Principles Of Natural Justice Quotes

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You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
Nowadays the job of the judge is not to do justice. The judge is more of a functionary . He's like a civil servant whose job is to interpret words written down by another branch of the government, whether those words are just or not.
N. Stephan Kinsella
If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.
Lysander Spooner
Americans today sometimes assume the Founders' references to God or Nature or the Supreme Ruler were just for impact or for propaganda. Not so. These were tightly reasoned statements of legal principles. Your rights to your life, liberty, and property came from your Creator, not the government; these rights cannot be repealed.
Richard J. Maybury (Whatever Happened to Justice?)
Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
John Rawls (A Theory of Justice)
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature, opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.
Abraham Lincoln
Bullies learn nothing when bullied in turn; there are no lessons, no about-face in their squalid natures. The principle of righteous justice is a peculiar domain where propriety and vengeance become confused, almost indistinguishable. The bullied bully is shown but the other side of the same fear he or she has lived with all his or her life. The about-face happens there, on the outside, not the inside. Inside, the bully and everything that haunts the bully's soul remains unchanged. It is an abject truth, but conscience cannot be shoved down the throat.
Steven Erikson (Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8))
Every day is an opportunity to stand in awe when witnessing the overpowering presence of nature, an apt time to pay reverence for the inestimable beauty of life. I must remain mindful to live in an ethical manner by paying attention to the threat of injustice towards other people and resist capitulating to the absurdity of being a finite body born into infinite space and time. I am part of the world, a spar in a sacred composition, a body of energy suspended in the cosmos. I seek to create a poetic personal testament to life. When I pivot and turn away from fixating upon the cruel artifices of my encysted orbit to face and outwardly embrace the cleansing swirl of heaven’s windmill, I feel gusting in the shank of my marrow the thump of onrushing primordial truths, the electric flush of those ineffable couplets of life that one may not utter.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Let me then remind you that justice is an immutable, natural principle; and not anything that can be made, unmade, or altered by any human power. It is also a subject of science, and is to be learned, like mathematics, or any other science. It does not derive its authority from the commands, will, pleasure, or discretion of any possible combination of men, whether calling themselves a government, or by any other name. It is also, at all times, and in all places, the supreme law. And being everywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and always the only law.
Lysander Spooner (A Letter to Grover Cleveland On His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude Of The People)
To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it. 49a. —It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn’t violate human nature? Or do you think something that’s not against nature’s will can violate it? But you know what its will is. Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Sec. 10. Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation from him that has done it: and any other person, who finds it just, may also join with him that is injured, and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered.
John Locke (Second Treatise of Government (Hackett Classics))
There was no difference of principle—but only of degree—between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.
Lysander Spooner (No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (Complete Series))
Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power, how could you live according to this indifference? Living, is that not precisely wanting to be different? And supposing your imperative ‘live according to nature’ meant at bottom as much as ‘live according to life’, how could you not do that? Why make a principle of what you yourselves are and must be?
Friedrich Nietzsche
One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is not other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred;
Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Ultimately...woman's equality is not derived from any theory of human nature but rather from concepts of justice, equality and the integrity of the individual based on philosophical and political principles that we have evolved since the Enlightenment. "There is, in fact, no incompatibility between the principles of feminism and the possibility that men and women are not psychologically identical,' writes Pinker. 'To repeat: equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.
Jack Holland (Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice)
[T]he sovereignty of reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of desire. They are principles natural to man.
Blaise Pascal (Pensées)
And the whole power of the government must be limited to the maintenance of that single principle. And that one principle is justice. There is no other principle that any man can rightfully enforce upon others, or ought to consent to have enforced against himself. Every man claims the protection of this principle for himself, whether he is willing to accord it to others, or not. Yet such is the inconsistency of human nature, that some men—in fact, many men—who will risk their lives for this principle, when their own liberty or property is at stake, will violate it in the most flagrant manner, if they can thereby obtain arbitrary power over the persons or property of others. We have seen this fact illustrated in this country, through its whole history—especially during the last hundred years—and in the case of many of the most conspicuous persons. And their example and influence have been employed to pervert the whole character of the government. It is against such men, that all others, who desire nothing but justice for themselves, and are willing to unite to secure it for all others, must combine, if we are ever to have justice established for any.
Lysander Spooner (A Letter to Grover Cleveland On His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude Of The People)
A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution; it persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance and Other Essays)
To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it. It's unfortunate that this has happened. No. It's fortunate that this has happened and I've remained unharmed by it - not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn't violate human nature? Or do you think something that's not against nature's will can violate it? But you know what its will is. Does what's happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person's nature to fulfil itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
On behalf of those you killed, imprisoned, tortured, you are not welcome, Erdogan! No, Erdogan, you’re not welcome in Algeria. We are a country which has already paid its price of blood and tears to those who wanted to impose their caliphate on us, those who put their ideas before our bodies, those who took our children hostage and who attempted to kill our hopes for a better future. The notorious family that claims to act in the name of the God and religion—you’re a member of it—you fund it, you support it, you desire to become its international leader. Islamism is your livelihood Islamism, which is your livelihood, is our misfortune. We will not forget about it, and you are a reminder of it today. You offer your shadow and your wings to those who work to make our country kneel down before your “Sublime Door.” You embody and represent what we loathe. You hate freedom, the free spirit. But you love parades. You use religion for business. You dream of a caliphate and hope to return to our lands. But you do it behind the closed doors, by supporting Islamist parties, by offering gifts through your companies, by infiltrating the life of the community, by controlling the mosques. These are the old methods of your “Muslim Brothers” in this country, who used to show us God’s Heaven with one hand while digging our graves with the other. No, Mr. Erdogan, you are not a man of help; you do not fight for freedom or principles; you do not defend the right of peoples to self-determination. You know only how to subject the Kurds to the fires of death; you know only how to subject your opponents to your dictatorship. You cry with the victims in the Middle East, yet sign contracts with their executioners. You do not dream of a dignified future for us, but of a caliphate for yourself. We are aware of your institutionalized persecution, your list of Turks to track down, your sinister prisons filled with the innocent, your dictatorial justice palaces, your insolence and boastful nature. You do not dream of a humanity that shares common values and principles, but are interested only in the remaking of the Ottoman Empire and its bloodthirsty warlords. Islam, for you, is a footstool; God is a business sign; modernity is an enemy; Palestine is a showcase; and local Islamists are your stunned courtesans. Humanity will not remember you with good deeds Humanity will remember you for your machinations, your secret coups d’état, and your manhunts. History will remember you for your bombings, your vengeful wars, and your inability to engage in constructive dialogue with others. The UN vote for Al-Quds is only an instrument in your service. Let us laugh at this with the Palestinians. We know that the Palestinian issue is your political capital, as it is for many others. You know well how to make a political fortune by exploiting others’ emotions. In Algeria, we suffered, and still suffer, from those who pretend to be God and act as takers and givers of life. They applaud your coming, but not us. You are the idol of Algerian Islamists and Populists, those who are unable to imagine a political structure beyond a caliphate for Muslim-majority societies. We aspire to become a country of freedom and dignity. This is not your ambition, nor your virtue. You are an illusion You have made beautiful Turkey an open prison and a bazaar for your business and loved ones. I hope that this beautiful nation rises above your ambitions. I hope that justice will be restored and flourish there once again, at least for those who have been imprisoned, tortured, bombed, and killed. You are an illusion, Erdogan—you know it and we know it. You play on the history of our humiliation, on our emotions, on our beliefs, and introduce yourself as a savior. However, you are a gravedigger, both for your own country and for your neighbors. Turkey is a political miracle, but it owes you nothing. The best thing you can do
Kamel Daoud
The most popular antiracist curriculum among conservative evangelicals is Latasha Morrison’s Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation. In the accompanying curriculum, Whiteness 101: Foundational Principles Every White Bridge Builder Needs to Understand, Morrison defines racism as “a system of advantage based on race, involving cultural messages, misuse of power, and institutional bias, in addition to the racist beliefs and actions of individuals.” It is important to note that this redefinition of racism, among other things, changes the location and therefore the nature of the sin. We are no longer dealing with the hearts of men; we are addressing institutions and structures. “For as long as America exists with its current institutions,” writes DiAngelo, “it will also need to be in group therapy where our turn begins with: ‘Hi. I’m America, and I’m racist.’ ”34
Voddie T. Baucham Jr. (Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe)
I believe this movement will prevail. I don’t mean it will defeat, conquer, or create harm to someone else. Quite the opposite. I don’t tender the claim in an oracular sense. I mean that the thinking that informs the movement’s goals will reign. It will soon suffuse most institutions, but before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior. Some say it is too late, but people never change when they are comfortable. Helen Keller threw aside the gnawing fears of chronic bad news when she declared, “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!” In such a time, history is suspended and thus unfinished. It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives. My hopefulness about the resilience of human nature is matched by the gravity of our environmental and social condition. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: In the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us. If that is difficult to believe, take a winter off and calculate what it requires to create a single springtime. It’s not too late for the world’s largest institutions and corporations to join in saving the planet, but cooperation must be on the planet’s terms. The “Help Wanted” signs are everywhere. All people and institutions including commerce, governments, schools, churches and cities, need to learn from life and reimagine the world from the bottom up, based on the first principles if justice and ecology. Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever prevents the system from healing itself. Social restoration is no different. We have the heart, knowledge, money and sense to optimize out social and ecological fabric. It is time for all that is harmful to leave. One million escorts are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war on people and place. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. “We” means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there is also a black, brown and copper movement. What is more harmful resides within is, the accumulated wounds of the past, the sorrow, shame, deceit, and ignominy shared by every culture, passed down to every person, as surely as DNA, as history of violence and greed. There is not question that the environmental movement is most critical to our survival. Our house is literally burning, and it is only logical that environmentalists expect the social justice movement to get on the environmental bus. But is actually the other way around; the only way we are going to put out this fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus. Armed with that growing realization, we can address all that is harmful externally. What will guide us is a living intelligence that creates miracles every second, carried forth by a movement with no name.
Paul Hawken
Famously, in 1852, formerly enslaved maritime worker Frederick Douglass asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” He honored the Founders as “great men” but asked: “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?”[3]
Heather Cox Richardson (Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America)
The fundamental basis by which the court’s decision might be made is, in itself, imperfect and subject to contradictions. There is very little consideration given to a priori knowledge regarding the circumstances being presented and as a result, arguments must be made empirically, under the assumption that assumptions themselves are, in fact, likely to give way to specious reasoning...Decisions must be made meticulously and according to specific, yet immeasurable criteria that can only be further manipulated by any cunning lawyer with the ability to make emotional pleas based on a requisite amount of inconsequential evidence to affect a decision beneficial to his clients. And so, in this respect, the law is capable of proving nothing except that its absurd attention to detail is really a kind of a façade meant to cover up the fact that a truly logical and just way to deal with such matters has not yet been devised. And the absence of adequate definition to its principles has given way to a kind of apathy among the men employed by the courts, who want nothing more now than to make a living for themselves and their families and not work themselves into too much of a frenzy about how little can be changed through their own initiative. Thus things aren’t likely to.
Ashim Shanker (Don't Forget to Breathe (Migrations, Volume I))
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
Frederick Douglass (Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings)
Both the Code of Hammurabi and the American Declaration of Independence claim to outline universal and eternal principles of justice, but according to the Americans all people are equal, whereas according to the Babylonians people are decidedly unequal. The Americans would, of course, say that they are right, and that Hammurabi is wrong. Hammurabi, naturally, would retort that he is right, and that the Americans are wrong. In fact, they are both wrong. Hammurabi and the American Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another. These principles have no objective validity.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Which countries contain the most peaceful, the most moral, and the happiest people? Those people are found in the countries where the law least interferes with private affairs; where government is least felt; where the individual has the greatest scope, and free opinion the greatest influence; where administrative powers are fewest and simplest; where taxes are lightest and most nearly equal, and popular discontent the least excited and the least justifiable; where individuals and groups most actively assume their responsibilities, and, consequently, where the morals of admittedly imperfect human beings are constantly improving; where trade, assemblies, and associations are the least restricted; where labor, capital, and populations suffer the fewest forced displacements; where mankind most nearly follows its own natural inclinations; where the inventions of men are most nearly in harmony with the laws of God; in short, the happiest, most moral, and most peaceful people are those who most nearly follow this principle: Although mankind is not perfect, still, all hope rests upon the free and voluntary actions of persons within the limits of right; law or force is to be used for nothing except the administration of universal justice.
Frédéric Bastiat
It is not enough for a population or a section of the population to have Christian faith and be docile to the ministers of religion in order to be in a position properly to judge political matters. If this population has no political experience, no taste for seeing clearly for itself nor a tradition of initiative and critical judgment, its position with respect to politics grows more complicated, for nothing is easier for political counterfeiters than to exploit good principles for purposes of deception, and nothing is more disastrous than good principles badly applied. And moreover nothing is easier for human weakness than to merge religion with prejudices of race, family or class, collective hatreds, passions of a clan and political phantoms which compensate for the rigors of individual discipline in a pious but insufficiently purified soul. Politics deal with matters and interests of the world and they depend upon passions natural to man and upon reason. But the point I wish to make here is that without goodness, love and charity, all that is best in us—even divine faith, but passions and reason much more so—turns in our hands to an unhappy use. The point is that right political experience cannot develop in people unless passions and reason are oriented by a solid basis of collective virtues, by faith and honor and thirst for justice. The point is that, without the evangelical instinct and the spiritual potential of a living Christianity, political judgment and political experience are ill protected against the illusions of selfishness and fear; without courage, compassion for mankind and the spirit of sacrifice, the ever-thwarted advance toward an historical ideal of generosity and fraternity is not conceivable.
Jacques Maritain (Christianity & Democracy (Essay Index Reprint Series) (English and French Edition))
49a. —It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn’t violate human nature? Or do you think something that’s not against nature’s will can violate it? But you know what its will is. Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Let me once more assert that Mr Malison was not a bad man. The misfortune was, that his notion of right fell in with his natural fierceness; and that, in aggravation of the too common feeling with which he had commenced his relations with his pupils, namely, that they were not only the natural enemies of the master, but therefore of all law, theology had come in and taught him that they were in their own nature bad — with a badness for which the only set-off he knew or could introduce was blows. Independently of any remedial quality that might be in them, these blows were an embodiment of justice; for "every sin," as the catechism teaches, "deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to come." The master therefore was only a co-worker with God in every pandy he inflicted on his pupils. I do not mean that he reasoned thus, but that such-like were the principles he had to act upon.
George MacDonald (Alec Forbes of Howglen)
Good, evil, these are human concepts, ways people have for understanding what it means to be alive,” Nick said. “Before people came along, this planet was teeming with life, fighting to survive, to live long enough to reproduce, completing the circle of life.” “I’m with you so far,” Elphaba said. “The circle of life is an essential Wiccan principle, in spite of The Lion King.” Nick ignored Elphaba’s bit of humor as his mood became more serious. “Precisely so. And in this circle of life, you have predators and prey. The predators must kill to eat. If they don’t, they starve. Are the predators evil?” “No, of course not. They’re simply acting on their nature.” “What is human nature, then? Are we a species that builds societies of trust and cooperation, or are we a species that seeks power over our fellow man, even if that means fighting wars or otherwise killing him?” Elphaba frowned, carefully considering her answer. “I’d like to think we are a species of trust and cooperation.” “Our entire history is a story of war, of murder and mayhem, of blood running in the streets,” Nick said quietly. “Yes, yes it is.” Elphaba leaned back, grimacing. “We are both,” Nick said. “A species of cooperation, and a species of strife. We fight wars, and we also establish the rule of law to mete out justice to the criminals in our midst. Humans are both good and evil.
Abramelin Keldor (The Goodwill Grimoire)
But perhaps a compromise lies where Augustine’s checklists leave you, when you do have room to maneuver. You lean, bend, or tilt in a certain direction when choosing between order and justice, war and peace, Caesar and God. You’re aligning aspirations with capabilities, for in Augustine’s thinking justice, peace, and God fit the first category, while order, war, and Caesar inhabit the second. Alignment, in turn, implies interdependence. Justice is unattainable in the absence of order, peace may require the fighting of wars, Caesar must be propitiated—perhaps even, like Constantine, converted—if man is to reach God. Each capability brings an aspiration within reach, much as Sun Tzu’s practices tether his principles, but what’s the nature of the tether? I think it’s proportionality: the means employed must be appropriate to—or at least not corrupt—the end envisaged. This, then, is Augustine’s tilt: toward a logic of strategy transcending time, place, culture, circumstance, and the differences between saints and sinners.
John Lewis Gaddis (On Grand Strategy)
You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere—not in logic, nor in wealth, fame, or in any indulgence. Nowhere. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands. How is a person to do this? By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles? Those to do with good and evil, indeed in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage and freedom, and nothing evil except what destroys these things.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.1.(5)
Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living)
Justices in the United States believe that their duty is to uphold the Constitution, but if they do not understand that the authority of the Constitution itself rests upon the inalienable natural rights of all human beings, then they not only undermine the Constitution, which they are sworn to uphold but also turn themselves into wielders of arbitrary power. Regrettably, this misuse of power occurred in both the Dred Scott decision and in the Roe v. Wade decision (and its subsequent interpretation in cases such as Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Robert P. Casey).
Robert J. Spitzer (Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues)
Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery tales. She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and person are correct. I remember her as a slim young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or justice: still, such as she was, I preferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall. It was the fifteenth
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition (Charlotte Brontë Classics))
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own and malice finds all her work in vain. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Compensation: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series)
according to the Americans all people are equal, whereas according to the Babylonians people are decidedly unequal. The Americans would, of course, say that they are right, and that Hammurabi is wrong. Hammurabi, naturally, would retort that he is right, and that the Americans are wrong. In fact, they are both wrong. Hammurabi and the American Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another. These principles have no objective validity.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves indifference as a power—how could you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature falsely, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. 10.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil (Illustrated))
Until Americans can overcome this idealization of law, until they begin to see that law is, like other institutions and actions, to be measured against moral principles, against human needs, we will remain a static society in a world of change, a society deaf to the rising cries for justice- and therefore,a society in serious trouble.” Added a quotation: “The realities of american politics, it turns out, are different than as described in old civic textbooks, which tell us how fortunate we are to have the ballot. The major nominees for president are not chosen by the ballot, but are picked for us by a quadrennial political convention which is half farce, half circus, most of whose delegates have not been instructed by popular vote. For months before the convention, the public has been conditioned by the mass media on who is who, so that it will not be temped to think beyond that list which the party regulars have approved.” Added a quotation: “I do not think civil disobedience is enough; it is a way of protest, but in itself it does not construct a new society. There are many other things that citizens should do to begin to build a new way of life in the midst of the old, to live the way human beings should live- enjoying the fruits of the earth, the warmth of nature and of one another-without hostility, without the artificial separation of religion, or race, or nationalism. Further, not all forms of civil disobedience are moral; not all are effective.” Added a quotation: “It is very hard, in the comfortable environment of middle-class America, to discard the notion that everything will be better if we don't have the disturbance of civil disobedience, if we confine ourselves to voting, writing letters to our congressmen, speaking our minds politely.....somehow we must transcend our own tight, air-conditioned chambers and begin to feel their plight, their needs. It may become evident that, despite out wealth, we can have no real peace until they do. We might then join them in battering at the complacency of those who guard a false "order," with that healthy commotion that has always attended the growth of justice.
Howard Zinn (Disobedience and Democracy : Nine Fallacies on Law and Order)
Modern debates were over truth and reality, reason and experience, liberty and equality, justice and peace, beauty and progress. In the postmodern framework, those concepts always appear in quotation marks. Our most strident voices tell us that “Truth” is a myth. “Reason” is a white male Eurocentric construct. “Equality” is a mask for oppressions. “Peace” and “Progress” are met with cynical and weary reminders of power—or explicit ad hominem attacks. Postmodern debates thus display a paradoxical nature. Across the board, we hear, on the one hand, abstract themes of relativism and egalitarianism. Those themes come in both epistemological and ethical forms. Objectivity is a myth; there is no Truth, no Right Way to read nature or a text. All interpretations are equally valid. Values are socially subjective products. Culturally, therefore, no group’s values have special standing. All ways of life from Afghani to Zulu are legitimate. Coexisting with these relativistic and egalitarian themes, we hear, on the other hand, deep chords of cynicism. Principles of civility and procedural justice simply serve as masks for hypocrisy and oppression born of asymmetrical power relations, masks that must be ripped off by crude verbal and physical weapons: ad hominem argument, in-your-face shock tactics, and equally cynical power plays. Disagreements are met—not with argument, the benefit of the doubt, and the expectation that reason can prevail—but with assertion, animosity, and a willingness to resort to force.
Stephen R.C. Hicks (Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition))
(Pericles Funeral Oration) But before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great. Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own. Then, again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries; Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength, the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory. I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men.
Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War)
The American Declaration of Independence asserts that: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Like Hammurabi’s Code, the American founding document promises that if humans act according to its sacred principles, millions of them would be able to cooperate effectively, living safely and peacefully in a just and prosperous society. Like the Code of Hammurabi, the American Declaration of Independence was not just a document of its time and place – it was accepted by future generations as well. For more than 200 years, American schoolchildren have been copying and learning it by heart. The two texts present us with an obvious dilemma. Both the Code of Hammurabi and the American Declaration of Independence claim to outline universal and eternal principles of justice, but according to the Americans all people are equal, whereas according to the Babylonians people are decidedly unequal. The Americans would, of course, say that they are right, and that Hammurabi is wrong. Hammurabi, naturally, would retort that he is right, and that the Americans are wrong. In fact, they are both wrong. Hammurabi and the American Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another. These principles have no objective validity. It
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
It is not an overstatement to say the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States would not have been possible in the post–civil rights era if the nation had not fallen under the spell of a callous colorblindness. The seemingly innocent phrase, “I don’t care if he’s black . . .” perfectly captures the perversion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race to connect spiritually across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste. The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass incarceration is officially colorblind. It purports to see black and brown men not as black and brown, but simply as men—raceless men—who have failed miserably to play by the rules the rest of us follow quite naturally. The fact that so many black and brown men are rounded up for drug crimes that go largely ignored when committed by whites is unseen. Our collective colorblindness prevents us from seeing this basic fact. Our blindness also prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions that persist in society: the segregated, unequal schools, the segregated, jobless ghettos, and the segregated public discourse—a public conversation that excludes the current pariah caste. Our commitment to colorblindness extends beyond individuals to institutions and social arrangements. We have become blind, not so much to race, but to the existence of racial caste in America. More
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Stoic virtues are sometimes referred to as the four cardinal virtues: Practical wisdom (prudence) Moderation (temperance) Courage (fortitude) Integrity (justice) However, each of them individually is not considered a virtue. They may be thought of as traits or dispositions that strengthen and ennoble humankind but must be used together so one does not override the others. The Stoics sought after ethical notions and solid principles. They came up with eight principles to form the foundation for living a good life[VM10]. These principles have been used by people from all walks of life and can help you achieve your goals. Nature is rational. Illness, poverty, and death are not evil; they are natural. A life following rational nature is virtuous. Passion is irrational (apatheia). Wisdom is the root of all virtue. The universe is governed by a law of reason. Pleasure is neither good nor bad. Virtue should be sought as a matter of duty, not for pleasure.
Marcus Epictetus (Live a Stoic Life: Using the Ancient Art of Stoicism to Live a Modern Life, Become Tougher, Calmer and More Resilient - Daily Stoic Challenges, Stoicism ... and Stoic Journal (Mastering Stoicism 5))
Until Americans can overcome this idealization of law, until they begin to see that law is, like other institutions and actions, to be measured against moral principles, against human needs, we will remain a static society in a world of change, a society deaf to the rising cries for justice- and therefore,a society in serious trouble.” “The realities of american politics, it turns out, are different than as described in old civic textbooks, which tell us how fortunate we are to have the ballot. The major nominees for president are not chosen by the ballot, but are picked for us by a quadrennial political convention which is half farce, half circus, most of whose delegates have not been instructed by popular vote. For months before the convention, the public has been conditioned by the mass media on who is who, so that it will not be temped to think beyond that list which the party regulars have approved.” “I do not think civil disobedience is enough; it is a way of protest, but in itself it does not construct a new society. There are many other things that citizens should do to begin to build a new way of life in the midst of the old, to live the way human beings should live- enjoying the fruits of the earth, the warmth of nature and of one another-without hostility, without the artificial separation of religion, or race, or nationalism. Further, not all forms of civil disobedience are moral; not all are effective.” “It is very hard, in the comfortable environment of middle-class America, to discard the notion that everything will be better if we don't have the disturbance of civil disobedience, if we confine ourselves to voting, writing letters to our congressmen, speaking our minds politely.....somehow we must transcend our own tight, air-conditioned chambers and begin to feel their plight, their needs. It may become evident that, despite out wealth, we can have no real peace until they do. We might then join them in battering at the complacency of those who guard a false "order," with that healthy commotion that has always attended the growth of justice.
Howard Zinn (Disobedience and Democracy : Nine Fallacies on Law and Order)
Similar declarations are to be found again and again, in Sumerian and later Babylonian and Assyrian records, and always with the same theme: the restoration of “justice and equity,” the protection of widows and orphans, to ensure—as Hammurabi was to put it when he abolished debts in Babylon in 1761 BC—“that the strong might not oppress the weak.”14 In the words of Michael Hudson, The designated occasion for clearing Babylonia’s financial slate was the New Year festival, celebrated in the spring. Babylonian rulers oversaw the ritual of “breaking the tablets,” that is, the debt records, restoring economic balance as part of the calendrical renewal of society along with the rest of nature. Hammurabi and his fellow rulers signaled these proclamations by raising a torch, probably symbolizing the sun-god of justice Shamash, whose principles were supposed to guide wise and fair rulers. Persons held as debt pledges were released to rejoin their families. Other debtors were restored cultivation rights to their customary lands, free of whatever mortgage liens had accumulated.15
David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)
David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)
Walter Isaacson (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life)
We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as [humans] is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that’s all. Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.
Albert Camus
True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied. With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . . We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race. Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our opposition to such offenses is rooted in religion, then are restraints upon murder and rape unconstitutional? We arrive at such absurdities if we attempt to erect a wall of separation between the operation of the laws and those Christian moral convictions that move most Americans. If we are to try to sustain some connection between Christian teaching and the laws of this land of ours, we must understand the character of that link. We must claim neither too much nor too little for the influence of Christian belief upon our structure of law. . . . I am suggesting that Christian faith and reason have been underestimated in an age bestridden, successively, by the vulgarized notions of the rationalists, the Darwinians, and the Freudians. Yet I am not contending that the laws ever have been the Christian word made flesh nor that they can ever be. . . . What Christianity (or any other religion) confers is not a code of positive laws, but instead some general understanding of justice, the human condition being what it is. . . . In short, judges cannot well be metaphysicians--not in the execution of their duties upon the bench, at any rate, even though the majority upon the Supreme Court of this land, and judges in inferior courts, seem often to have mistaken themselves for original moral philosophers during the past quarter century. The law that judges mete out is the product of statute, convention, and precedent. Yet behind statute, convention, and precedent may be discerned, if mistily, the forms of Christian doctrines, by which statute and convention and precedent are much influenced--or once were so influenced. And the more judges ignore Christian assumptions about human nature and justice, the more they are thrown back upon their private resources as abstract metaphysicians--and the more the laws of the land fall into confusion and inconsistency. Prophets and theologians and ministers and priests are not legislators, ordinarily; yet their pronouncements may be incorporated, if sometimes almost unrecognizably, in statute and convention and precedent. The Christian doctrine of natural law cannot be made to do duty for "the law of the land"; were this tried, positive justice would be delayed to the end of time. Nevertheless, if the Christian doctrine of natural law is cast aside utterly by magistrates, flouted and mocked, then positive law becomes patternless and arbitrary.
Russell Kirk (Rights and Duties: Reflections on Our Conservative Constitution)
Now war is merely wholesale cannibalism; and there is no reason why it should not be classed with cannibalism and unequivocally denounced. “The sentiment and the idea of justice can grow only as fast as the external antagonisms of societies decrease, and the internal harmonious coöperations of their members increase.” How can this harmony be promoted? As we have seen, it comes more readily through freedom than through regulation. The formula of justice should be: “Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.” This is a formula hostile to war, which exalts authority, regimentation and obedience; it is a formula favorable to peaceful industry, for it provides a maximum of stimulus with an absolute equality of opportunity; it is conformable to Christian morals, for it holds every person sacred, and frees him from aggression; and it has the sanction of that ultimate judge—natural selection—because it opens up the resources of the earth on equal terms to all, and permits each individual to prosper according to his ability and his work. This may seem, at first, to be a ruthless principle; and many will oppose to it, as capable of national extension, the family principle of giving to each not according to his ability and product, but according to his need. But a society governed on such principles would soon be eliminated.
Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)
The two texts present us with an obvious dilemma. Both the Code of Hammurabi and the American Declaration of Independence claim to outline universal and eternal principles of justice, but according to the Americans all people are equal, whereas according to the Babylonians people are decidedly unequal. The Americans would, of course, say that they are right, and that Hammurabi is wrong. Hammurabi, naturally, would retort that he is right, and that the Americans are wrong. In fact, they are both wrong. Hammurabi and the American Found Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another. These principles have no objective validity. … Its likely that more than a few readers squired in their chairs while reading the preceding paragraphs. Most of us today are educated to react in such a way. It is easy to accept that Hammurabi’s Code was a myth, but we do not want to hear that human rights are also a myth. If people realise that human rights exist only in the imagination, isnt there a danger that our society will collapse? Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights.” -Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari (2011).
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Since I can see no answer to these questions, I draw the following conclusions. This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) ‘ideologies’, all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.
C.S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man)
The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence, of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year, will not purchase its protection, security, and defence, for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions; churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production.
Adam Smith (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations)
There is also another political party, who desire, through the influence of legislation and coercion, to level the world. To say the least, it is a species of robbery; to some it may appear an honorable one, but, nevertheless, it is robbery. What right has any private man to take by force the property of another? The laws of all nations would punish such a man as a thief. Would thousands of men engaged in the same business make it more honorable? . . . I shall not, here, enter into the various manners of obtaining wealth; but would merely state, that any unjust acquisition of it ought to be punished by law. Wealth is generally the representation of labour, industry, and talent. If one man is industrious, enterprising, diligent, careful, and saves property, and his children follow in his steps, and accumulate wealth; and another man is careless, prodigal, and lazy, and his children inherit his poverty, I cannot conceive upon what principles of justice, the children of the idle and profligate have a right to put their hands into the pockets of those who are diligent and careful, and rob them of their purse. Let this principle exist, and all energy and enterprise would be crushed. Men would be afraid of again accumulating, lest they should again be robbed. Industry and talent would have no stimulant, and confusion and ruin would inevitably follow. Again, if you took men's property without their consent, the natural consequence would be that they would seek to retake it the first opportunity; and this state of things would only deluge the world in blood. So that let any of these measures be carried out, even according to the most sanguine hopes of the parties, they would not only bring distress upon others, but also upon themselves; certainly they would not bring about the peace of the world.
John Taylor
Today there is much talk about democratic ideals in the outside world. But not in Germany! For here in Germany we had more than enough time-fifteen years-to acquaint ourselves with these democratic ideals. And we ourselves had to pick up the legacy left behind by this democracy. Now we are being credited with many a truly astounding war aim, especially by the English. After all, England is quite experienced in issuing proclamations of objectives in warfare as it has waged the greatest number of wars the world over. Truly astounding are the war aims announced to us today. A new Europe will arise. This Europe will be characterized by justice. This justice will render armament obsolete. This will lead to disarmament at last. This disarmament in turn will bring about an economic blossoming. Change and trade will spring up-much trade-free trade. And with the sponsorship of this trade, culture shall once more blossom, and not only culture will benefit, but religion will also prosper. In other words: we are heading towards a golden age! Well, we have heard of this golden age before. Many times precisely the same people attempted to illustrate its virtues to us who are now flooding us with descriptions of its benefits. The records are old ones, played once too often. We can only pity these gentlemen who cannot even come up with a new idea to trap a great people. For all this they had already promised us in 1918. Then, too, England’s objectives in the war were the creation of this “new Europe,” the establishment of a “new justice,” of which the “right to selfdetermination of the peoples” was to form an integral part. Back then already they promised us justice to render obsolete-for all time-the bearing of any sort of weaponry. Back then already they submitted to us a program for disarmament-one for global disarmament. To make this disarmament more evident, it was to be crowned by the establishment of an association of nations bearing no arms. These were to settle their differences in the future-for even back then there was no doubt that differences would still arise-by talking them to death in discussion and debate, just as is the custom in democratic states. There would be no more shooting under any circumstances! In 1918, they declared a blessed and pious age to come! What came to pass in its stead we all lived to see: the old states were destroyed without even as much as asking their citizenry. Historic, ancient structures were severed, not only state bodies but grown economic structures as well, without anything better to take their place. In total disregard of the principle of the right to self-determination of the peoples, the European peoples were hacked to pieces, torn apart. Great states were dissolved. Nations were robbed of their rights, first rendered utterly defenseless and then subjected to a division which left only victors and vanquished in this world. And then there was no more talk of disarmament. To the contrary, armament went on. Nor did any efforts materialize to settle conflicts peacefully. The armed states waged wars just as before. Yet those who had been disarmed were no longer in a position to ward off the aggressions of those well armed. Naturally, this did not herald economic prosperity but, to the contrary, produced a network of lunatic reparations payments which led to increasing destitution for not only the vanquished, but also the so-called victors themselves. The consequences of this economic destitution were felt most acutely by the German Volk. International finance remained brutal and squeezed our Volk ruthlessly. Adolf Hitler – speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, January 30, 1940
Adolf Hitler
The liberal ideals of the Enlightenment could be realized only in very partial and limited ways in the emerging capitalist order: "Democracy with its mono of equality of all citizens before the law and Liberalism with its right of man over his own person both were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy," Rocker correctly observed. Those who are compelled to rent themselves to owners of capital in order to survive are deprived of one of the most fundamental rights: the right to productive, creative and fulfilling work under one's own control, in solidarity with others. And under the ideological constraints of capitalist democracy, the prime necessity is to satisfy the needs of those in a position to make investment decisions; if their demands are not satisfied, there will be no production, no work, no social services, no means for survival. All necessarily subordinate themselves and their interests to the overriding need to serve the interests of the owners and managers of the society, who, furthermore, with their control over resources, are easily able to shape the ideological system (the media, schools, universities and so on) in their interests, to determine the basic conditions within which the political process will function, its parameters and basic agenda, and to call upon the resources of state violence, when need be, to suppress any challenge to entrenched power. The point was formulated succinctly in the early days of the liberal democratic revolutions by John Jay, the President of the Continental Congress and the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court: "The people who own the country ought to govern it." And, of course, they do, whatever political faction may be in power. Matters could hardly be otherwise when economic power is narrowly concentrated and the basic decisions over the nature and character of life, the investment decisions, are in principle removed from democratic control.
Noam Chomsky (Chomsky On Anarchism)
Self-Confidence Formula First. I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my Definite Purpose in life; therefore, I DEMAND of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action. Second. I realize that the dominating thoughts of my mind will eventually reproduce themselves in outward, physical action, and gradually transform themselves into physical reality; therefore, I will concentrate my thoughts for 30 minutes daily upon the task of thinking of the person I intend to become, thereby creating in my mind a clear mental picture of that person. Third. I know that through the principle of autosuggestion any desire that I persistently hold in my mind will eventually seek expression through some practical means of attaining the object back of it; therefore, I will devote ten minutes daily to demanding of myself the development of SELF-CONFIDENCE. Fourth. I have clearly written down a description of my DEFINITE CHIEF AIM in life, and I will never stop trying until I shall have developed sufficient self-confidence for its attainment.4 Fifth. I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure unless built upon truth and justice; therefore, I will engage in no transaction that does not benefit all whom it affects. I will succeed by attracting to myself the forces I wish to use and the cooperation of other people. I will induce others to serve me because of my willingness to serve others. I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism by developing love for all humanity—because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me because I will believe in them and in myself. Sixth. I will sign my name to this formula, commit it to memory, and repeat it aloud once a day, with full FAITH that it will gradually influence my THOUGHTS and ACTIONS so that I will become a self-reliant and successful person. Back of this formula is a law of Nature which no one has yet been able to explain. It has baffled the scientists of all ages. The psychologists have named this the “Law of Autosuggestion” and let it go at that.
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich!:The Original Version, Restored and Revised™: The Original Version, Restored and Revisedâ„¢)
The year 1789 does not yet affirm the divinity of man, but the divinity of the people, to the degree in which the will of the people coincides with the will of nature and of reason. If the general will is freely expressed, it can only be the universal expression of reason. If the people are free, they are infallible. Once the King is dead, and the chains of the old despotism thrown off, the people are going to express what, at all times and in all places, is, has been, and will be the truth. They are the oracle that must be consulted to know what the eternal order of the world demands. Vox populi, vox naturae. Eternal principles govern our conduct: Truth, Justice, finally Reason. There we have the new God. The Supreme Being, whom cohorts of young girls come to adore at the Feast of Reason, is only the ancient god disembodied, peremptorily deprived of any connection with the earth, and launched like a balloon into a heaven empty of all transcendent principles. Deprived of all his representatives, of any intercessor, the god of the lawyers and philosophers only has the value of a demonstration. He is not very strong, in fact, and we can see why Rousseau, who preached tolerance, thought that atheists should be condemned to death. To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well. But that will only come later. In 1793 the new faith is still intact, and it will suffice, to take Saint-Just's word, to govern according to the dictates of reason. The art of ruling, according to him, has produced only monsters because, before his time, no one wished to govern according to nature. The period of monsters has come to an end with the termination of the period of violence. "The human heart advances from nature to violence, from violence to morality." Morality is, therefore, only nature finally restored after centuries of alienation. Man only has to be given law "in accord with nature and with his heart," and he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt. Universal suffrage, the foundation of the new laws, must inevitably lead to a universal morality. "Our aim is to create an order of things which establishes a universal tendency toward good.
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
So, aside from destroying nature to 'create sustainability', allowing a country to be torn apart in the name of anti-racism, permanently replace their country's founding principles with anarchy, raising future generations to be social justice police and allowing endless immigration without any restrictions or sending back criminals, what is the left's dream for the future?
Lil Fangs (Liberal Oppression)
There is no definitive acquisition from which history can rise without losing an inch of the height it has attained: the bourgeoisie which was the revolution became the ancien regime, and, when reflecting on the French Revolution, it identifies itself with the old ruling class. At the same time that there is historical progress, there is, therefore, a consolidation, a destruction, a trampling of history; and at the same time as a permanent revolution, there is a permanent decadence which overtakes the ruling class in proportion as it rules and endures, for by ruling it abdicates what had made it "progressive," loses its rallying power, and is reduced to the protection of private interests. Throughout history, revolutions meet one another and institutions resemble one another; every revolution is the first revolution, and every institution, even a revolutionary institution, is tempted by historical precedents. This does not mean that everything is in vain and that nothing can be done: each time the struggle is different, the minimum of demandable justice rises, and, besides, according to these very principles, conservatism is utopian. But this means that the revolution which would recreate history is infinitely distant, that there is a similarity among ruling classes insofar as they are ruling and among ruled classes insofar as they are ruled, and that, for this reason, historical advances cannot be added like steps in a staircase. The Marxists know this very well when they say that the dictatorship of the proletariat turns the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie. But then a proletarian philosophy of history holds to the miracle that the dictatorship may use the bourgeoisie's weapons without becoming something like a bourgeoisie; that a class may rule without becoming decadent when in point of fact any class which rules the whole proves to be particular by that very action; that a historical formation, the proletariat, may be established as a ruling class without taking upon itself the liabilities of the historical role; that it may accumulate and keep intact in itself all the energy of all past revolution and unfailingly give life to its institutional apparatus and progressively annul its degeneration. It is to act as if everything that historically exists were not at the same time movement and inertia, it is to place in history, as contents, on the one hand the principle of resistance (called the bourgeoisie) and on the other the principle of movement (called the proletariat), when these are the very structure of history as a passage to generality and to the institution of relationships among persons...To believe in proletarian revolution is to arbitrarily assert that history's sliding back on itself and the resurrection of past ghosts are bad dreams, that history carries within itself its own cure and will surprise us with it...One does not kill for relative progress. The very nature of revolution is to believe itself absolute and to not be absolute precisely because it believes itself to be so.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Where did this infamous character come from? His most intimate early portrait was created by Adam Smith in two major works, his 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments and his 1776 book known as The Wealth of Nations. Today Smith is best remembered for having noted the human propensity to ‘truck, barter and exchange’ and the role of self-interest in making markets work.2 But although he believed self-interest was ‘of all virtues that which is most helpful to the individual’, Smith also believed it was far from the most admirable of our traits, knocked off that top spot by our ‘humanity, justice, generosity and public spirit . . . the qualities most useful to others’. Did he consider humankind to be motivated by self-interest alone? Not at all. ‘How selfish soever man may be supposed,’ he wrote, ‘there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.’3 Furthermore, Smith believed that an individual’s self-interest and concern for others combined with their diverse talents, motivations and preferences to produce a complex moral character whose behaviour could not easily be predicted.
Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
Civil disobedience is urged not to destroy the United States but because the government is now poorly organized to achieve democracy. The aim of such a movement always will be to improve the nature of the government, to urge and counsel resistance to military Jim Crow in the interest of a higher law--the principle of equality and justice upon which real community and security depend.
Bayard Rustin (Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin)
The seemingly innocent phrase, “I don’t care if he’s black …” perfectly captures the perversion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race to connect spiritually across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste. The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass incarceration is officially colorblind.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
A familiar criticism, which we echo in part, is that justice is concerned with more than distributive principles. In addition, much of what justice comprehends lies beyond an assessment of each person’s distributive shares and includes equally concerns about the nature of the relations among persons. For example, worries about social subordination and stigma, lack of respect, lack of institutions, and social practices that adequately support capacities for attachment and self-determination also are matters of justice—for both individuals and groups.
Madison Powers (Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy (Issues in Biomedical Ethics))
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
Ibram X. Kendi (Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019)
Calhoun’s complaint was not only with Jefferson. He totally rejected the Founders’ theory of natural rights, and with it their entire constitutional system of self-government. In its place, he proposed a polity based on what he believed were scientific principles of racial hierarchy and on a view of political justice as a manifestation of will, rather than the work of human reason.
John Daniel Davidson (Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come)
The response to such behavior was mixed among BLM supporters; but for many, such violence and mayhem was not lamentable, but a sign of righteous agitation and even real progress. This is because of America’s evil societal nature. As a society built on “white supremacy,” America deserves to be targeted, demolished, and built afresh on “antiracist” principles, they say. Again, in some cases the need for such cleansing is stated metaphorically. But it is impossible to miss that in many instances, when the theory escapes the classroom, it does not land softly. As numerous examples show, teaching that “white supremacy” deserves nothing other than destruction has led to real-life consequences.27 For its unbiblical teaching and its ungodly violence, Black Lives Matter and woke activism must be rejected—by Christians, certainly, and by any citizen besides.
Owen Strachan (Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel - and the Way to Stop It)
John Quincy Adams delivered the official memorial in the House of Representatives. “Pronounce him one of the first men of his age,” Adams said, “and you have not yet done him justice… turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of every age and every clime—and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?”48 Adams went on. Lafayette discovered no new principles of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. [But] born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities, at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if inspired from above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty.
Mike Duncan (Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Age of Revolution)
While woke ideology appears as a benevolent fight for justice, it is far from that. It lures us in with an appeal to our better natures, then replaces intelligible principles with distorted ones, resulting in incoherence and chaos. p.5
Noelle Mering (Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology)
Sapiens (Sonnet 1410) Sapiens is a promise to stand grounded in people, Sapiens is a duty to stand firm on principle. Sapiens is an alarm to wake up from apathy, Sapiens is mindful revolt against inherited atrocity. Sapiens is rightful rebellion against dehumanizing intellect, Sapiens is sentient uproar against puritanism boneheaded. Sapiens is the saintly answer to the clarion call of life, True sapiens is saintly sapiens, all else is desecration of life.
Abhijit Naskar (Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets)
The golden rule introduced a principle of justice which overthrew the assumption of natural inequality. And, in Ockham’s eyes, that move is at the heart of Christian revelation. It is God’s will.
Larry Siedentop (Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism)
Summa addresses critical questions such as the nature of human reason, the principles of morality, the character of justice, the origins and limits of government, the relationship of positive law (law decreed or promulgated by political or legal institutions with the authority to do so) to natural law, and the virtues. These are the sections to which natural law scholars—religious, secular, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Aristotelian, or Muslim—interested in exploring topics like the nature and limits of state power, or the character of property, continually turn.
Samuel Gregg (The Essential Natural Law (Essential Scholars))
Nuremberg war crimes trials of the surviving leaders of the National Socialist regime. During the trial, one defense that many of the accused articulated was that everything done on their orders had been directly or indirectly sanctioned by the German state. The law was the law, and the moral rightness or wrongness of the law was consequently not relevant. The prosecution responded by maintaining that while this may have been the case, such actions were not only rendered illegal by international law, but were called into question by strong Western legal philosophical traditions which emphasized that there are indeed universal laws which no positive law (no matter how firmly sanctioned by the state) can annul. The chief Nuremberg prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson (a Justice of the United States Supreme Court and a firm believer in natural law), contended that the International Military Tribunal sought to “[rise] above the provincial and transient and [sought] guidance not only from international law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence which are assumptions of civilization and which long have found embodiment in the codes of all nations” (Jackson, 1947: part 2, 29).
Samuel Gregg (The Essential Natural Law (Essential Scholars))
In times of strife, taliban have usually mobilized in defense of tradition. British documents from as early as 1901 decry taliban opposition to colonialism in present-day Pakistan. However, as with so much else, it was the Soviet invasion and the US response that sent the transformative shock. In the 1980s, as guns and money coursed through the ranks of the Kandahar mujahedeen, squabbling over resources grew so frequent that many increasingly turned to religious law to settle their disputes. Small, informal bands of taliban, who were also battling against the Russians, established religious courts that heard cases from feuding fighters from across the south. Seemingly impervious to the lure of foreign riches, the taliban courts were in many eyes the last refuge of tradition in a world in upheaval. ... Thousands of talibs rallied to the cause, and an informal, centuries-old phenomenon of the Pashtun countryside morphed into a formal political and military movement, the Taliban. As a group of judges and legal-minded students, the Taliban applied themselves to the problem of anarchy with an unforgiving platform of law and order. The mujahedeen had lost their way, abandoned their religious principles, and dragged society into a lawless pit. So unlike most revolutionary movements, Islamic or otherwise, the Taliban did not seek to overthrow an existing state and substitute it with one to their liking. Rather, they sought to build a new state where none existed. This called for “eliminating the arbitrary rule of the gun and replacing it with the rule of law—and for countryside judges who had arisen as an alternative to a broken tribal system, this could only mean religious law. Jurisprudence is thus part of the Taliban’s DNA, but its single-minded pursuit was carried out to the exclusion of all other aspects of basic governance. It was an approach that flirted dangerously with the wrong kind of innovation: in the countryside, the choice was traditionally yours whether to seek justice in religious or in tribal courts, yet now the Taliban mandated religious law as the compulsory law of the land. It is true that, given the nature of the civil war, any law was better than none at all—but as soon as things settled down, fresh problems arose. The Taliban’s jurisprudence was syncretic, mixing elements from disparate schools of Islam along with heavy doses of traditional countryside Pashtun practice that had little to do with religion. As a result, once the Taliban marched beyond the rural Pashtun belt and into cities like Kabul or the ethnic minority regions of northern Afghanistan, they encountered a resentment that rapidly bred opposition.
Anand Gopal (No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes)
The term ‘democracy’ can have two kinds of meaning. It can refer to ways of making effective claims for a more just and egalitarian common world. Or it can refer to a mode of governing populations that employs popular consent as a means of limiting claims for greater equality and justice by dividing up the common world. Such limits are formed by acknowledging certain areas as matters of public concern subject to popular decision while establishing other fields to be administered under alternative methods of control. For example, governmental practice can demarcate a private sphere governed by rules of property, a natural world governed by laws of nature, or markets governed by principles of economics. Democratic struggles become a battle over the distribution of issues, attempting to establish as matters of public concern questions that others claim as private (such as the level of wages paid by employers), as belonging to nature (such as the exhaustion of natural resources or the composition of gases in the atmosphere), or as ruled by laws of the market (such as financial speculation). In the mid-twentieth century, this ‘logic of distribution’ began to designate a large new field of government whose rules set limits to alternative political claims: the field that became known as ‘the economy’.
Timothy Mitchell (Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil)
The Hayekian position really comes in two quite different versions, one much more sweeping than the other. In its strong version, the Hayekian argument implies that no reforms of long-standing institutions or customs should ever be undertaken, because any legal or political meddling would interfere with the natural evolution of social mores. One would thus have had to say, a century and a half ago, that slavery should not be forcibly abolished, because it was customary in almost all human societies. More recently, one would have had to say that the federal government was wrong to step in and end racial segregation instead of letting it evolve at its own pace. Obviously, neither Hayek nor any reputable follower of his would defend every cultural practice simply on the grounds that it must exist for a reason. Hayekians would point out that slavery violated a fundamental tenet of justice and was intolerably cruel. In calling for slavery’s abolition, they do what must be done if they are to be human: they establish a moral standpoint from which to judge social rules and reforms. They thus acknowledge that sometimes society must make changes in the name of fairness or decency, even if there are bound to be hidden costs. ... Hayek himself, then, was a partisan of the milder version of Hayekianism. This version is not so much a prescription as an attitude. Respect tradition. Reject utopianism. Plan for mistakes rather than for perfection. If reform is needed, look for paths that follow the terrain of custom, if possible. If someone promises to remake society on rational or supernatural or theological principles, run in the opposite direction. In sum: move ahead, but be careful.
Jonathan Rauch (Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America)
We are by nature a courageous and adaptive people. Our forebears overcame great challenges, and so will we. We are already seeing the emergence of new and innovative defenses against the assault on reason. It is my greatest hope that those who read this book will choose to become part of a new movement to rekindle the true spirit of America. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.” As John Adams wrote in 1780, ours is a government of laws and not of men. What is at stake today is that defining principle of our nation and thus the very nature of America. As the Supreme Court has written, “Our Constitution is a covenant running from the first generation of Americans to us and then to future generations.” The Constitution includes no wartime exception, though its framers knew well the reality of war. And as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded us shortly after World War I, the Constitution’s principles have value only if we apply them in the difficult times as well as in those when it matters less. The question before us could be of no greater moment: Will we continue to live as a people under the rule of law as embodied in our Constitution? Or will we fail future generations by leaving them a Constitution far diminished from the charter of liberty we have inherited from our forebears? Our choice is clear.
Al Gore (The Assault on Reason)
Government servants. These provisions are applicable only to the employees of the various Ministries, Departments and Attached and Subordinate Offices.Further, the employees, being citizens of the country also enjoy Fundamental Rights guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution and can enforce them though the Writ jurisdiction of the Courts. In addition to the constitutional provisions, there are certain rules which are applicable to the conduct of the proceedings for taking action against the erring employees. Central Civil Services (Classification, Control, and Appeal) Rules 1965 cover a vast majority of the Central Government employees.Besides, there are also several other Rules which are applicable to various sections of the employees in a number of services.(b) Semi Governmental Organisations: By this, we mean the Public Sector Undertakings and Autonomous Bodies and Societies controlled by the Government. Provisions of Part XIV of the Constitution do not apply to the employees of these Organisations.However, as these organisations can be brought within the definition of the term ‘State’ as contained in Article 12 of the Constitution, the employees of these organisations are protected against the violation of their Fundamental Rights by the orders of their employer. The action of the employer can be challenged by the employees of these organisations on the grounds of arbitrariness, etc. These organisations also have their own sets of rules for processing the cases for conducting the disciplinary proceedings against their employees.(c) Purely private organisations: These are governed by the various industrial and labour laws of the country and the approved standing orders applicable for the establishment.4. Although the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965 apply only to a limited number of employees in the Government, essentially these are the codification of the Principles of Natural Justice, which are required to be followed in any quasi judicial proceedings. Even the Constitutional protections which are contained in Part XIV of the Constitution are the codification of the above Principles.Hence, the procedures which are followed in most of the Government and semi-governmental organisations are more or less similar. This handout is predominantly based on the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965.5. Complexity of the statutory provisions, significance of the stakes involved, high proportion and frequency of the affected employees seeking judicial intervention, high percentage of the cases being subjected to judicial scrutiny, huge volume of case law on the subject - are some of the features of this subject.These, among others have sparked the need for a ready reference material on the subject. Hence this handbook2
Anonymous
q) Consultation with CVC or UPSC where necessary (r) Forward the inquiry report to the delinquent employee together with the reasons for disagreement, if any and the recommendations of the CVC where applicable - Rule 15(2) (s) Considering the response of the delinquent employee to the inquiry report and the reasons for disagreement and taking a view on the quantum of penalty or closure of the case. Rule 15(2)A (t) Pass final order in the matter – Rule 15(3) (u) On receipt of copy of the appeal from the penalized employee, prepare comments on the Appeal and forward the same to the Appellate Authority together with relevant records. - Rule 26(3) 9. What happens if any of the functions of the Disciplinary Authority has been performed by an authority subordinate to the disciplinary authority? Where a statutory function has been performed by an authority who has not been empowered to perfrom it, such action without jurisdiction would be rendered null and void. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in its Judgment dated 5 th September 2013, in Civil Appeal No. 7761 of 2013 (Union of India & Ors.Vsd. B V Gopinathan) has held that the statutory power under Rule 14(3) of the CCA rule has necessarily to be performed by the Disciplinary Authority. as under: “49. Although number of collateral issues had been raised by the learned counsel for the appellants as well the respondents, we deem it appropriate not to opine on the same in view of the conclusion that the charge sheet/charge memo having not been approved by the disciplinary authority was non est in the eye of law. ” 10. What knowledge is required for the efficient discharge of the duties in conducting disciplinary proceedings? Disciplinary Authority is required to be conversant with the following: � Constitutional provisions under Part III (Fundamental Rights) and Part XIV (Services Under the Union and the States) � Principles of Natural Justice 7
Anonymous
Blair ... argued that while he rejected doctrinaire “socialism,” he was committed to what he called “social-ism.” Blair’s hair-splitting got at an important distinction. Socialism, sprawling and inchoate as it may be, is still a doctrine. “Social-ism” is something different. It is an orientation, a way of thinking about politics and governance—it is oriented toward government control but is not monomaniacally committed to it as the be-all and end-all. Social-ism is about what activists call “social justice,” which is always “progressive” and egalitarian but not invariably statist. As a practical matter, “social-ism” works from the assumption that well-intentioned leaders and planners are both smart enough and morally obliged to, in Obama’s words, “spread the wealth around” for the betterment of the whole society in general and the underprivileged in particular. But at a far more important level, “social-ism” is a fundamentally religious impulse, a utopian yearning to create a perfect society unconstrained by the natural trade-offs of mortal life. What Blair’s doctrinal revision recognizes is that public ownership of the means of production—the central economic principle of socialism—is not necessary as long as private interests and private businesses can be compelled to follow the designated road to utopia.
Jonah Goldberg
Delgamuukw involved two bands of the Skeena region in northwest British Columbia. They wanted to challenge the governmental and legal assumptions about land ownership. The case began in 1984 and ended at the Supreme Court in 1997. The two bands did not win ownership. However, they brought the standard European-derived assumptions about the nature of ownership to a halt and opened the way for what might be fair negotiations. What is fascinating is that the government had all the written documentation it needed to win. But the court, led by Chief Justice Antonio Lamer, turned them back. The Gitxsan and the Wet’suwet’en Nations had put forward an argument of oral memory in order to prove the land was theirs. They argued that oral memory is perfectly accurate, as it is passed on from one generation to the next via individuals charged with remembering, and with doing so accurately through a formalized process. As in the Guerin decision, the Court chose to base its decision on principles far more important than any technical argument coming out of the Western tradition. The result was one of the most important rulings in the history of Canada. Alongside written proof, the Court would give equal place – and in this case what amounted to precedence – to oral memory. This argument for orality carries all of us out of the universal European narrative. In the chief justice’s eloquent judgment, he said that oral histories would be “admitted for their truth,” that the laws of evidence must therefore be adapted, that “in the circumstances, the factual findings [of the government] cannot stand.” His concluding sentences were a call for negotiations to achieve something that I can only imagine happening through a spatial approach: “… the reconciliation of the pre-existence of Aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown. Let us face it, we are all here to stay.” The crisis of 2012–2013 is a depressing reminder that the governments of Canada – federal and provincial – have stubbornly refused to accept this Supreme Court recommendation. But at least the rules are there, carefully argued and laid out, constantly repeated and developed
John Ralston Saul (The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence)
The Fundamentalist Principle: Those who know the truth should decide who is right.”22 The fundamentalist principle is the bedrock of theocracies and secular totalitarian regimes; but we also see this fundamentalist impulse in the increasingly authoritarian nature of Social Justice scholarship and activism and in its attempts to shut down criticism. This way lies totalitarianism, if fundamentalists can get themselves in power.
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
Only a person who feels he will lose will demand equality as a universal principle…People can only be equal in respect of those characteristics having the least value. Equality as a purely rational idea can never stimulate desire, will, or emotion. But resentment, in whose eyes the higher values never find favor, conceals its nature in the demand for equality. In reality, it wants nothing less than the destruction of all those who embody those higher values which arouse its anger… Just as we are not up against justice but rather up against vengeance, so we are not truly up only against proponents of equality, but also against those who hold a pathological desire for destruction.
Douglas Murray (The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason)
Never has been a LONG hortatory poem’, Pound advised John Hargrave, the leader of the Green Shirts, a militant wing of Social Credit: ‘Epic…is not incitement to IMMEDIATE act/ you tell the tale to direct the auditor toward admiration of certain nobilities, courage etc.’ Or, putting it another way, this time to Basil Bunting as a fellow poet, ‘The poet’s job is to define and yet again define till the detail of surface is in accord with the root in justice.’ Behind that lies the principle of le mot juste; but for the poet there is more to it than the accurate word; there must be justice also in the arrangement of the words and in their tones and rhythms. That sort of justice, the natural justice of language, does not come naturally. It was as much as he could do, it was like forging pokers, Pound told another young poet, Mary Barnard, ‘to get economic good and evil into verbal manifestation, not abstract, but so that the monetary system is as concrete as fate and not an abstraction’.
Anthony David Moody (Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume II: The Epic Years)
Owing to the isolation in which the agriculturist lives, and to his limited education, he is but little capable of adding anything to general civilisation or learning to estimate the value of political institutions, and much less still to take an active part in the administration of public affairs and of justice, or to defend his liberty and rights. Hence he is mostly in a state of dependence on the landed proprietor. Everywhere merely agricultural nations have lived in slavery, or oppressed by despotism, feudalism, or priestcraft. The mere exclusive possession of the soil gave the despot, the oligarchy, or the priestly caste a power over the mass of the agricultural population, of which the latter could not rid themselves of their own accord. Under the powerful influence of habit, everywhere among merely agricultural nations has the yoke which brute force or superstition and priestcraft imposed upon them so grown into their very flesh that they come to regard it as a necessary constituent of their own body, as a condition of their very existence. On the other hand, the separation and variety of the operations of business, and the confederation of the productive powers, press with irresistible force the various manufacturers towards one another. Friction produces sparks of the mind, as well as those of natural fire. Mental friction, however, only exists where people live together closely, where frequent contact in commercial, scientific, social, civil, and political matters exists, where there is large interchange both of goods and ideas. The more men live together in one and the same place, the more every one of these men depends in his business on the co-operation of all others, the more the business of every one of these individuals requires knowledge, circumspection, education, and the less that obstinacy, lawlessness, oppression and arrogant opposition to justice interfere with the exertions of all these individuals and with the objects at which they aim, so much the more perfect will the civil institutions be found, so much larger will be the degree of liberty enjoyed, so much more opportunity will be given for self-improvement and for co-operation in the improvement of others. Therefore liberty and civilisation have everywhere and at all times emanated from towns, in ancient times in Greece and Italy, in the Middle Ages in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Holland; later on in England, and still more recently in North America and France. But there are two kinds of towns, one of which we may term the productive, the other the consuming kind. There are towns which work up raw materials, and pay the country districts for these, as well as for the means of subsistence which they require, by means of manufactured goods. These are the manufacturing towns, the productive ones. The more that these prosper, the more the agriculture of the country prospers, and the more powers that agriculture unfolds, so much the greater do those manufacturing towns become. But there are also towns where those live who simply consume the rents of the land. In all countries which are civilised to some extent, a large portion of the national income is consumed as rent in the towns. It would be false, however, were we to maintain as a general principle that this consumption is injurious to production, or does not tend to promote it. For the possibility of securing to oneself an independent life by the acquisition of rents is a powertul stimulus to economy and to the utilisation of savings in agriculture and in agricultural improvements. Moreover, the man who lives on rents, stimulated by the inclination to distinguish himself before his fellow-citizens, supported by his education and his independent position, will promote, civilisation, the efficiency of public institutions, of State administration, science and art.
Friedrich List
We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as [humans] is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that’s all. Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.
Albert Camus
Reacher kept quiet. He could see where this game was going. If he said yes, he’d be expected to hurt the guy badly. Which he had no objection to in principle, but he’d prefer to do it on his own terms. If he said no, Borken would call him a coward with no sense of natural justice and no self-respect. An obvious game, with no way to win. So he kept quiet, which was a tactic he’d used a thousand times before: when in doubt, just keep your mouth shut.
Lee Child (Die Trying (Jack Reacher, #2))
In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man’s effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
The uses to which Rousseau’s doctrine has been turned are a mater for amazement and provide a striking lesson in social history. All that has been taken over from it is the magic formula, popular sovereignty, divorced both from the subject-matter to which it was applicable and from the fundamental condition of its exercise, the assembly of the people. It is now used to justify the very spate of legislation which it was its purpose to dam, and to advance the indefinite enablement of Power – which Rousseau had sought to restrict! All his school had made individual right the beginning and the end of his system. It was to be guarantee by subjecting to it at two removes the actual Power in human form, namely the executive. The executive was made subject to the law, which was kept strictly away from it, and the law was made subject to the sacrosanct principles of natural justice. The idea of the law’s subjection to natural justice has not been maintained. That of power’s subjection to the law has fared a little better, but has been interpreted in such a way that the authority which makes laws has incoporated with itself the authority which applies them; they have become united, and so the omnipotent law has raised to its highest pitch a Power which it has made omnicompetent. Rousseau’s school had concentrated on the idea of law. Their labour was in vain: all that the social consciousness has taken over from it is the association between the two conceptions, law and popular will. It is no longer accepted that a law owes its validity, as in Rousseau’s thought, should be confined to a generalized subject -matter. Its majesty was usurped by any expression of an alleged popular will. A mere juggling with meanings has brought the wheel full circle to the dictum which so digusted our philosophers: “Whatever pleases the prince shall have force of law.” The prince has changed – that is all. The collapse of this keystone has brought down the whole building. The principle of liberty has been based on the principle of law: to say that liberty consists in obedience to the laws only, presupposes in law such characteristics of justice and permanenece as may enable the citizen to know with precision the demands which are and will be made on him; the limits within which society may command him being in this way narrowly defined, he is his own master in his own prescribed domain. But, if law comes merely to reflect the caprices of the people, or of some body to which the legislative authority has been delegate, or of a faction which control that body, then obedience to the laws means in effect subjection to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of men whoch give this will the form of law. In that event the law is no longer the stay of liberty. The inner ligatures of Rousseau’s system come apart, and what was intended as a guarantee becomes a means of oppression.
Bertrand de Jouvenel (ON POWER: The Natural History of Its Growth)
...the French Revolution took away from justice the duty which it had previously performed of defending the individual against the encroachments of Power….the cribbing and cabining of justice and the baring of the individual were the work, not of the Reign of Terror, but of the Constituent Assembly. Also because this condition of things has been bequeathed by the Revolution to modern society, in which these principles are still in action. Just as the Revolution crushed any bodies whose authority was capable of limiting that of the state, so it deprived the individual of every constitutional means of making his right previal against that of the state. It worked for the absolutism of Power. The Russian Revolution offers the same contrast, but still more pronounced, between the liberty promised and the authority realized. It was not any particular Power, but Power itself, which was denounced and damned by the school of Marx and Engels, with a vigour nearly equal to that of the anarchists. In a justly celebrated pamphlet Lenin asserted that the Revolution must “concentrate all it forces against the might of the state; its task is not to improve the governmental machine but to destroy it and blot it out.
Bertrand de Jouvenel (ON POWER: The Natural History of Its Growth)
Frederick Douglass condemned the measure and said the “shame of slavery was not just the South’s, that the whole nation was complicit in it.”8 In his 1852 Independence Day address, Douglass thundered at the hypocrisy of the new laws that bol stered the spread of slavery, condemning them in the words of the Declaration of Independence: Fellow citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why I am called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessing resulting from independence to us? . . . What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals him to be more than all the days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass- fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy— a thin veil to cover up the crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloodier than the people of these United States at this very hour. Go where you may, search out where you will . . . and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Steven Dundas
Three major points are: You get probabilities, not definite answers. You don't get access to the wave function itself, but only a peek at processed versions of it. Answering different questions may require processing the wave function in different ways. Each of those three points raises big issues. The first raises the issue of determinism. Is calculating probabilities really the best we can do? The second raises the issue of many worlds. What does the full wave-function describe, when we're not peeking? Does it represent a gigantic expansion of reality, or is it just a mind tool, no more real than a dream? The third raises the issue of complementarity. To address different questions, we must process information in different ways. In important examples, those methods of processing prove to be mutually incompatible. Thus no one approach, however clever, can provide answers to all possible questions. To do full justice to reality, we must engage it from different perspectives. That is the philosophical principle of complementarity. It is a lesson in humility that quantum theory forces to our attention. We have, for example, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: You can't measure both the position and the momentum of particles at the same time. Theoretically, it follows from the mathematics of wave functions. Experimentally, it arises because measurement requires active involvement with the object being measured. To probe is to interact, and to interact is potentially to disturb. Each of these issues is fascinating, and the first two have gotten a lot of attention. To me, however, the third seems especially well-grounded and meaningful. Complementarity is both a feature of physical reality and a lesson in wisdom, to which we shall return.
Frank Wilczek (A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design)
All these peculiarities of the structure of modern tyranny, whose ugliest and extremest form was Nazism, are marked by the entire dissolution of the values and standards without which our society, or any other, cannot exist in the long run: a pernicious anaemia of morality, a cynical unconcern in the choice of means, which in the absence of firm principles become ends in themselves; a nihilistic lack of principle, and, in a word, what may be described literally as Satanism and Nihilism. Everything rots away, and finally there remains only one fixed aim of the tyranny, to which all moral principles, all promises, treaties, guarantees, and ideologies are ruthlessly sacrificed—the naked lust for domination, for the preservation of the continually threatened power, a power held on to for no other purpose than the continued enjoyment of all its fruits. [...] All the ideals and emotions blatantly appealed to—social justice, national community, peace, religion, family life, welfare of the masses, claims in the international field, the return to simpler and more natural forms of life, and so forth—prove as a rule to be nothing more than crudely-painted inter-changeable boards for the staging of mass propaganda.
Wilhelm Röpke (The German Question)
Hamilton had developed a strong aversion to slavery growing up in the West Indies, where he witnessed the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and slaves working under brutal conditions. His participation in John Laurens’s visionary emancipation plan during the war was an early example of his work for the abolition of slavery. The 1783 Peace Treaty had included a provision for the return of runaway slaves who joined with the British. Hamilton would later comment that this clause violated principles of natural justice and humanity.
Tony Williams
For the heavenly Logos, a spirit emanating from the Father and a Logos from the Logos-power, in imitation of the Father who begot Him made man an image of immortality, so that, as incorruption is with God, in like manner, man, sharing in a part of God, might have the immortal principle also. The Logos, too, before the creation of men, was the Framer of angels. And each of these two orders of creatures was made free to act as it pleased, not having the nature of good, which again is with God alone, but is brought to perfection in men through their freedom of choice, in order that the bad man may be justlypunished, having become depraved through his own fault, but the just man be deservedly praised for his virtuous deeds, since in the exercise of his free choice he refrained from transgressing the will of God. Such is the constitution of things in reference to angels and men. And the power of the Logos, having in itself a faculty to foresee future events, not as fated, but as taking place by the choice of free agents, foretold from time to time the issues of things to come; it also became a forbidder of wickedness by means of prohibitions, and the encomiast of those who remained good. And, when men attached themselves to one who was more subtle than the rest, having regard to his being the first-born, and declared him to be God, though he was resisting the law of God, then the power of the Logos excluded the beginner of the folly and his adherents from all fellowship with Himself. And so he who was made in the likeness of God, since the more powerful spirit is separated from him, becomes mortal; but that first-begotten one through his transgression and ignorance becomes a demon; and they who imitated him, that is his illusions, have become a host of demons, and through their freedom of choice have been given up to their own infatuation.
Tatian the Assyrian (Tatian's Address To The Greeks)
Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man’s effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of Spain and Gaul, where the principles of order and obedience had been extinguished by war and rebellion. Before Constantine resigned the purple, and in the fourth month of the siege of Arles, intelligence was received in the Imperial camp, that Jovinus has assumed the diadem at Mentz, in the Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of the Alani, and of Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the candidate, on whom they had bestowed the empire, advanced with a formidable host of Barbarians, from the banks of the Rhine to those of the Rhone. Every circumstance is dark and extraordinary in the short history of the reign of Jovinus. It was natural to expect, that a brave and skilful general, at the head of a victorious army, would have asserted, in a field of battle, the justice of the cause of Honorius. The hasty retreat of Constantius might be justified by weighty reasons; but he resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul; and Dardanus, the Pr?torian pr?fect, is recorded as the only magistrate who refused to yield obedience to the usurper.
Edward Gibbon (History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire 3)
The designated occasion for clearing Babylonia’s financial slate was the New Year festival, celebrated in the spring. Babylonian rulers oversaw the ritual of “breaking the tablets,” that is, the debt records, restoring economic balance as part of the calendrical renewal of society along with the rest of nature. Hammurabi and his fellow rulers signaled these proclamations by raising a torch, probably symbolizing the sun-god of justice Shamash, whose principles were supposed to guide wise and fair rulers. Persons held as debt pledges were released to rejoin their families. Other debtors were restored cultivation rights to their customary lands, free of whatever mortgage liens had accumulated.15 Over the next several thousand years, this same list—canceling the debts, destroying the records, reallocating the land—was to become the standard list of demands of peasant revolutionaries everywhere. In Mesopotamia, rulers appear to have headed off the possibility of unrest by instituting such reforms themselves, as a grand gesture of cosmic renewal, a recreation of the social universe—in Babylonia, during the same ceremony in which the king reenacts his god Marduk’s creation of the physical universe. The history of debt and sin was wiped out, and it was time to begin again. But it’s also clear what they saw as the alternative: the world plunged into chaos, with farmers defecting to swell the ranks of nomadic pastoralists, and ultimately, if the breakdown continued, returning to overrun the cities and destroy everything.
David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)
Having said that from pudor and libertas comes liberalitas, Vico does not discuss this further. Associated with the studia humanitatis, which Vico con- nects to the general meaning of humanitas, is Cicero’s term artes liberales (liberalis, relating to freedom). The liberal arts are the ‘‘humanities.’’ ‘‘Liberality’’ is the quality or state of being free, of kindness, courtesy, or generosity. If we speculatively extend Vico’s mention of liberalitas it suggests that the law, once beyond the enactment and support of rights basic to human nature, contains and promotes a humane wisdom. Law extends the original feeling of common humanity that takes shape in the basic uses of language in human society. This humane wisdom is justice, in the Platonic and humanist sense of proportion or balance in the faculties of the soul, and in the order of society. Vico adds to his principles of humanity two principles of history. He says universal history is the history of things and the history of words (rerum et verborum). Etymology is the history of words, and mythology is the first history of things (ch. 7). This establishes the detailed exposition of Varro’s obscure period of the nations that is reformulated as ‘‘poetic wisdom’’ (sa- pienza poetica) in the second book of the New Science, its longest book. Etymology, as in the Cratylus, allows us access to the original meanings of the words of languages. But at the end of the Cratylus Socrates turns from words to the things themselves. Mythologies give us the first histories, as Vico ex- plains in the Dissertationes of the third book of the Universal Law. Vico says in the New Science: ‘‘The first science to be learned should be mythology or the interpretation of fables’’ (NS 51).
Donald Phillip Verene (Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico's New Science and Finnegan's Wake)