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Welcome to The Stoa Letter, the newsletter on Stoic theory and practice.
🏛️ Theory
What is justice?
For the Stoics, it is one of the four cardinal virtues: moderation, courage, justice, and wisdom.
The Stoics believed the virtues were unitary – you couldn’t have one without the others. But breaking things down into their parts is an excellent way to understand them deeper. So, virtue was considered as composed of the cardinal four and each of the four were seen as possessing their own subcomponents.
The Stoic, Arius Didymus, an advisor to the emperor Augustus, shared his framework in The Stoic Epitome of Ethics.
What is justice? It’s ultimately about delivering to others what they are owed. It has four parts: piety, kindness, good fellowship, and fair dealing. Arthur Pomeroy translates this as follows:
Piety is a knowledge of the service of the gods.
Kindness is a knowledge of which is disposed to do good.
Good fellowship is a knowledge of equality in partnership.
Fair dealing is a knowledge of how to deal with one’s neighbors without incurring blame.
Piety
This is an interesting one that deserves contemplation.
It’s perhaps best captured by Epictetus in Handbook 31:
As to piety towards the Gods you must know that this is the chief thing, to have right opinions about them, to think that they exist, and that they administer the All well and justly; and you must fix yourself in this principle, to obey them, and to yield to them in every thing which happens, and voluntarily to follow it as being accomplished by the wisest intelligence.
For if you do so, you will never either blame the Gods, nor will you accuse them of neglecting you. And it is not possible for this to be done in any other way than by withdrawing from the things which are not in our power, and by placing the good and the evil only in those things which are in our power.
The core takeaway here is to respect the Gods, reality, and Nature – and focus on what is up to you. Stoicism is about playing the hand you are dealt well.
Impiety, the opposite of piety, is displayed by a person who rages at the gods for their misfortune. Today, they may blame all of their problems on larger social systems, or even nature itself – instead of respecting these things for what they are and returning to what is up to them.
Kindness
Some people have exceptionally fast physical reflexes. They react at impressive speeds – if you’ve seen videos on parents with lightning fast reflexes then you know exactly what I mean. Kindness is like this—an ethical reflex. The ability to recognize what is good and do it right away.
This aspect of justice is simple but essential. So many of us are focused on irrelevant factors in our lives – instead of quickly handling other’s needs well. We’re not unkind, but we don’t genuinely help people as often as we can.
Good Fellowship
Justice is about recognizing other humans as equals. There’s a lot of debate about what this means. For the Stoics, it means remembering that everyone is meant to work together because we’re all rational and social animals. Every adult human shares the ability to reason and live prosocially – even if they don’t always use it.
This is what Marcus Aurelius reminds himself of in Meditations 2.1:
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.
We should be kind to others because they are our equals. Don't forget that.
Fair Dealing
In ancient Rome, politicians nearly always had to buy votes to win. So, the question arises, is it just to participate in political corruption like this? The Roman statesman and philosopher, Cicero said that you should – otherwise you simply will not win. In contrast, the Stoic Cato the Younger argued that you shouldn’t. In fact, Cato’s most successful political interventions involved reducing bribery and other forms of corruption. But even Cato bought some votes when he believed it was for the good of the Republic.
Cato’s example is a good one here. He’s more principled than those around him, but on this issue, he recognized that justice doesn’t mean creating the best system, but the best one we can.
🎯 Action
Choose one of these aspects of the virtue of justice – and focus on applying it today.
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đź”— Resources
🖋️ Check out our breakdown of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations 2.1 here:
And listen to Michael and I’s deep dive on the passage for more:
🏛️ If you want to learn about more Stoic frameworks for the virtues check out these conversations on courage, moderation, and wisdom.
Our new episode on Justice will be live tomorrow – subscribe to Stoa Conversations to get notified about any new conversations (and if you can, please give us a rating, it helps the show and Stoa grow).
What aspect of justice do we need most today? |
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