Social Justice And The Dilemma Of Justice?

Müge Neda Altınoklu Şenay

24 Mart 2016

Dilemma of Justice

Equity rather than equality?

The ancient concept of justice is fundamentally different from its modern meaning. In modern times, although the institutional meaning of justice means to judge crimes or to resolve conflicts between individuals according to the laws, and although in a less institutional sense, we speak of justice in a sense of social justice that assume the fair distribution of economic wealth, power, rights and duties in society, justice in antiquity was highly different from its modern meaning and first thought as a virtue that provide harmony within the ideal state. Ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle dealt with the question of justice and linked it to the important concepts such as equality, equity, fairness, proportionality, etc. Since the ancient Greeks had no legal system in its modern sense, the justice is exercised not in its normative sense, but in moral sense. Since judging each as he deserved was the main principle of ancient perception of justice, the egalitarian character of the justice is one of the main questions that have to be asked when compare with its contemporary meaning. The concepts such as deserve, merit, talent or division of labor bring justice into a conditional situation. There is no doubt that the justice offered by either Plato or Aristotle, was neither inclusive nor absolute. Similarly when thinking the justice with its relation to equality, they did not