Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘distribution’ operates across several registers that rarely collapse into one another: the ritual-sacrificial, the political-ethical, the theological, the statistical, and the psycho-cosmological. Seaford traces the concept to its archaic root in Greek sacrificial practice — the communal, egalitarian division of meat as the primal model from which coinage, law, and even the word ‘nemesis’ derive. Ricoeur, drawing on Aristotle and Rawls, elevates distribution to the structuring principle of institutionalized justice, arguing that the rule of distribution is what defines an institution as a cooperative system rather than a mere aggregate of individuals. John of Damascus deploys the term theologically, mapping the differentiated distribution of charisms across the Trinitarian persons. Plotinus assigns it a metaphysical rank: the material world receives ‘order and distribution’ from the Supreme, but the Supreme itself is constituted by no such parts. Jung, characteristically, renders distribution statistical — the Poisson and binomial distributions serve as his empirical tools for probing synchronicity. What unifies these disparate registers is a shared structural question: who or what is the distributing agent, and what principles govern the allocation of shares? The tension between egalitarian and hierarchical distribution — present in Homer, explicit in Rawls, implicit in Trinitarian theology — runs as an unresolved thread throughout.
Justice as distributive is in fact extended to all the kinds of advantages capable of being treated as shares to be distributed: rights and duties, on the one hand, benefits and burdens, on the other.
Ricoeur argues, following Rawls, that distributive justice is the master concept of institutional life, defining every cooperative system through the rule by which shares — of rights, duties, benefits, and burdens — are allocated.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
goods to be shared, burdens to be shared. And this sharing cannot help but pass through the institution.
Ricoeur insists, via Aristotle’s analysis of pleonexia and distributive justice, that the sharing of external goods and adversities is constitutively institutional and cannot be reduced to private virtue.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
the historical shift that produces coinage is a process in which the model of sacrificial distribution acquires the permanent material embodiment… The ancient tradition of communal egalitarian distribution is powerful enough to ramify into the distribution of numerous standardised and communally recognised pieces of metal.
Seaford argues that Greek coinage is genealogically derived from the model of communal sacrificial distribution, carrying its egalitarian logic into the domain of monetary exchange.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004thesis
Equal distribution to all and (especially) collective participation (koinonia) are persistently emphasised in numerous later references to the animal sacrifice performed by groups varying in size from the household to the whole city-state.
Seaford demonstrates that the normative ideal of equal distribution is the defining feature of Greek sacrifice, persisting across scales from household to Panhellenic festival.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004thesis
there is one Who distributes and another in Whom the distribution is vouchsafed. Yet know that it is always God Who worketh all things.
John of Damascus deploys distribution as a Trinitarian category, distinguishing the distributing agent (the Spirit) from the recipient locus of distribution while maintaining the unity of divine operation.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
it is from the Supreme that we derive order and distribution and harmony, which are not parts of an idea.
Plotinus assigns distribution to the material realm as something received from the Supreme, which itself transcends any such compositional arrangement.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
classical period is attributed despotic power, originated in the widespread and economically fundamental practice of distributing meat. Cognate words for which a sacrificial origin has been inferred are nemesis (retribution), isonomia (equality of political rights).
Seaford traces the semantic field of Greek political and ethical vocabulary — nemesis, isonomia — to the archaic practice of meat distribution, establishing distribution as the etymological foundation of justice concepts.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
The crisis of the Iliad is a breakdown of the form of reciprocity (Achilles’ prize is in return for fighting) controlled by the leader (redistribution).
Seaford reads the Iliad’s central conflict as a crisis of redistributive reciprocity, in which the leader’s control over distribution is contested with catastrophic consequences.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
The name obelos… would naturally be adopted for the new, nameless piece of silver that was distributed en masse in the way that meat on an obelos had been distributed en masse.
Seaford argues that the very name of the monetary obol records the transition from sacrificial meat-distribution to coin-distribution, embedding ritual communalism in monetary nomenclature.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
Now, all positions on a circle of 360° are equally probable… Applying the binomial distribution, we get… This approximation is valid if a may be regarded as very small in comparison with 1, while x is finite.
Jung employs statistical distribution — binomial and Poisson models — as the empirical baseline against which astrological coincidences in his synchronicity research are measured.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
the economies of the ancient Near East were nevertheless basically of the redistributive type.
Seaford, engaging Polanyi, affirms that redistributive economic organization — in which a central authority allocates goods — is the foundational model against which market exchange must be understood.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
The distribution of the dependent variables was chosen based on their nature. The outcomes… were modeled following a linear distribution. The presence or absence of relapse was considered a binomial distribution.
Pauluci employs statistical distribution as a methodological instrument, selecting linear, binomial, and Poisson models to fit the nature of clinical outcome variables.
, Omega-3 for the Prevention of Alcohol Use Disorder Relapse: A Placebo-Controlled, Randomized Clinical Trial, 2022aside
The Distribution of the Sigmatic Middle vs. the Passive Aorist Form. In the course of the history of the Greek language, a gradual expansion of the passive aorist form can be observed.
Allan uses ‘distribution’ in its linguistic sense to describe the historical spread of passive aorist forms at the expense of the sigmatic middle in Ancient Greek.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003aside