Political philosophy. A Very Short Introduction by A Very Short Introduction

Author:A Very Short Introduction [Introduction, A Very Short]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0192803956
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-10-04T18:13:23+00:00

Chapter 5

Justice

Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government has no place for the figure of Liberty, for reasons that we saw in the previous chapter, but Justice appears not just once but twice. She is one of the virtuous figures ranged alongside the good ruler, but she also appears separately, at the very heart of the fresco, a majestic figure seated alone between the two groups of figures representing good and bad government respectively. Why did Lorenzetti paint Justice twice? I think he wanted to convey the idea that justice is more than simply a virtue that rulers should possess: it is fundamental to the institutions that turn a mass of individuals into a political community in the first place. Lorenzetti’s main figure holds a pair of scales, and from each of these a rope descends to the figure of Concord, who braids them into a thicker cord that then passes round the long line of citizens and up to the hand of the ruler. Justice, Lorenzetti is implying, binds the citizens one to another, and then all of them together to government. In this, he was following in a long-standing tradition which viewed justice as central to the justification of political authority. As St Augustine had asked, nearly a millennium earlier, ‘justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?’

Saying that justice is of cardinal importance to good government is one thing; saying what justice really means is quite another, and this is the question that will occupy us throughout this chapter. One 74

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