Justice

The terms political and theory are both Greek words, in form so close to the original that it requires considerable imaginative effort to understand the changes which their significance has undergone in the course of a development through more than two thousand years. Not to make this effort condemns the student either to the belief that nothing which the great Greek thinkers taught is any longer relevant or useful for our current political debate or to the habit of interpreting everything they said in the language and values of modern speculation. Both these tendencies are to be regretted. Reflection upon political associations was initiated by the Greeks. ‘The first valuable contribution the Greeks made to political theory was that they invented it.’ ¹ Since that time, the setting has altered often, the emphasis has been moved back and forth, the terms used have changed their meanings, until sometimes they bear almost the opposite of their original significance. But the importance of distinguishing and defining the relationship between human beings which we, like the Greeks, call political and the need to study this relationship systematically have been constantly recognized in European society.