Dikaiosune — justice, righteousness, the condition of right order — occupies a structurally pivotal position in the depth-psychology corpus, principally through the classical philological tradition that feeds into depth-psychological appropriations of Greek ethics. Adkins' exhaustive analysis in Merit and Responsibility establishes the foundational tension: dikaiosune is neither a stable nor a self-evident concept in Greek moral thought, but a contested value perpetually subordinated to competitive arete and the success-oriented standards of Homeric culture. Plato's Republic stages the decisive philosophical confrontation — whether dikaiosune constitutes the human arete itself, the excellence of the soul's right internal order, or merely a social convenience imposed upon natural striving. Adkins demonstrates that Plato's argument depends on a strategic identification of dikaiosune with eudaimonia, achieved through controlled punning on arete and sophrosune. Sullivan situates this within the broader Archaic tradition, where justice lacks clear conceptual definition and ranges across legal, political, moral, and cosmic registers. The comparative-religious perspectives of Harrison and the mythological frameworks of Kerenyi remain largely peripheral to this term, whose real gravity lies in the philosophical-ethical debate about whether right order — internal, political, cosmic — can be grounded independently of power and success.
Dikatosune is the condition in which each of the elements is performing its function perfectly, is displaying its arete, excellence, is agathos, a good specimen of its kind, ew prattei, is in a state of eudarmonia.
Adkins articulates Plato's core argument that dikaiosune is identical with the optimal functional condition of each psychic element, making it both the human arete and the precondition of eudaimonia.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
a Meno may hold, with Protagoras, that dikaiosune is essential to the efficient exercise of that skill, even if the case of Crito proves that he could not adhere to this opinion in a crisis; a Callicles or a Thrasymachus may believe that dikaiosune is merely an impediment to its exercise.
Adkins maps the central fifth-century dispute over dikaiosune: whether it is instrumentally necessary to political skill or, as the immoralists insist, a hindrance to its fullest expression.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Socrates: But is not dikaiosune (the?) human arete? Polemarchus: It must be admitted to be so. Socrates: Then it must also be admitted that men who are harmed become more unjust.
Adkins isolates the logical pivot of Plato's argument against Polemarchus: the identification of dikaiosune with the definitive human arete, which renders the traditional injunction to harm enemies self-refuting.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Plato benefits much more from this apparent carelessness than was immediately apparent. Though Plato could construct a good logical argument in the manner suggested, he cannot legitimately make the deductions from it which he does make.
Adkins argues that Plato's identification of his technical dikaiosune with ordinary Greek usage is a philosophically illegitimate but rhetorically powerful conflation that drives the Republic's moral argument.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
The argument against Polemarchus reveals serious deficiencies in the popular standard of dikaiosune; but the manner in which the argument is presented indicates that these do not lie in those aspects of dikaiosune which come to mind first.
Adkins shows that Plato's elenctic critique of Polemarchus exposes flaws in the conventional conception of dikaiosune without initially targeting its most culturally salient features.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Aristotle can say that dikaiosune in the general sense of displaying courage, self-control, quiet civic behaviour, &c., is 'the whole of arete'; and at 112929 he quotes Theognis' 'the whole of arete is summed up in dikaiosune'.
Adkins documents Aristotle's qualified endorsement of dikaiosune as comprehensive arete while demonstrating that his broader ethical system prevents it from holding this supreme position in practice.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Dikaios, then, has firmly taken its place in the forefront of Greek values in the Laws; and once again it might appear that the problem is solved. Dikatosune raises the right questions; that has been repeated many times in the present work.
Adkins traces the culmination of dikaiosune's elevation in Plato's Laws, acknowledging that it now generates the right ethical questions while noting that inconsistencies still remain unresolved.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Dikaiosune must be linked to it, if at all, as a means; and this depends on the answer to the question: 'Must the prosperous householder, t'
Adkins establishes that in the Protagorean framework dikaiosune functions only instrumentally, as a possible means to the ends of political techne rather than as an intrinsic value.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
it is the mark of a just man not to attempt to outdo another just man, but only the unjust; the mark of an unjust man to try to outdo all and sundry. Accordingly, the just man is more like the epistemon, sophos, and agathos than is the unjust.
Adkins reconstructs Plato's analogical argument that the just man's restraint in competition identifies him with the knowledgeable expert, linking dikaiosune structurally to episteme and agathos.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
The system will work if two conditions are fulfilled: firstly, if men in general believe sufficiently strongly that their success depends on their dikaiosune; and secondly, if it is assumed that the proper field for displaying active arete is the field of battle and the games, leaving civic life as the field for dikaiosune.
Adkins identifies the fragile sociological conditions under which dikaiosune can function as a viable norm, showing that any philosophical challenge to the partition of spheres undoes the system entirely.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
In the early fourth century we see in Plato's Republic a careful delineation of justice as a moral concept. No such clear definition of it exists in the authors we are studying.
Sullivan situates the Archaic conception of justice as a diffuse social 'notion' rather than a defined moral concept, marking Plato's Republic as the watershed moment of conceptual clarification.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
Plato may be able to show that internal agatha, things which are 'good for' a man on the psychological level, are much more important and conducive to the stability and efficiency of man and state than any external agatha.
Adkins explains the strategic logic by which Plato reorients the value system from external success to internal goods, establishing the psychological foundation on which dikaiosune as soul-order must rest.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Let him rather quietly possess such gifts as the gods give him.
Adkins uses the Odyssean passage to illustrate the Homeric precursor to justice-thinking: an empirical prudence grounded in divine unpredictability rather than in any principled account of right treatment.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960aside
Excellence, human (arete), 84, 103, 124, 296-7, 307, 375-6, 413, 419, 421; and agathon and kakon, 55 ... see also Activity, contemplation, Character, Character, good, Justice
Nussbaum's index cross-references justice with human excellence and external goods, situating dikaiosune within a broader inquiry into vulnerability and the relational conditions of the good life.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986aside