CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW

UNIVERSITY,
PATNA

FINAL DRAFT
Topic: Comparative study of Greek & Indian view of Justice

SUBMITTED TO:

DR. MANORANJAN KUMAR

FACULTY OF LAW

SUBMITTED BY:

KUMAR SANJEEV

ROLL NO. - 2122

B.A., LL.B. (Hons.)

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 6th semester

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank my faculty Dr. Manoranjan Kumar, whose assignment of such a pertinent
topic made me work towards knowing the subject with a greater interest and enthusiasm and
moreover he guided me throughout the project.

I owe the present accomplishments of my project to my friends and seniors, who helped me
immensely with sources of research materials throughout the project and without whom I
couldn’t have completed it in the present way.

I would also like to extend my gratitude to my parents and all those unseen hands who helped me
out at every stage of my project.

THANK YOU!

NAME – KUMAR SANJEEV

ROLL NO. – 2122

6th Semester (BA LL.B)

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 DECLARATION
I hereby declare that the work reported in the B.A. LL.B (Hons.) project report entitled
“Comparative study of Greek & Indian view of Justice” submitted at Chanakya National
Law University Patna, is an authentic record of my work carried under the supervision of Dr.
Manoranjan Kumar. I have not submitted this work elsewhere for any other degree or diploma.
I am fully responsible for the contents of my project report.

KUMAR SANJEEV

Chanakya National Law University

19/02/2022

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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT...........................................................................................................................2

DECLARATION.........................................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................5

AIMS & OBJECTIVE.............................................................................................................................6

HYPOTHESIS.........................................................................................................................................6

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.............................................................................................................6

SOURCES OF DATA.............................................................................................................................6

LIMITATIONS.......................................................................................................................................6

MODE OF CITATION...........................................................................................................................6

GREEK VIEW OF JUSTICE......................................................................................................................7

Plato’s views on Justice...........................................................................................................................7

Aristotle’s views on Justice.....................................................................................................................9

INDIAN VIEW OF JUSTICE...................................................................................................................11

Amrtaya Sen’s views on Justice............................................................................................................11

Gandhian’s view of Justice....................................................................................................................12

CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................................14

BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................................................................................................15

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 INTRODUCTION

The term justice has been derived from the Latin word ‘Jus’ which means to bind or tie together,
thus in this way it can be stated as justice is the key ailment which ties the individuals in the
society together and harmonizes a balance between them and enhances human relation.

In the most common terms, justice is an ideal representing something that is just and right. It
basically means being just, impartial, fair and right. What is just may depend on the context, but its
requirement is essential to the idea of justice.

For example, the natural law school of jurisprudence believes that justice means the
implementation of religious laws. On the other hand, modern jurisprudence says justice means the
implementation of concepts like equality and liberty. However, in both these examples, justice just
means enforcement of what the law perceives to be right.

In the modern context, justice basically means the recognition and implementation of laws made by
legislatures. Furthermore, in the modern context, unlike ancient states, this function lies largely on
judicial organs.

Therefore, justice generally means the recognition, application and enforcement of laws by courts.
This is different from the understanding of justice in the ancient period when it was given a
religious and moralistic meaning.

In the words of jurists-

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 Blackstone- “Justice is a reservoir from where the concept of right, duty, and equity
evolves.”
 Salmond- “Though every man wants to be righteous and just towards him, he himself
being ‘selfish’ by nature may not be reciprocal in responding justly.” According to him,
some kind of external force is necessary for maintaining an orderly society, and without justice it
is unthinkable.

AIMS & OBJECTIVE

In this project topic the researcher tends to do the comparative study of the term Justice from the
Indian and Greek point of view with reference to some renowned jurists and scholars.

HYPOTHESIS
The researcher believes that the concept of justice holds that every individual has an equal right
to basic liberties, and that they should have the right to opportunities and an equal chance as
other individuals of similar ability.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The researcher has adopted purely a doctrinal method of research. The researcher has made
extensive use of the books and internet sources. The doctrinal research helps in comparative
study of the topic.

SOURCES OF DATA
The researcher will be relying on secondary sources to complete the project. Secondary sources –
books, websites.

LIMITATIONS
The researcher has time as well as territorial limitations in completing the project.

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MODE OF CITATION
The researcher will follow Blue book (20th edition) for completing the project.

GREEK VIEW OF JUSTICE

The Greeks looked upon justice as virtue in action and therefore a virtue. The Greek conception
of justice was the virtue of soul and injustice its vice. To both Plato and Aristotle justice meant
goodness as well as willingness to obey laws. It connoted correspondence of rights and duties.
Justice was the ideal of perfection in human relationships and the spirit which animated men in
the proper discharge of their duties. The promotion of balance and harmony in thought and
action was pre-eminently social in character. Nature was the source of law and the duty of the
state was ordinarily considered to be the application rather than the creation of the law. Aristotle,
and Plato's justice, in fact both are complementary to each other, the aim of both philosophers is
to find of a principle of capacity through which , unity, harmony , virtue and happiness can be
established in the society. But in spite of this common agreement they differ in many
fundamental respects from each other.

Plato’s views on Justice

Plato gives a prominent place to the idea of justice. ‘Justice’ according to Plato was doing one’s
job for which one was naturally fitted without interfering with other people. In his contemporary
world Plato saw cities so divided that their citizens stood against one another. Thinking mainly
of the Athenian democracy in which he lived and at the hands of which Socrates had been killed,
he found the contemporary politics of his day dominated by two things: One was the ignorance
and the other was a political selfishness. Plato found in justice the remedy for curing these evils.
According to Plato, justice is that in individual life, and in social life, means placing each
individual and each class is in its proper place. And each class according to prevalence of one of
this capacities, places in the social and moral hierarchy. Justice is a quality – an indispensable
quality of moral life. It is condition of the individual and of the state and the ideal state is the
visible embodiment of justice. The state is the reality of which justice is the idea. In the theory of
justice Plato said that every individual was a functional unit, assigned a particular task with
clear-cut obligations and privileges, which one was expected to perform diligently and

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meticulously. Plato explained his arguments for differing individual capacities with the help of
the theory of three classes and three souls, an idea borrowed from Pythagoras. He pointed out
that every human soul had three qualities: rational, spirit and appetite, with justice as the fourth
virtue, balancing and harmonizing the other three qualities. 1 In each soul, one of these qualities
would be the predominant faculty. Individuals in whom the rational faculty was predominant
would constitute the ruling class. Those in whom spirit was the predominant quality were the
warriors. Together, the rulers and soldiers would constitute the guardian class. Individuals whose
souls were appetitive exhibited a fondness for material things. Plato understood injustice to mean
interference and meddlesomeness. Any interchange in jobs between the three social classes
would bring harm to the state and was the worst evil. On the contrary, if the rulers, warriors and
artisans performed their respective tasks, then such a state would be just. Plato also said that
human faculties were not hereditary. An individual’s functional role in society was determined
by his own natural aptitudes, and not by parental lineage. To ensure that the parents did not
manipulate to get the best for their child, they were made to give up their child to the state, which
in turn would categorize and educate him in the appropriate faculty that he was endowed with.
Hence the three classes identified by Plato working in proper correlation, will insure the
maximum of well-being throughout the state. Every member of the community must be assigned
to the class for which he proves himself best fitted. Hence Justice is a principle of non-
interference, which keeps within proper bounds the various classes of society, various
individuals of each class and various elements in an individual’s soul. It is a principle of
functional specialization, which moves everyone to make a specialized contribution to society.
Specialization according to Plato leads to efficiency. Each class and each individual will do their
duty and none will interfere with other’s activities. This constitutes the central idea of justice.
When this is achieved, Plato says, justice in the society will start to reside. Like individuals,
classes will also not interfere with each other. He thought that if each class were engaged in
performing its own duty ordained by nature, then there should not arise any be no ground for
dissatisfaction. Plato’s theory of justice rules also out the possibility of interference of law.2

1
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/
2
https://brewminate.com/the-concept-of-justice-in-greek-philosophy-plato-and-aristotle/

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Aristotle’s views on Justice
Aristotle believed that people are separated by dramatic differences in their natural capacities, so
much so that, while some are qualified to rule or to participate in ruling, others who comprise the
bulk of humankind are fit only to be ruled. For him the relation between these two categories is
one of command and obedience. For Aristotle, however, relations between those who are
radically unequal are not primary subject of justice. The concept of justice in Aristotle’s theory
applies primarily to asset of relations among men who are free and relatively equal to one
another – relations that play a very slim role in the argument of the Republic. Aristotle’s decision
to begin his discussion with this distinction between different types of justice is a typical
example of his philosophical method and entails a departure from Plato’s approach to
philosophy. In the Republic, Plato insists that justice must be one thing only, being always the
same in any and all of its manifestations. Plato’s search for justice therefore proceeds by way of
refutation and exclusion, that is, by showing what justice is not in order to arrive at a univocal
view of what it is. Aristotle theory of Justice Aristotle’s approach, in contrast, accepts that justice
may be several different things, and especially that it may be seen in a number of different ways,
each of which may contains significant truth.3

Aristotle theory of Justice It is usual in discussions of Aristotle’s views on justice to follow his
own order of exposition. After drawing the distinction between complete and partial justice and
declaring his intention to focus on the latter, Aristotle proceeds to distinguish two forms of it,
namely distributive justice and corrective justice. He then goes on to discuss several additional
topics: the relation between justice and reciprocity, justice in the political sense, and other.
Aristotle theory of justice Most commentators have concentrated their attention on Aristotle’s
comments on distributive and corrective justice, treating the subsequent topics as appendages,
despite the fact that these later discussions occupy about two thirds of his account overall.

This approach has led to some curious difficulties, especially in treatment of Aristotle’s
discussion of justice and reciprocity. Many of his interpreters have concluded that this discussion

3
https://philpapers.org/browse/aristotle-justice

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is anomalous. Some have decided that it is distinctly out of place, a digression that might have
been better located somewhere other than in the context of his discussion of justice.

Aristotle explicates the notion of distributive justice by sketching a simple illustration. The just,
he points out, involves at least four terms, namely two persons and two shares. Distributive
justice is achieved when “as the one person is to the other person, so is the one thing to the other
thing” in other words, when the ration between the things in question is the same as the ratio
between the persons.

If two persons are equals, then their shares should be equal as a matter of
distributive justice. Aristotle theory of justice if the persons are not equals, then their just shares
will be unequal in proportion to the inequality between them. (Bear in mind that, for Aristotle, all
the persons who come into play in anything to do with distributive justice are relative equals in
the sense that none is entitled to command the others. Aristotle theory of Justice Nevertheless,
these relative equals may be, and often are, unequal in merit or desert.) 4

4
https://brewminate.com/the-concept-of-justice-in-greek-philosophy-plato-and-aristotle/

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 INDIAN VIEW OF JUSTICE
In India from the very old period itself justice was followed and it was even considered to be the
very embodiment of God itself where its sole mission was to uphold justice, truth and
righteousness. Vedas also demonstrated its deep commitment towards justice. Manu, Yajnavakya
etc also shed light on the nature and quality of justice which was followed in the ancient India.
With the advent of the Britishers, they followed the status qou and didn’t go for much after ation
to the laws enacted by Hindus and Muslims.

But in fact it was during the colonial period, the Britisher’s drafted laws exmodying substantial
and procedural justice where ideas of rule of law, freedom of persons, civil liberties, natural
justice, and equality were reflected. Later with the enactment of the Constitution, these became
law of the land which is evident from the Preamble, Part III and IV of the Constitution.

Amrtaya Sen’s views on Justice

The main feature of Amartya Sen’s idea of justice is that he takes into account not only the
western thought on the idea of justice but also eastern thought. As mentioned in this study,  Sen
borrows two notions of justice, niti and nyaya, from classi-cal Indian political thought. The
importance of this kind of approach to the idea of justice is that it enables the person to consider
different thoughts and experiences of others about the idea of justice. These two concepts refer to
the two different kinds of view on justice. Sen explains that niti, relates to organizational
propriety as well as behavioral correctness, whereas the latter, nyaya, is concerned with what
emerges and how, and in particular the lives that people are actually able to lead 5 Niti basically
aims to establish just society by means of just institutions like transcendental institutionalism. On
the other hand, nyaya aims the social realization of justice like realization-focused comparison.
Nyaya is basically aims to reduce or remove injustice. Sen explains this approach with the notion
of “matsyanyaya, ‘justice in the world of fish’, where a big fish can freely devour a small fish.” 6
Nyaya is against the justice of matsyanyaya. In this sense, Sen claims that “The central
recognition here is that the realization of justice in the sense of nyaya is not just a matter of
judging in-stitutions and rules, but of judging the societies themselves. To that extend, Nyaya is

5
Sen, The Idea of Justice, p.22
6
Sen, The Idea of Justice, p.20

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not only related to the institutions but also to the societies. It makes possible to establish a
relationship between institutions and society. Social realization of justice and re-moving of
injustice depends on the taking into account of both institutions and society critically.

Amartya Sen propounded the Social Choice theory, whereby he states that a law should be
enacted understanding the needs of the society and should be based on demand of justice. Recent
landmark judgment of Puttaswamy Vs. Union of India,7 apart from dealing with privacy it also
dealt with many other aspects. It invoked the writings of Amartya Sen’s Idea of Justice and
stated that Political liberties and democratic rights are the onstituent components of
development. Chandrachud J. ven overruled his father’s judgment in ADM Jabalpur Vs.
Shivakanth Shukla8 and thereby upheld the dissent of Khanna J. and thereby the recognition of
right to life and personal liberty under the Constitution.

In 2010, Pradeshiya Jan Jati Vikas Manch and Others Vs. State of UP 9 and Others, referred
to Part IV of the Amartya Sen’s Idea of Justice. Public Reasoning and Democracy in ensuring
the civil and political rights of the Scheduled Tribes and person’s right to representation at the
grass root level. B. K. Pavitre Vs. Union of India referred to Amartya Sen’s Merit and Justice
in understanding merit as an instrument in achieving social ordering and in lessening economic
inequality. Court thereby ruled that providing reservations to SC’s and ST’s is not at odds with
the principle of meritocracy. Court ruled that merit must not be limited to inflexible criteria’s
such as ranks in exams but seek to provide equality in the society.

Gandhian’s view of Justice

Gandhi argues that for both individuals and social justice is the most necessary bsic is a
requirement. He considers just as basically tantamount to fair treatment. This explained by
Gandhi in his select works. Gandhi says justice empower persons to enjoy certain natural rights
such as equality, liberty and equal opportunities in Gandhi’s conceptualization, just claim to
certain universal, natural, inherent and inalienable rights earned by duties. Justice constitutes
natural univer justice and is based on rights, to him, justice is unconditional empowers a person
to enjoy certain natural rights, such equality of social status, equal social and economic
opportunities, equal enjoyment of freedom and so forth.
7
(2017) 10 SCC 1
8
(1976) 2 SCC 521
9
AIR 2011

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Gandhi had a deep concern for social and economic justice, which was closely connected to his
basis philosophy of non-violence. Gandhi was a pioneer of social justice as his idea was of
decentralization of power and authority which is one of the safeguards for individual freedom.
Gandhi says that my ideal of village swaraj is that it is a complete republic. Gandhi argues that
Panchayati Raj safeguards the liberty of the individual and of the village community as a whole
for their full moral development. Gandhi laid emphasis on human equality. He was aware that
political institutions are relevant only to extend the economic well being of the people and secure
social justice to them. To quote Gandhi “economic equality of my conception does not mean that
everyone would literally have the same amount in simply means that everybody should have
enough for his/her needs. For economic justice. Gandhi provides such alternatives they are
following:-

 Decentralisation of money and power

 Cottage and small industries
 Opposition of consumerism
 Equal distribution
 Trusteeship

Gandhi suggested and himself used on different occasions with various instruments or methods
to ensure justice. The instruments are ahimsa, non-cooperation and satyagraha. For Gandhi, it
must be ensured that both the ends and the means are morally reasonable and ethically just. In
fact, Gandhi has gone a few steps further by emphasizing people’s participation, decentralization
and bottom-up approach. Gandhi has given a more important role in participatory democracy and
not simply to a system of rule by elected representatives of the people. However, decentralization
and policy-making at the grass-root level that Gandhi suggested, if properly implemented in
practice, may ensure a greater dose of democracy, better popular participation and more
regulatory justice.10

10
Palakkappillil, J.P. The Gandhian concept of social justice. In Routledge International Handbook of Social Justice
(pp 65-73)

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 CONCLUSION

At last, we can conclude that Justice is concerned with human welfare and the protection of

reasonable interests. It can be experienced only when each citizen will perform his duties in right

perspective. A just society is that society where every individual gets legal, political, social and

economic justice. For every just society there should be a proper combination between equality,

liberty and justice. There is a close mutual relationship among them and these concepts are

closely knitted to each other with an unseen thread. The individual is the subject matter of these

concepts. The main purpose of these concepts is the development of human welfare.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WEBSITES

 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/jurisprudence/justice/
DC2A67A4CA975CB060E3286DACC8AB8F
 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3860302
 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/
 https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3967&context=ndlr
 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/amartya-sen-and-idea-of-justice/

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  https://www.theleaflet.in/in-order-to-indianise-justice-delivery-systems-we-must-
follow-the-gandhian-way/

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