The Concept of Justice in the History of the Early Byzantine Thought (4th–7th Centuries)

Abstract

The article is devoted to semantic transformation of the concept of ‘justice’ in leading intellectual traditions of early Byzantine period: late Neoplatonism, early Christianity, represented by the Cappadocians Fathers, and Christian Neoplatonism. The analysis of the texts of Proclus and his successors, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor showed that the preservation of the former and the emergence of new meanings and connotations of the concept of ‘justice’ was due to the specificity of intellectual situation: the adaptation of Christianity to imperial pagan intellectual culture, the shift of the power pole from paganism to Christianity, the expansion and a qualitative change in the members of church communities. The ancient concept of justice as an equivalent exchange, manifested in a society primarily in “distribution by dignity”, in pagan neo-Platonism was transferred from the ethical sphere to the ontological sphere, and in the Christian intellectual tradition it was filled with theological reflections of incomprehensible divine justice, and new understanding of justice as righteousness, i.e. an unconditional fulfillment of the duties entrusted by God.