Comenius's Ideas on Justice
By John Taylor; 2009 Mar 09, 'Ala 08, 165 BE
In its banner quote for the day the New York Times recently quoted President Obama as saying, "Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan. I don't have that luxury, and I don't think the American people do either." Not only are the crises threatening us multiple, they also are extreme, requiring a complete about face. In the same edition of the Times, an editorial asks:
"What if the crisis of 2008 represents something more fundamental than a recession, and 2008 was when we hit the wall -- when Mother Nature and the market both said: `No more.' What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall?" (Thomas Friedman, "The Inflection Is Near?," http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html)
Another article describes how much worse the debt crisis is in Europe than America. East European countries borrowed such vast sums that their currencies are plummeting, there is rioting in the streets and the entire Italian banking system is being dragged down too. Nobody can seriously expect such new problems, not to mention already existing ones, like hatred between peoples and tensions among nuclear-armed nations, worsening global warming and a thousand others to just go away on their own.
We need to save ourselves, both as individuals and as groups. Yes, we need a stronger hand on the world level, including a world government, but we also need the full participation of every world citizen. The Badi' blog is written to encourage reflection on how coordinated individual and planet-wide planning might work.
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The surest basis for peace and change is justice. Plato's defined justice as "knowing what is yours." The parable of the talents intensifies this, since it imposes upon this learning and personal growth as an additional obligation to God. Since abilities start off hidden and take years to develop, justice involves a long-term commitment to progress, personal and social.
For an individual to be just, then, is to understand what is his or hers by following a calling. But the obligation to express talents and virtues in some service, trade or profession does not stop at that. Justice also involves how we spend the gains from our work. A just person supports, first of all, a family or household, as well as broader social projects.
So, on the most basic level, "Knowing what is yours" is pursuing a trade or profession, spending the gains there-from to support a family or household. This duty of justice applies to groups and institutions just as much. They also must know their role, stick to it and never take a step beyond. On the widest level, a world government would be just only if it sticks to its main concern, international peace. It cannot go beyond that by, for example, setting up a tyranny or becoming arbitrary or totalitarian.
As long as all individuals are just, there can never be injustice on the institutional level. The fact that it is rare, if ever for a person to be perfectly, absolutely just is the reason we need laws and institutions in the first place. Working together, groups and individuals can reinforce each other's knowledge of their place and what it is to be just.
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We have seen that Comenius sums up the obligation to be just as not singular, but rather as a tripartite duty. I am to know what is mine, yes, but there are three aspects to self, body, spirit and mind. I should therefore be "something," "nothing" and "everything."
Work and service make me "something" in relation to society. My dedication to God makes my will "nothing" in relation to His. Following the Christian teaching to be wholly born again, I am "everything" in my determination to reform my inner motives completely. Reform, then, must be true, orderly and total. In the last part of the Words of Wisdom, Baha'u'llah similarly speaks of justice as freeing the self from imitation, discerning with the "eye of oneness" and looking into "all things with a searching eye."
Justice is the basis of lasting reform, and it too needs to be "something, nothing and everything," "something," when we are gainful members of society, "... do your best to be SOMETHING, that is, to fulfil your own vocation without presuming to go beyond it." In this Platonic meaning of justice, when each member is just, society can be as unified as the parts of a healthy tree. The organization of humanity would be complete, with each part happy with the whole, and the whole working for the benefit of each part.
"For if you think of a Tree, the root does not quarrel with the trunk, nor the trunk with the branches, nor the branches with one another, on the question of priority or superiority. Each individual part keeps to its position and makes every possible contribution to maintaining itself as a whole and also the other parts, just like the limbs in the body and the stones and beams in a building." (Panorthosia, Ch. 20, para 17, p. 26)
Baha'u'llah uses the same analogy in "ye are all the leaves of one tree" to join the principle of investigation of reality with the oneness of humanity. Comenius puts it like this: "But mankind, like any kingdom, state, church, school, or family, is just the same as one tree, and one body, and one house, consisting of its own parts." Justice, then, forges a contract where organization is so perfect that the part is content with the whole, and the whole with the part. This allows each individual to be wholly content and removes any need for the arrogance and ambition that otherwise rots out this relationship.
"Position should therefore be a matter of indifference to you, or rather you should have the fixed intention to stay exactly where they post you and perform the duties of your own post without looking round for another one. Thus you will be a living branch of a tree, a live member of the body, and well-squared stone for the building of the house of God." (para 17, p. 26)
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