p19st Justice

Justice and the Investigation of Reality, Part One

By John Taylor; 2007 Nov 16, 13 Qudrat, 164 BE

In this series of essays, begun in January of 2007, we have been considering justice. Although we tend not think of justice as a Baha'i principle, it is certainly one of the most fundamental and indispensable of all. Perhaps we do not notice it for the same reason that when we look at someone in the street wearing a tee-shirt we tend to notice its shape and color, or we may read the message written on it, but rarely do we ask what of what material it is made, whether it is cotton, wool or polyester. Justice, that is, is so woven into the fabric of principle that it becomes invisible.

In what was covered so far we have considered definitions of what justice is and how it applies to the Oneness of God and other spiritual principles, such as power of the Holy Spirit, covenant and love. Now is a good time to turn to the social principles. As always, we will systematically walk through each of the dozen odd Baha'i social principles. Today let us look at justice and search for truth, proceeding more or less chronologically.

 The principle of search for truth is nothing more nor less than justice in the individual. Personal life reflects justice insofar as it intersperses mediation, reflection and self-assessment into daily life. Justice is investigating reality by establishing feedback between reflection and experience. Chinese teachers understood and taught this as forcefully as any world tradition. Confucius, for instance, records in the Analects,

 "The philosopher Tsang said, `I daily examine myself on three points: -whether, in transacting business for others, I may have been not faithful; -whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere; -whether I may have not mastered and practiced the instructions of my teacher.'" (Analects, 1:7)

 Once one lives up to these three inner requirements of an examined life, faithfulness, sincerity and tractability, the next step is to lay the fruits of service before the powers that be, for service is truth, and truth service. Confucius taught that the first requirement when standing before authority is so to order one's existence as to be able in such a situation to speak truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

 "Tsu-lu asked about the way to serve a lord.  The Master said, `Make sure that you are not being dishonest with him when you stand up to him.'" (Analects, 14:22)

 Aristotle thought along the same lines when, asked what he gained from the study of philosophy, he answered, "(I learned) to do, without being commanded, what others do from fear of the laws." (Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, C.D. Yonge, tr.) Similarly, the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius admonished himself,

 "Neither in writing nor in reading wilt thou be able to lay down rules for others before thou shalt have first learned to obey rules thyself. Much more is this so in life." (Meditations, 11:29)

 This new understanding of justice as truth's inner command, as a process of voluntarily internalizing the highest requirements of law and right, is characteristic of those geniuses from around the world who sprung up in the Axial age, about five hundred years BCE. For instance, Plato in the Symposium vividly recounts Socrates' story of being taught in his youth the principle of love by Diotima. She held that love is not a god himself because he lacks all good, but he joins with the good by his lack mixed with longing and desire for the good. This attraction between highest and the lowest, divine and material links otherwise polar opposites. Justice is itself an axial principle that mediates personal and social, divine and human.

 Plato, in his great work on justice, The Republic, explained how justice revolutionizes the world of external appearances by a process of education. To teach this he used his famous parable of the den or cave. To be unjust is to sit back and watch a false, contrived shadow play on a cave wall, and to imagine that is all there is to reality. But to be just is to turn away, to escape and join in the self-contemplation of the divine. The just walk out of a dark, shadowy world and see the sun of the good. They break free from the chains of tyrannical illusions. This is painful and causes temporary blindness, and invites violent reaction from the ignorant shadow puppeteers, who have a vested interest in the Status Quo. But Plato stressed that justice is not just going out into the daylight for a direct, intense vision of reality, rather it is turning around, going back into the cave to rescue the majority, who remain enslaved to falsity. It is the mixture of individual enlightenment with social reform.

 The Platonist school of philosophy emphasized Plato's idealistic side, his definition of man as one who participates in self-contemplation of the divine, as the Good reflected in our reflection, and popularized it across the Greco-Roman world. For instance Plotinus wrote,

 "Of things carrying their causes within, none arises at hazard or without purpose... All that they have comes from the Good; the Supreme itself, then, as author of reason, of causation, and of causing essence -- all certainly lying far outside of chance -- must be the Principle and as it were the exemplar of things, thus independent of hazard: it is, the First, the Authentic, immune from chance, from blind effect and happening: God is cause of Himself; for Himself and of Himself He is what He is, the first self, transcendently The Self." (Plotinus, Six Enneads, 14)

 It can be seen that the best aspects of this, consciously or not, came out of the Jewish tradition and its teaching that God is no absentee landlord but a loving, concerned, involved Being Who creates man in His own image. According to this, justice demands complete involvement and immersion in the divine Law.

 "I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad. O how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day." (Ps 119:96-97) "I will meditate in thy statutes." (Ps 119:48)

 Unlike for Platonists, the Jewish idea of contemplation of the divine did not confine itself to cogitation and theory but is primarily concerned with moral obligation, with the responsibility that reflection entails. "From man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an accounting." (Gen 9:5) For the first time, Jewish law restricted legal responsibility to the individual; one could only be put to death for his own crimes, not those of a son, father or other family member (Deut 24:16).

 Similarly, reflection was understood as a social as well as personal activity. It should not be undertaken only in isolation but in groups, for example at holy day celebrations, and as part of the work week (the Sabbath), as well as in work. Each must have a career, producing independence and beneficial service. "Ye shall eat of the fruit of the labour of your hands." (Ps. 128) Creation was understood essentially as an act of love that demands of those who contemplate that they strive to love and forgive others, as God loved and forgave them.

 "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD." (Lev 19:18)

 The self-assessment of personal search, essential as is to progress, cannot end in perfection, as God's self-contemplation does. Our personal perspective will always be flawed. "He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him." (Prov 18:17) Thus the examined life is enhanced and perfected by social interaction and regular contact with other seekers. This was fulfilled in the prophesy that the first shall be last, and the last first. We shall look at the contribution of the Christian revelation to our understanding of justice and search next time.