HKB
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Often appears with: justice as a virtue · whiteness and blackness · vicious rulers · variation of degree in qualities · value, price, and exchange · tyranny vs kingship · tyranny and lawlessness · transcendentalism · theft and avarice · thamar and amnon · statues and public taste · sparta and athens
Usually: argument (3) · dialogue (2) · injustice endured (2) · censure (2) · indignation (2) · skepticism (2) · curiosity (1) · detachment (1)
“No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays — First Series · insight
“Where the vulgar laugh, the philosopher admires; and he laughs where the vulgar open their big, stupid eyes in astonishment.” Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary · observation
“The author of this passage seems to me a very unsociable animal.” Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary · wit
Emerson argues that “common life” proverbs express transcendentalism, and that different people judge justice, beauty, and wisdom differently, challenging a broker’s money-first ethics with higher duties.
the last facts of philosophy as well as you. “Blessed be nothing” and “The worse things are, the better they are” are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life. One man’s justice is another’s injustice; one man’s beauty another’s ugliness; one man’s wisdom another’s folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his…
Plato claims the tyrant’s happiness is immeasurably less than the king’s using a numerical analogy (3×3 and 729), then contrasts just and unjust lives via an allegory of a multi-headed beast ruled by a man.
and therefore intensely desired; and men go fighting about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth. The same may be said of the passionate element:—the desires of the ambitious soul, as well as of the covetous, have an inferior satisfaction. Only when under the guidance of reason do either of the other principles do their own business or att…
Aristotle argues that qualities have contraries and admit degrees of variation, using examples like justice/injustice and whiteness, while noting some qualities, including figure-based ones, cannot vary in degree.
that which is just, that which is white to that which is black. This, however, is not always the case. Red, yellow, and such colours, though qualities, have no contraries. If one of two contraries is a quality, the other will also be a quality. This will be evident from particular instances, if we apply the names used to denote the other categories; for instance, granted that justice is the contrary of injustice and…
In a dialogue format, Voltaire defines natural law as an instinct for justice, challenges the idea of theft across places by comparing laws in Sparta and Athens, and contrasts moral essentials with shifting customs.
*MOUNTAIN* It is a very old, very universal fable that tells of the mountain which, having frightened all the countryside by its outcry that it was in labour, was hissed by all present when it brought into the world a mere mouse. The people in the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed should have admired. It was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a mouse, as for the mouse to give birth to a mountain. A …
The dialogue portrays human motives as driven by self-interest and vengeance, listing historical and religious examples of political cruelty to show how people lose moral clarity despite believing in justice.
A: Abuse of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft" was the punishment for avarice. B: It was forbidden to marry one's sister in Rome. It was allowed among the Egyptians, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one's sister on the father's side. It is but with regret that I cite that wretched little Jewish people, who …