. Our republic has turned into an oligarchy of the corporate elite and the only way we can take it back is for us as a people to become upright enough to demand in a true manner, i.e. not hypocritical, that our leaders be as virtuous as we are and to do what is best for the entirety of our state. This action encapsulates the ideals that Plato expresses in his dialogue.