Episode
Ep. 39 Marcel Guarnizo: What is Justice
- Podcast
- The Moral Imagination
- Published
- Apr 13, 2022
- Duration seconds
- 6878
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-moral-imagination-1176352/episodes/ep-39-marcel-guarnizo-what-is-justice/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-moral-imagination-1176352/ep-39-marcel-guarnizo-what-is-justice.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
What is Justice? What do we owe to each other? The theme of justice is core issue of all human societies and pervades myth and philosophy. Plato’s Republic and Gorgias are reflections on justice and the right ordering of the soul and society. So is Aristotle’s Politics. The Hebrew Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius, the writings of Buddhism, and the Stoics all contain reflections on justice. C.S. Lewis notes in his appendix to the Abolition of Man that in every land and every culture there is a “Tao,” a way of being in the world that affirms what is good and condemns what is bad. Despite the universal hungering for justice, injustice seems to be the way of man. Against Plato stands Thrasymachus and Callicles, the tyrant and the sophist who want to reduce justice to power. In this episode I speak with Marcel Gaurnizo about the nature of justice. We discuss the definition of justice — giving each what is due. We discuss how justice is not simply a social or political condition but a human virtue that requires a consistent act of the will. Marcel explains how the shift from metaphysical view of justice to political justice opens the door to the dictatorship and tyranny of the majority or injustice through procedural methods. We discuss the Plato’s story of the ring of Gyges which makes the wearer invisible just like Bilbo and Frodo in the Lord of the Rings — and thus free from any punishment. Would we have strength to do the right thing even if we would never get in trouble for doing what is wrong? As Marcel notes, the ring of Gyges is all around us. There are many things that are legal—that we will not be punished for — but which are evil and unjust. Marcel also walks us through different species of justice — commutative (exchange) and distributive. He ex…