A Socratic Question and Polemarchic Answer
What is Justice?
This is the question at the heart of so much of the Western canon. Since the days of Socrates, philosophers and politicians have been giving their answers.
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas have all done their very best to give an answer to this question.
As it turns out, it's not a very easy question to answer (particularly without an appeal to an objective, immaterial, transcendent foundation to Justice).
Strangely enough, despite the immense difficulty of knowing what is just and what isn't, I hear "calls for justice" all the time.
"Justice for Lindsay!" "Justice for Trump!" "Justice for the people of Ukraine!"
"Justice for George Floyd."
Everyone seems to be clamoring for justice these days, and while I certainly think the intentions are good, I wonder whether any of us even know what we are clamoring for.
What does it mean to "get justice" for someone? Unfortunately for many, they have not any inclination to ask that question of themselves.
Better to keep chanting along with everyone else — surely someone knows what we're talking about, right?
Yet, this is one of the most important questions you could learn to ask if our schools weren't so busy cramming your head full of total nonsense.
It is also the central question of Book I of Plato's Republic, and I think it sheds some light on our predicament in America.
Most people don't think of Plato when they think of the American Justice system, but in fact we can find the American answer to the "Justice" question without reading very far.
A few pages in, we arrive at a dialogue between Socrates and a young man named Polemarchus.
They are discussing the question "what is Justice?" and Polemarchus gives his answer:
"That it is just to render to each his due."
Believe it or not, this is more or less what became the Western notion of Justice, even though Socrates doesn't agree with Polemarchus entirely.
It is a very practical answer, not nearly principled enough for Plato. You can reduce the question further by asking how you know what each is due and whether it applies in cases of justice etc. etc.
Overtime though, Western Civilization has tended to agree with Polemarchus (and Aristotle and Aquinas and so on).
That is because (unfortunately for Plato) we do not live in a Utopia. There is no Nirvana in this world. Injustice will never be rooted out by some Philosopher King.
We have to aim for something else.
Justice In America
Instead, we can aim to establish laws based on universal morality and punish those who violate those laws, protecting the innocent in the process.
Legal systems of the West, therefore, have tended to be proscriptive in many ways rather than prescriptive.
This is a generalization, of course. There are many prescriptive aspects of Western legal systems, but most of what we think of "LAW" in America is proscriptive.
Criminal law, for example, tends to be proscriptive (meaning we tell people what not to do and punish them if they do it).
Whereas our prescriptive laws tend to be civil (meaning we tell people what to do and punish them if they don't do it — such as employee safety regulations).
So "justice" in the American system historically meant giving everyone their "due" — criminals deserve to be punished proscriptively, and everyone deserves a certain amount of dignity which we secure prescriptively.
That has been the system of justice in this country since its founding, and it had precedence in the European system long before that.
Injustice is when that doesn't occur. Injustice is not when laws are broken — it is when laws are not enforced.
Crimes are what happens when laws are broken, injustice is what happens when crimes are not punished.
So, for example, Black Lives Matter feels that certain laws are not enforced when it comes to the death of young black men at the hands of police officers (evidently white or otherwise).
Put differently, certain crimes go unpunished when it comes to the death of black men at the hands of police officers.
That is an injustice. If murderers go free after committing murders, then it is an injustice.
What is not an injustice is a murder. A murder is a crime. If someone murders you and is let go the next day, that is an injustice.
If he murders you and spends the rest of his life in prison for it, then that is actually justice. He is getting what he deserves.
George Floyd and His Justice
Thankfully for BLM, then, we can now say with great certainty that what happened to George Floyd was not an injustice.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the lead ex-officer responsible for the death of Mr. Floyd, Derek Chauvin, is serving nearly 23 years in prison.
He will be nearly 70 years old when he is finished serving his sentence.
The other two officers holding down Mr. Floyd have also been sentenced to several years in prison after they pled guilty to their wrongdoing.
But all this happened a few years ago, as I am sure everyone knows from all the peaceful marches celebrating the fact that the country wasn't systemically racist afterall, right?
Finally, this week, we have nearly closed the chapter on George Floyd's murder as the last remaining officer — who held off the crowd — was found guilty of aiding and abetting second degree manslaughter.
Tou Thao, the former Minneapolis police officer, will be sentenced on Aug. 7th.
He will likely serve several years in prison himself, and of course, will never be allowed to serve on a police force again.
The officers involved in Floyd's death violated a series of laws both proscriptive and prescriptive.
They killed a man unjustly, and they failed to act in ways becoming of police officers. They have been found guilty as such.
So, I would ask of BLM sympathizers, where is the failure of justice? Where is the supposed system of injustice?
It is not an injustice that Floyd was killed. It was evil, to be sure, but not an injustice. All the evildoers were punished, so why the protests?
In the name of what exactly, did BLM burn, loot, and destroy mostly black-owned neighborhoods?
In the name of what exactly, were countless crimes committed and many more people killed?
In the name of what exactly, were people beaten and robbed? Stabbed and shot? Assaulted, looted, mugged, spit-on, and cursed-at?
I surmise, and I suggest to you, that it was in the name of NOTHING.
Real Injustice
The sick irony — obvious to anyone who isn't drinking the kool-aid of left-leaning race narratives — is that numerous injustices occurred in the wake of Floyd's death.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of crimes were committed in the name of "social justice" that went unpunished. Where is the justice for those victims?
Cities refused to enforce many laws in the riots that followed Floyd's death, and that is the real injustice.
Someday perhaps the leaders of BLM will face justice for the crimes they incited, but evidently that day is not anytime soon.
At the very least, now that is so obviously clear for anyone who cares about the truth that Floyd's death was no injustice, perhaps BLM will join conservatives in protesting the crimes committed without punishment in states like CA and NY.
Perhaps they will join conservatives in the injustice of not enforcing border laws?
Perhaps they will join conservatives in the injustice of not enforcing drug laws, which disproportionately hurt blacks?
I won't hold my breath.
As always, thanks for reading!
Further Reading
Republic by Plato
Great article! I love reading about your philosophical insights into current events, and I feel like this one was even better than usual. Really good balance struck here between the philosophical grounding and the discussion of the current event.