As For Justice...

According to my philosophy dictionary, the Sophists were the first philosophers to bring philosophy into the social arena. They were the first to get paid to teach philosophy, and the first to train people for the role of social leadership and administration (a.k.a. politics). They were also the ones who gave us our modern definition of justice in the social context. The Sophists were a 5th century B.C. group of famous teachers in Athens, Greece, and contemporaries of the likes of Plato and Aristotle, who also heavily influenced our modern understanding of justice.

The Sophists most notably distinguished justice as having primarily two forms: conventional, and natural. Conventional justice is what commonly passes for justice in ordinary social contexts. It primarily serves the interests of the strong (those in power), while pretending to provide "justice" for the weak in order to keep them willingly subservient (see Thrasymachos e.g.).

George Orwell illustrates the double standard of conventional justice in his book "1984", where he coined the term "double speak" to refer to the way those in power twist the meaning of words in order to render them philosophically weak and useless. Thus terms like, "justice for all", which is philosophical nonsense (i.e. a contradictory and impossible idea), is used to help keep the weak-minded masses - the "herd", as later philosophers refer to it - from being able to contemplate meaningfully and hence question "authority" (the ones who provide "justice for all", but really provide nothing except justice for themselves, or "just-us" justice).

This is what the Sophists taught to those who were to take power in ancient Greece. Of course politics today is no more than a bizarre puppet show, where the puppets themselves are weak-minded automatons who really believe they have power when they clearly have none (i.e. they are either completely delusional - as in most cases - or extremely egoistic attention seekers; or both). The ones who pull the strings these days do so from behind the scenes, never daring to expose their power, knowing that as soon as they do it will be taken from them, often by the sheep herd itself (which is what the Nazis were trying to prevent, but obviously failed in their own hubris - i.e. they had a valid idea, but not the power to do anything about it - they were weakened by the very "sickness" they sought to eradicate: self-righteous self-perception).

Essentially, according to the Sophists, justice is the interest of power. So conventional justice (a.k.a "modern justice", a.k.a. "social justice", etc.) is an illusion, or literally a kind of false justice that those in power pull over the eyes of the sheep as a means of wielding the power that they invoke in their own interest. To the Sophists, this deception was nothing less than a means of natural justice. Conventional (or false) "justice", is a lie that allows those in power to invoke natural (or true) "justice", for themselves. The truth is that real justice - natural justice, that is - can never be given, or provided, especially not by any systematic or institutional means. It can only be taken by the one who seeks it!

So, the next time someone tells you that it is wrong to take justice into your own hands, realize that what they say is just doublespeak meant to keep you weak and subservient to those in power. The truth is that there is no place else where justice belongs but in your own hands. Justice given is really just-us (those in power) taking the power of justice away.

[J.D. July 12, 2019]