From mythical diké to rational dikaiosýne: the genesis and development of the concept of justice in Anciente Greece

Abstract

Much of the Western theoretical framework has its origins in Greco-Roman thought. This article will present and discuss one of the manifestations that Greek thought transmitted to the West: its conceptions of justice. Our main intention is to present and discuss how and when the Greek term Diké (justice) was replaced by the term Dikaiosýne to designate fair action in the city (Pólis) in a long process of social, political, economic and cultural transformations that Greek society underwent between the 8th and 5th centuries BC. To do so, we started with the appearance of the mythological terms Thémis and Diké, present in the poetry of Homer and Hesiod, designating divine justice, passing through the modification of divine Diké to cosmological Diké in the first philosophers, the so-called pre-Socratic thinkers, to finally, arrive at the notion of Dikaiosýne, justice in Plato and Aristotle as just action of the soul (Psyché) in the city (Pólis). Thus, it is clear that, in order to understand the emergence and development of the notion of justice in ancient Greece and its legacy to the West, it is necessary to understand the influence of myths, of this literature specifically related to the concept of justice, as well as the reception and interpretation given to myths by philosophy, especially with the formulation of philosophy by Plato and Aristotle. So, we can say that the understanding of the concept of justice and its application in the West lies in the passage from the mythological terms of Thémis and Diké to the conception of a cosmological Diké in the thought of the pre-Socratics and from this to the term Dikaiosýne in Plato and Aristotle as fair actions in the city (Polis) as an effect of the existence of a soul (Psyché) which is also just in the individual.