Faith and the Dialogue of Civilizations - Part 7 of 8
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
CA
Justice and Balance: The Governing Paradigm
As a concrete example of the dialectic between some of the believing civilizations and the disbelieving material civilization, we offer their different perspectives on the idea of Justice.
Justice is the balance that governs the actions of men and women. It is the touchstone upon which men and women test their individual and collective efforts and decide whether those efforts are worthy of pursuit. Justice by itself cannot be measured. But as an attribute of the soul it imparts qualities of equity, equilibrium and proportion to human actions. It exists in the abstract until it is actualized through human volition and free will.
Justice is not merely a concept or an enunciation of principles. It includes the process of implementation and the body of codes, laws, rules and regulations that are used to ensure that justice is done. It embraces every sphere of life. It is indivisible and universal. It determines one’s relation to the self, to fellow human beings and to the world at large. Individuals and societies alike have viewed the pursuit of justice as a noble and worthy endeavor.
Justice can be defined in the positive sense or in the negative sense. In the positive sense it is those attributes of human actions that further the moral wellbeing of humankind. Conversely, it may also be defined as those attributes of human action which prevent oppression, exploitation and inequity.
In ancient times justice was in the hands of a strongman. His will, his whims and his fancies determined the fate for those around him. Those who supported him became his cohorts. Those who opposed him were summarily killed. As societies evolved into tribes and groupings the notion of the “wise and knowing” king came into being. The king became an embodiment of wisdom and justice. If the ruler was indeed fair his subjects were happy. But if he got intoxicated with power, as frequently happened, there was oppression in the land.
In the Old Testament tradition justice is used as a tool to teach individuals what is right and what is wrong. In this pedagogical sense justice becomes synonymous with righteousness and is used as a means to inculcate qualities of love, kindness and reverence.
The Greeks pursued the subject with all their rational abilities. In Plato’s Republic, nomos or the mind was king. In this kingdom, reason was the embodiment of justice. It was the privilege of the rational elite to determine what was just and what was unjust. Plato gave scant attention to procedural justice or the imperative of laws. The judicial structure that he proposed was inherently undemocratic and non-egalitarian. It prescribed a hierarchical society in which the thinking elite were at the top and the common man was at the mercy of this elite.
It was left to Aristotle to propose a proper balance between the philosophy of justice and its implementation through laws. Where Plato exalted justice and overlooked the importance of law, Aristotle construed justice through the working of law. He was also deeply aware of the risks in leaving the implementation of justice to a “wise and noble” king. “He who commands that law should rule”, he wrote, “may thus be regarded as commanding that God and reason alone should rule. He who commands that a man should rule adds the character of the beast”.
In parts of South Asia justice takes on a cosmic aura based on the existing social structure. Society is divided into castes and one’s position in life is determined by the caste that one is born into. The exploitation of the lower castes by the upper castes is sanctioned by the doctrine of karma which implies that your present station in life is the result of your actions in your previous incarnation. There is no appeal to this cosmic order preordained by the gods.
The Buddha rejected the doctrine of karma as a justification for the caste system and its inherent exploitation. In the Buddhist tradition a person struggles through successive reincarnations towards a higher ethical self. The noble deeds of one lifetime reflect in a higher ethical status in the next life. The elevation of man through successively higher ethical states continues until he attains nirvana.
In the writings of medieval European thinkers, one sees a dichotomy between justice as applied to matters of conscience and justice as applied to human transactions. One of the giants of the era, Thomas Aquinas, proposed a dual approach to the implementation of justice. Laws that challenged the authority of the church were to be opposed. Laws that violated individual rights were “not binding on the conscience” but nonetheless were to be obeyed in the interests of social peace. The Church was sovereign in matters of faith. The king was sovereign in matters of individual rights and social responsibilities. In this manner, Western thought accepted the same ambiguous duality in matters relating to the application of justice as it did in matters relating to science and philosophy.
As Western civilization expanded its influence around the globe and became a global civilization, people in other parts of the globe accepted similar assumptions about their condition. As a result the sciences as they are taught today are bereft of ethical values. Modern man relates to nature and to the world of man with no allegiance to a universal value system. Having left God behind in the confines of the church modern man embarks on a philosophical journey, assuming that everything that is outside of the church is profane. Thus nature is stripped of spiritual content. Science has no ethical value. Technology becomes the unbridled exploitation of the earth’s resources. Statecraft becomes an exercise in self-interest. Justice becomes merely an expression of social necessity, to be used when it is convenient and abandoned when that need no longer exists.
Since the twelfth century the development of social and natural sciences in the West has been essentially secular. Having lost the anchor of religion, Western thought grasped the rope offered by the Greeks and embarked on its intellectual journey. In the last two hundred years, as the West imposed its will on the globe, these same assumptions were adopted by other civilizations. Today there is nothing to distinguish sociology and science as they are taught in Singapore or Los Angeles. Modern man therefore looks upon the world as essentially godless and profane. The speculative genius of the Greeks backed by the empirical approach of the West has brought the world untold riches. But it has also left humankind impoverished in its soul, unsure of itself and its place in the cosmos. Man feels alone, alienated from the universe, wandering in the darkness of space, full of anxiety, without a friend and without an anchor.
Modern man has thus created a prison of his own making. First he isolated himself from nature, making the assumption that the sciences were secular, and stripped them of emotions, feelings, color and passion. Then he placed his future at the mercy of his own speculative genius. As a consequence he found himself alone in the cosmos wandering in concentric circles of ignorance about the nature of his true self. Centuries later, he found the ghosts of Hegel, Darwin and Karl Marx.
The fundamental question is this: Can man find the truth about himself without guidance from his Creator? Modern man has made the assumption that he can. He relegated revealed Truths to personal faith and opened up all others spheres – physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, sociology, history – to his own inquiry and speculation. This led him to “The Age of Reason”, “The Humanist Movement”, “The Communist Movement”, and a host of other movements. (Continued next week)
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