Within the depth-psychology corpus, Justice emerges as one of the most philosophically charged terms in the archive, traversing cosmological, ethical, psychological, and symbolic registers simultaneously. Sullivan’s exhaustive survey of Archaic Greek thought traces the term from Homer and Hesiod—where justice (dike) is a divine force honoured by Zeus, separating humanity from the animal realm and guaranteeing cosmic order—through the Presocratics, where Parmenides and Heraclitus reconceive justice as the principle that preserves ontological and elemental balance. In the Platonic corpus, justice migrates inward: it becomes the ordering principle of the tripartite soul and the structural foundation of the ideal state, collapsing the distinction between political and psychic health. The Tarot commentators—Nichols, Pollack, Jodorowsky, Banzhaf, Place—inherit this dual legacy and amplify its archetypal resonance: Justice as Arcanum VIII (or XI) is simultaneously goddess Dike, weigher of the soul, and an invitation to rigorous self-evaluation. Nichols, drawing on Hillman, insists that Solomonic judgment is an operation of the feeling function, not ratiocination. Tensions persist throughout: between justice as cosmic law and as human achievement, between punitive and restorative registers, between the inevitability of justice’s triumph and the scandalous spectacle of innocent suffering. The term is never merely juridical; it is always also a question of inner proportion and existential accountability.
justice is the order of the State, and the State is the visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. The one is the soul and the other is the body
Plato’s Republic defines justice as simultaneously the structuring principle of the polis and the inner law of the individual soul, making political and psychic order inseparable.
, Republic, -380thesis
justice’ is a complex one, especially since modem concepts of it differ greatly among themselves and sometimes differ markedly from those of earlier ages. Justice’ too may be of different kinds: legal, political, moral, human, divine, cosmic.
Sullivan establishes that the Archaic Greek notion of justice is irreducibly plural, encompassing legal, political, moral, human, divine, and cosmic registers without a single unified definition.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
Hesiod sees justice as the force that separates human beings from animals. Solon makes justice the foundation of human society and, like Hesiod, assumes that its presence will bring blessing and its absence, eventual punishment.
The overview passage consolidates the Archaic consensus that justice is the distinctively human capacity whose presence or absence determines the fate of individuals, families, and cities.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
her scales will not weigh eye against eye nor mete out reward and punishment. The intricacies of human behavior are too various and subtle to be thus mechanically determined.
Nichols argues from a Jungian perspective that Tarot Justice transcends punitive mechanics, pointing instead toward a subtler archetypal weighing that cannot be reduced to tit-for-tat reciprocity.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
the application of law by a judge is an operation of feeling, and that laws were invented not merely to protect property or assure the priesthood and ruling-class of their power, but also to evaluate difficult human problems and to do justice in human affairs.
Drawing on Hillman’s typological analysis, Nichols relocates justice within the feeling function, arguing that genuine judgment is an act of relational discernment rather than cold ratiocination.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
To human beings Zeus gave justice, which is by far the best. Justice is of great concern to Zeus. She is his daughter. He listens to reports of injustice, himself observing as well perverse human behaviour.
Hesiod presents justice as a divine gift uniquely bestowed on humans, with Zeus as its active guardian who rewards the just and punishes the unjust across individual, familial, and civic dimensions.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
Justice, Arcanum VIII, is the number of perfection: balance in the flesh, balance in the mind. Nothing can be added to her, nor anything taken away. To others as to herself she gives what they deserve.
Jodorowsky reads the Justice card as the archetype of perfect cosmic equilibrium, a channel implementing universal law that dispenses precisely what is merited without excess or deficiency.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004thesis
In the Presocratics we encounter the notion of cosmic justice, analogical to that in human society. This justice is associated with the divine or ruling principle of the universe and, as with justice among the gods, acts as the ideal pattern for human justice.
Sullivan traces the transition from social to cosmic justice in the Presocratic tradition, where the ordering principle of the universe furnishes the model for ethical life.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
The Justice ‘who holds the alternating keys’ of the doors of the ‘ways of night and day’ can be seen then as preserving the balance of ‘night’ and ‘day’ and presumably all other opposites. She is ‘much avenging’: she apparently punishes severely occurrences of injustice or imbalance.
In Parmenides, Justice is recast as the cosmic guardian of ontological balance between opposites, a force that severely punishes any disruption of the fundamental symmetry of Being.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
he calls the goddess who steers, holder of the keys, Justice and Necessity. We have a clear echo here of the role of these two forces in the ‘Way of Truth’. In a universe where two forms are accepted, they function as they do for Being: they ensure the essential nature of what
Parmenides identifies Justice and Necessity as co-governing forces that steer the cosmos, ensuring the structural integrity of existence whether conceived monistically or dualistically.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
Dike implies an awareness of right and a recognition of the claims of others. Aidos involves a sense of shame concerning one’s own behaviour with others: these should be honourable.
Sullivan articulates the semantic field around dike in Hesiod, showing its intimate link with aidos and nemesis as the triad of social forces that make communal existence possible.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
To the ancient Greeks, justice was a divine principle of universal order, personified by the goddess Themis, who stood at the side of Zeus, the ruler of the heavens. Themis was depicted as holding a scale, which represented order and balance, and a sword and a chain.
Place traces the iconographic genealogy of the Justice card from Themis and Dike through Roman Astraea, situating the Tarot figure within a continuous tradition of divine personification of universal order.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
Solon also believes that a society founded on justice and ‘good order’ (eunomie) will flourish. Justice is blessed both by Zeus and by nature. Cities which honour fairness and right have it in their power to prevent innocent suffering in future generations.
Solon’s political theology links justice to eunomia, presenting a just social order as the preventive remedy against the transmission of suffering across generations.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
Justice, or the law, aims to benefit and protect a new universal of its own creation: the State. From the very first, however, this means that justice is restricted to an area within which its benefits can be realized, if necessary, by force.
Snell distinguishes justice as a civic institution from virtue proper, arguing that the coercive dimension of law marks a structural limit that prevents justice alone from constituting genuine morality.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
Justice is moved by wisdom. The light blue emanating from the platters of her scales indicates that she is weighing our spirituality. Her sword is similarly bathed in this essential blue because it is used to cut away the superfluous.
Jodorowsky interprets Justice’s symbolic palette to argue that true judgment is a function of spiritual wisdom rather than punitive power, cutting away illusion rather than inflicting penalty.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
Justice is shown as the form of the goddess Dike, who with her wall crown is portrayed as the protectress of the city and the order of civilization. In her right hand she holds the sword that is raised to pass and execute judgment.
Banzhaf reads the Justice card as marking the threshold of full personal responsibility, where the hero must internalize the laws of the world rather than relying on the customs of the parental clan.
, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 2000supporting
The gods appear to honour justice because of its intrinsic nature. It embodies ‘what is right’. Human beings seem to be called on to do likewise and, if they fail to do so, will encounter divine disapproval.
Homer’s presentation establishes justice as intrinsically binding rather than merely divinely commanded, with divine approval following from justice’s own nature rather than constituting it.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
‘Good Order, Justice, and Peace’, bring, it seems, prosperity. Being present with Zeus, they show what he values and what he wishes for mortals. The latter have the freedom to honour them or not.
In the Theogony, Justice appears as one of the three Seasons attending human works, functioning alongside Good Order and Peace as a divine principle whose cultivation is freely chosen but consequential.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
Pindar in Ol. 2 makes justice the one mode of behaviour that can save a person from the need for rebirth. If manifested during three lifetimes, justice allows someone to travel to the ‘island of the Blessed’, to dwell forever in light.
Pindar elevates justice to a soteriological function, making it the sole human practice capable of breaking the cycle of rebirth and securing permanent beatitude.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
if this kind of thing occurs, who will bother to honour the gods? By letting them suffer, the gods endanger their own position because mortals may not
Theognis raises the problem of theodicy acutely, arguing that the gods’ tolerance of innocent suffering undermines their own authority and erodes the motivation for piety.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
The balanced scales of Justice again suggest that stationary point. When we find the centre of our lives everything comes into balance. When all the opposites, including past and future, come into balance we are able to be free within ourselves.
Pollack maps the scales of Justice onto the still centre of the psyche, proposing that the card signifies a condition of inner equilibrium that liberates the self from compulsive repetition.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
‘Hope,’ he says, ‘cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey.’ Well said, Cephalus, I replied; but as concerning justice, what is it?
The Republic opens its inquiry into justice by testing Cephalus’s conventional equation of justice with truth-telling and debt-repayment, using Pindar’s praise of the just life as the launching point.
, Republic, -380supporting
If individuals express a wish for wealth attended by justice, all may eventually turn out well. Solon repeats some of his ideas found in poem 13 but he also explicitly relates justice to ‘good order’, eunomie.
Solon presents justice and eunomia as paired political virtues, conditioning the right pursuit of prosperity and offering hope that aligned desire will ultimately issue in communal wellbeing.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
What is important for the question of justice in these fragments is that the change that fire undergoes occurs ‘in measures’. It is a balanced change and, being such, ensures both the existence of itself and of ‘all things’.
Heraclitus’s notion of measured elemental exchange is read as a form of cosmic justice: the proportional transformation of fire into and out of all things sustains the existence of the whole.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
we are both agreed that justice is interest of some sort, but you go on to say ‘of the stronger’; about this addition I am not so sure, and must therefore consider further.
The exchange with Thrasymachus tests the reductive claim that justice is merely the interest of the stronger, with Socrates identifying the logical vulnerability in the equation of law with ruler’s advantage.
, Republic, -380aside
justice is of use in contracts, and contracts are money partnerships. Then justice will be useful when money is useless. And there is another difficulty: justice, like the art of war or any other art, must be of opposites.
Socrates exposes the reductio ad absurdum of treating justice as a craft, showing that any art-based definition leads to the paradox that justice must be equally competent at theft.
, Republic, -380aside
Like Hesiod and Solon, Xenophanes relates justice and ‘good order’. Both are seen as positive forces in society and so important that judgements about excellence should be made in light of them.
Xenophanes extends the Hesiodic linkage of justice and eunomia by arguing that wisdom, rather than athletic prowess, better serves social order and therefore merits the higher honor.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995aside
Socrates, what about this thing which you were calling justice, is it just or unjust?—and I were to answer, just: would you vote with me or against me?
The Protagoras uses the reflexive question of justice’s own nature to introduce the problem of virtue’s unity, probing whether justice is a part of virtue or its entirety.
, Protagoras, -390aside