Periodic Reporting for period 3 - JustCity (The Just City: The Ciceronian Conception of Justice and Its Reception in the Western Tradition)
Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-03-31
Justice is one of the most fundamental concepts both in abstract discussions of political theory and in political practice. Most contemporary approaches to the idea of justice take as their point of departure relatively recent elaborations of justice, the most well-known of which presumably are John Rawls’ theory of justice and Robert Nozick’s libertarian answer to Rawls. But there is a rich history of thinking about justice that goes back at least to classical antiquity, and this deep history of justice provides a kind of hidden background to more recent theories such as those of Rawls or Nozick. Other basic political ideas, such as the concepts of democracy, of liberty, or of popular sovereignty, have received more historical scrutiny in more or less recent times. A great number of contemporary scholars have contributed to elucidate the rich historical background of ideas about democracy or liberty. Justice, however, is arguably even more fundamental a concept than either of those and seems to trump other values once the requirements of justice are seen to conflict with them. Our inquiry will thus be relevant to normative political theory, but it also has the potential to shed light on issues of interest to the social sciences. This is so because ideas about justice have historically played a fundamental role in the design and justification of legal orders, while a large proportion of mainstream social science takes legal order simply for granted. A lot of economics, for example, presupposes the existence of stable political and legal order with governments that define property rights and enforce laws in a predictable manner. The long-term historical investigation of ideas about justice we envisage has therefore the potential to shed light on what much of social science, focused on the hitherto politically stable societies of the post-war West, has been taking as an exogenous given: the conditions that make a just political and legal order possible in the first place. The Roman concept of justice that is the focus of our project is particularly suitable in this regard given the centrality it accords to law and legal order.
With a focus on Cicero’s conception of justice and its lasting intellectual legacy, the JustCity research project delves into one of the most innovative and influential, yet widely neglected contributions the history of Western political thought has to offer. Not only does Cicero’s law-centred conception of justice, both within and between states, mark a significant departure from the virtue-centred conceptions of justice typical for earlier, Greek theories, it also paved the way for what has come to be known as the constitutionalist tradition in political thought, as well as for the emergence of natural and international law in early modern Europe. In order to fully appreciate its massive impact in the long term, the project will trace Cicero’s conception of justice as it is first and foremost expressed in the famous Carneadean debate in the Republic through four historical inflection points: (i) its inception in the late Roman Republic; (ii) its transmission by the Christian writers Lactantius and Augustinus; (iii) its use by Alberico Gentili and other early modern thinkers engaged in debates on international politics and the law of nations; (iv) its effect on 18th century Enlightenment thought, as mediated by early 17th century natural law theorists. In connecting these four inflection points, which designate the four main themes of the project, JustCity pursues a longue durée intellectual history of one of the most fundamental and controversial concepts of Western political thought. The project is methodologically innovative and shows how the reception of classical antiquity can be operationalized and made fruitful for a long-term perspective in the history of ideas.
Our project seeks to explore the novelty of Cicero’s conception of justice vis-à-vis his Greek predecessors; how Ciceronian justice relates to other key legacies of classical political thought such as republicanism and Roman law; and how it was historically influential over the very long term. Cicero gives criteria of justice for political orders. But Cicero’s justice also explains the stability of political orders and of how people come to agree on their principles and cooperate; justice is the cement of order, as it were. For Cicero, you cannot have justice without the state – but you cannot have a state without justice either. Cicero’s justice is original in several ways. It is very much focused on the protection of political due process and private property rights. Justice is no longer primarily seen as a virtue or character trait but as a system of enforceable legal rights. While Aristotle’s focus had been on distributive justice, Cicero turns Aristotelian distributive justice into mere unenforceable beneficence. This departure from distributive justice was, for better or worse, historically very influential. Lastly, Cicero’s justice is international and explicitly meant to apply to relations between city-states, and to the justice, or lack thereof, of imperialism. It is also meant to apply to non-citizens.
The project is grounded in shared source corpora and profits from new critical reconstructions of bk. 3 of Cicero’s Republic, new text editions and a veritable surge of scholarly interest in Roman political thought and Roman law and society. To provide focus, we harness the study of classical reception to long-term intellectual history. Cicero’s long-term impact cannot be accounted for in terms of the orthodox view, promoted by the so-called Cambridge school, that there is no such thing as context-invariant concepts and ideas, which is why concepts and ideas can only ever be understood in their specific historical context. Given the methodological incoherence of the Cambridge school view, a new approach is needed, perhaps best called ‘analytic contextualism’, which does not reduce thought to context and appreciates the causal effect of concepts in history. We hope to achieve a reinterpretation of the intellectual history of justice in the West, based on the rediscovery of Cicero’s neglected theory. This deep and long history may reveal a new understanding of the foundations of democracy; it will expose underlying common denominators of current conceptions of justice; and it will inspire thinking on the empirical consequences of justice, transitional justice, and economic justice.
With a focus on Cicero’s conception of justice and its lasting intellectual legacy, the JustCity research project delves into one of the most innovative and influential, yet widely neglected contributions the history of Western political thought has to offer. Not only does Cicero’s law-centred conception of justice, both within and between states, mark a significant departure from the virtue-centred conceptions of justice typical for earlier, Greek theories, it also paved the way for what has come to be known as the constitutionalist tradition in political thought, as well as for the emergence of natural and international law in early modern Europe. In order to fully appreciate its massive impact in the long term, the project will trace Cicero’s conception of justice as it is first and foremost expressed in the famous Carneadean debate in the Republic through four historical inflection points: (i) its inception in the late Roman Republic; (ii) its transmission by the Christian writers Lactantius and Augustinus; (iii) its use by Alberico Gentili and other early modern thinkers engaged in debates on international politics and the law of nations; (iv) its effect on 18th century Enlightenment thought, as mediated by early 17th century natural law theorists. In connecting these four inflection points, which designate the four main themes of the project, JustCity pursues a longue durée intellectual history of one of the most fundamental and controversial concepts of Western political thought. The project is methodologically innovative and shows how the reception of classical antiquity can be operationalized and made fruitful for a long-term perspective in the history of ideas.
Our project seeks to explore the novelty of Cicero’s conception of justice vis-à-vis his Greek predecessors; how Ciceronian justice relates to other key legacies of classical political thought such as republicanism and Roman law; and how it was historically influential over the very long term. Cicero gives criteria of justice for political orders. But Cicero’s justice also explains the stability of political orders and of how people come to agree on their principles and cooperate; justice is the cement of order, as it were. For Cicero, you cannot have justice without the state – but you cannot have a state without justice either. Cicero’s justice is original in several ways. It is very much focused on the protection of political due process and private property rights. Justice is no longer primarily seen as a virtue or character trait but as a system of enforceable legal rights. While Aristotle’s focus had been on distributive justice, Cicero turns Aristotelian distributive justice into mere unenforceable beneficence. This departure from distributive justice was, for better or worse, historically very influential. Lastly, Cicero’s justice is international and explicitly meant to apply to relations between city-states, and to the justice, or lack thereof, of imperialism. It is also meant to apply to non-citizens.
The project is grounded in shared source corpora and profits from new critical reconstructions of bk. 3 of Cicero’s Republic, new text editions and a veritable surge of scholarly interest in Roman political thought and Roman law and society. To provide focus, we harness the study of classical reception to long-term intellectual history. Cicero’s long-term impact cannot be accounted for in terms of the orthodox view, promoted by the so-called Cambridge school, that there is no such thing as context-invariant concepts and ideas, which is why concepts and ideas can only ever be understood in their specific historical context. Given the methodological incoherence of the Cambridge school view, a new approach is needed, perhaps best called ‘analytic contextualism’, which does not reduce thought to context and appreciates the causal effect of concepts in history. We hope to achieve a reinterpretation of the intellectual history of justice in the West, based on the rediscovery of Cicero’s neglected theory. This deep and long history may reveal a new understanding of the foundations of democracy; it will expose underlying common denominators of current conceptions of justice; and it will inspire thinking on the empirical consequences of justice, transitional justice, and economic justice.
Successful recruitment of research team members and a scientific project manager (months 1-6); the team consists of four researchers with a 70% contract each, rather than three full-time researchers as initially planned (funded with additional funds from UZH’s ERC award); relocation of all team members to Zurich and setting up a shared workplace including all necessary equipment at Zurich University premises (months 7-9, relocation slightly delayed due to Covid situation); establishing of relevant sources and bibliographic material (months 8-10); the team members have taken up research by reading and analysing the classical sources and reviewing existing scholarship (as of month 11); a weekly seminar has been established, giving the team the opportunity for scholarly exchange, presentation of research progress and getting feedback from external scholars that are invited on a regular basis (as of month 11); organization of an internal JustCity workshop at the Swiss Institute in Rome, where each team member presented a detailed research plan and corresponding book proposal in presence of international scholars serving as guest commentators (month 13); writing of drafts of first chapters (months 14-24); presentation of one key chapter per team member at an international conference, organized by our project team members and held at London School of Economics (month 25); presentation of further research results at a workshop at Università degli Studi di Padova, organized by our project team members in conjunction with the Finnish ERC CoG research project "Law, Governance and Space" (SpaceLaw, PI: Prof. Kaius Tuori, University of Helsinki) (month 30).
All team members have furthermore attended several external workshop, conferences and/or scientific meetings where they were given the opportunity to present and discuss their project-related research before an audience of international scholars.
Also, the JustCity research project is proud to list 12 peer-reviewed publications since its start.
All team members have furthermore attended several external workshop, conferences and/or scientific meetings where they were given the opportunity to present and discuss their project-related research before an audience of international scholars.
Also, the JustCity research project is proud to list 12 peer-reviewed publications since its start.
Although the past three or so decades have seen a rapidly growing interest in Cicero's political thought and Roman political thought more broadly, there is to date no in-depth investigation into Cicero’s conception of justice and much less into its long-lasting historical influence over the centuries. This is all the more surprising since not only is justice the indisputable cornerstone on which Cicero's political theory is built, but also is it this very aspect of his thought that was to exert the most significant impact on later intellectual history, providing ammunition in particular to those early modern thinkers who eventually broke with Aristotelian, Epicurean and Stoic views on justice. The fact that this has still not been appraised accordingly in contemporary scholarship seems to be mainly due to the unfounded belief, so prevalent among intellectual historians, that Cicero's political thought was by and large a second-rate adaption of pre-existing Greek theories. By contrast, our project seeks to restore Ciceronian justice as a true novelty and, given its revolutionary impact, the key conceptual lens through which to investigate the European heritage of political and legal thought. Our project is innovative in bringing the reception of classical
antiquity to bear on a topic of obvious significance from a perspective of the longue durée, thereby integrating disciplinary approaches from ancient philosophy, intellectual history, the reception of classical antiquity and legal history. The diachronic element is supplemented, within each subproject, with attention to the historical specificities and sensitivity to context.
In both aiming to present Cicero's conception of justice as a substantive contribution to the history of political thought in its own right and tracing its powerful afterlife over the long term, from its inception in the late Roman Republic to its role in shaping the debate on natural and international law in early modern Europe, the JustCity project targets two goals achieving wich will push scholarship in the pertaining fields beyond the current state of the art.
With a view to the first goal, i.e. establishing Ciceronian justice as an idea conceived independently of, and indeed in contrast to, the traditional Greek notions of justice, we have in the time period covered by this report made significant progress in exploring the very distance between Cicero and his Greek predecessors, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools. Based on these promising results we are more than confident to be able to produce further corroborating evidence for the originality, innovativeness and specifically juridical character of Cicero's conception of justice. Regarding the second goal, i.e. the demonstration of the long-term time travel and heavy impact of Ciceronian ideas, it will be crucial to pay attention to the reasons why these ideas have managed to travel so well and to exert such influence. On this matter, our research suggests that there must be more than just the narrowness of Roman legal concepts and disinterest in the regulation of ritual and social hierarchy that is commonly invoked as explanation. However, the bulk of research required to substantiate this assumption is yet to be done.
antiquity to bear on a topic of obvious significance from a perspective of the longue durée, thereby integrating disciplinary approaches from ancient philosophy, intellectual history, the reception of classical antiquity and legal history. The diachronic element is supplemented, within each subproject, with attention to the historical specificities and sensitivity to context.
In both aiming to present Cicero's conception of justice as a substantive contribution to the history of political thought in its own right and tracing its powerful afterlife over the long term, from its inception in the late Roman Republic to its role in shaping the debate on natural and international law in early modern Europe, the JustCity project targets two goals achieving wich will push scholarship in the pertaining fields beyond the current state of the art.
With a view to the first goal, i.e. establishing Ciceronian justice as an idea conceived independently of, and indeed in contrast to, the traditional Greek notions of justice, we have in the time period covered by this report made significant progress in exploring the very distance between Cicero and his Greek predecessors, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools. Based on these promising results we are more than confident to be able to produce further corroborating evidence for the originality, innovativeness and specifically juridical character of Cicero's conception of justice. Regarding the second goal, i.e. the demonstration of the long-term time travel and heavy impact of Ciceronian ideas, it will be crucial to pay attention to the reasons why these ideas have managed to travel so well and to exert such influence. On this matter, our research suggests that there must be more than just the narrowness of Roman legal concepts and disinterest in the regulation of ritual and social hierarchy that is commonly invoked as explanation. However, the bulk of research required to substantiate this assumption is yet to be done.