Justice in the World Today

Hope he gets some of that coffee:Statue of Thucydides in Vienna, Austria(7/31/2026) A long time ago, according to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE), a delegation from Athens went to the burg of Melos to demand its surrender. Melos, which was trying to stay neutral in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, resisted. The Athenians offered to argue it out with them, but refused to listen to arguments about justice. Justice, they said, was only for powers of equal strength, while weaker cities had to obey the commands of the weak.Thucydides' rhetorical purpose in this conversation has been debated (cf. Fisher 2026), but one common interpretation is that democratic Athens had in its pride lost the moral bearings that were a source of its strength, presaging their catastrophic defeat in the war. Justice towards the weak, it seems, is an obligation of the strong. Moreover, philosophers from Plato to the Framers of the U.S. Constitution treat justice as a…