Periodic Reporting for period 4 - JustCity (The Just City: The Ciceronian Conception of Justice and Its Reception in the Western Tradition)
Reporting period: 2025-04-01 to 2025-09-30
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, such as John Rawls’s. But there is a rich, deep history of thinking about justice that goes back at least to classical antiquity, which provides a hidden background to modern theories. Justice is one of the most fundamental political concepts. Our inquiry was thus relevant to normative political theory, but it also shed light on issues of interest to the social sciences, 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. Our long-term historical investigation of ideas about justice shed light on what much social science, focused on the hitherto politically stable societies of the post-war West, takes as an exogenous given: the conditions that make political order possible in the first place. The Roman concept of justice is particularly suitable in this regard given the centrality it accords to law and legal order.
Focussing on Cicero’s conception of justice and its intellectual legacy, the JustCity project investigated one of the most innovative and influential contributions to Western political thought. Cicero’s law-centred conception of justice, both within and between states, marks a significant departure from virtue-centered conceptions of justice typical for Greek theories. It paved the way for the constitutionalist tradition in political thought as well as for the emergence of natural and international law in early modern Europe. JustCity pursued a long-term intellectual history of one of the most fundamental and controversial concepts of Western political thought from antiquity to the Enlightenment. The project was methodologically innovative and demonstrated how the reception of classical antiquity can be operationalized and made fruitful for a long-term history of ideas. Our project showed 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.
Importance for society lies in the fact that Cicero's justice should be seen as a major influence on the development of liberalism since the 18th century. The project has shown that liberal proceduralism should be seen historically as an answer to civil war – an answer inspired especially by Cicero's political and legal theory – and thus as originating prior to the religious wars in Europe. Liberalism therefore grew out of an attempt to reconcile republican government, hitherto identified with small city-states, with large states; and to remedy the centrifugal tendencies generated by virtue-based, originally small republics. Liberalism is thus best described, not as in opposition to republicanism, but as the outgrowth of a particular kind of republicanism: the juridical republicanism of Cicero and the Roman lawyers.
Focussing on Cicero’s conception of justice and its intellectual legacy, the JustCity project investigated one of the most innovative and influential contributions to Western political thought. Cicero’s law-centred conception of justice, both within and between states, marks a significant departure from virtue-centered conceptions of justice typical for Greek theories. It paved the way for the constitutionalist tradition in political thought as well as for the emergence of natural and international law in early modern Europe. JustCity pursued a long-term intellectual history of one of the most fundamental and controversial concepts of Western political thought from antiquity to the Enlightenment. The project was methodologically innovative and demonstrated how the reception of classical antiquity can be operationalized and made fruitful for a long-term history of ideas. Our project showed 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.
Importance for society lies in the fact that Cicero's justice should be seen as a major influence on the development of liberalism since the 18th century. The project has shown that liberal proceduralism should be seen historically as an answer to civil war – an answer inspired especially by Cicero's political and legal theory – and thus as originating prior to the religious wars in Europe. Liberalism therefore grew out of an attempt to reconcile republican government, hitherto identified with small city-states, with large states; and to remedy the centrifugal tendencies generated by virtue-based, originally small republics. Liberalism is thus best described, not as in opposition to republicanism, but as the outgrowth of a particular kind of republicanism: the juridical republicanism of Cicero and the Roman lawyers.
The project has hitherto resulted in 20 peer-reviewed articles by team members; 6 book reviews; and 1 book (https://www.iurisconsensus.org/publications-copy(opens in new window)). 4 more monographs are in the pipeline, along with several articles. We have organized 3 international conferences and 4 workshops (https://www.iurisconsensus.org/conferences)(opens in new window); extended 19 invitations to guest speakers at Zurich; and team members have participated in numerous conferences and workshops over the course of the project duration (https://www.iurisconsensus.org/event(opens in new window)).
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 was previously 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 had not been appreciated in scholarship was 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 demonstrated the true novelty of Ciceronian justice and its revolutionary impact at least until the Enlightenment, using it as a key conceptual lens through which to investigate the European heritage of political and legal thought. The project was 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 was supplemented, within each subproject, with appropriate sensitivity to historical context.
Aiming thus 1) to present Cicero's conception of justice as a substantive contribution to the history of political thought in its own right and 2) 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 targeted two goals to push scholarship beyond the 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 made significant progress in exploring the very distance between Cicero and his Greek predecessors, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools.
The innovativeness of Cicero's conception of justice must be seen in its specifically juridical character and its attempt to turn earlier virtue-based accounts of distributive justice into a law-based account of procedural commutative justice. Cicero accepted Aristotle's diagnosis of civil war as sparked by competing accounts of justice; but Cicero thought that Aristotelian distributive justice itself merely added such a competing account, thus exacerbating the problem. Cicero's solution seeks to overcome skepticism vis-à-vis the competing accounts of justice and the good life by formulating a concept of natural law designed to survive such skepticism. Regarding the second goal, i.e. the demonstration of the long-term time travel and heavy impact of Ciceronian ideas, our project paid due attention to the reasons why these ideas managed to travel so well across time and to exert such influence. On this matter, our research suggests that it was especially the narrowness of Roman legal concepts and disinterest in the regulation of ritual and social hierarchy that accounts for Cicero's influence in tandem with his academic skepticism about accounts of virtue-based justice, which made Cicero newly relevant in an age of religious civil war and large territorial states.
Aiming thus 1) to present Cicero's conception of justice as a substantive contribution to the history of political thought in its own right and 2) 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 targeted two goals to push scholarship beyond the 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 made significant progress in exploring the very distance between Cicero and his Greek predecessors, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools.
The innovativeness of Cicero's conception of justice must be seen in its specifically juridical character and its attempt to turn earlier virtue-based accounts of distributive justice into a law-based account of procedural commutative justice. Cicero accepted Aristotle's diagnosis of civil war as sparked by competing accounts of justice; but Cicero thought that Aristotelian distributive justice itself merely added such a competing account, thus exacerbating the problem. Cicero's solution seeks to overcome skepticism vis-à-vis the competing accounts of justice and the good life by formulating a concept of natural law designed to survive such skepticism. Regarding the second goal, i.e. the demonstration of the long-term time travel and heavy impact of Ciceronian ideas, our project paid due attention to the reasons why these ideas managed to travel so well across time and to exert such influence. On this matter, our research suggests that it was especially the narrowness of Roman legal concepts and disinterest in the regulation of ritual and social hierarchy that accounts for Cicero's influence in tandem with his academic skepticism about accounts of virtue-based justice, which made Cicero newly relevant in an age of religious civil war and large territorial states.