Justice is like a double-edged sword. What is just to one person may be unjust to another. Unlike love, which is unconditional and absolute, justice always comes with a condition of ‘for what.’
Sometimes, it is necessary to understand that justice may not heal the heart's wounds but hurt. The word "justice" often promotes sharp conflicts and confrontations, leaving scars.
Justice has various meanings. Lawyers advocate legal justice, politicians advocate political justice, religious people advocate divine justice, and civic activists advocate distributive justice. However, the ancient Latin maxim concerning ‘rights’, ‘to each his own!’ (Suum cuique!), has long been used with justice.
The word justice is derived from the Greek, which means ‘rightness’. In Greek mythology, Dike was the goddess of justice and fair judgments, who governed the right relationships between things.
Plato argued that the purpose of a state is to realize justice, defined justice as the state of rightness achieved by humans through the balance and harmony of the virtues of wisdom, courage, and moderation.
Aristotle defined it as a moral character that does good and beneficial things to others, especially in personal relationships.
For St. Thomas Aquinas, Justice is a virtue that involves the constant and firm will to give each person, including God and neighbor, what they are due. It's about establishing relationships with others and is foundational to a just society and life. This suggests that those who create, enforce, and judge laws concerning justice must have a high moral conscience and responsibility.
This is precisely why Aristotle emphasized ‘fairness’ in relation to justice. Rather than realizing universal justice, ethical awareness and morality should be considered first. The essential issue of justice is not good and evil but right and wrong.
The question of ‘what is truly fair?’ is not easy to answer. In the Bible, is Jesus Christ's forgiving of an adulteress fair and just? Or is the act of the Jews who tried to stone an adulteress fair and just? The Old Testament defines the relationship between God and man as a contractual relationship of rights and obligations and describes the fair performance of this as justice.
However, the more important message is God's justice, who always forgives those who repent, even though they have not repented. God’s justice is fundamentally based on forgiveness and love because this kind of justice can heal and save people. We need to always recall the words of Christ, who performed the miracle of healing: "Go and sin no more."
