Eternal Standard

Justice, by Josef Pieper. Translated by Lawrence E. Lynch. 121 pp. New York: Pantheon Books. $2.75

Justice is the principle which makes our civil social order possible: and Dr. Pieper’s piercing essay is designed to refresh this generation’s memory of the meaning of that great word. “To each his own”; this classical definition remains the best expression of the concept. Relating the idea of justice to our modern disputes, Pieper—a German philosopher whose Leisure, the Basis of Culture, The End of Time and Fortitude and Temperance already are widely read in America—evokes the ideas of Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas to contend against the envy, egoism and false expectations that have been at work in our century with a dreadful power.

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Russell Kirk

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Justice, by Josef Pieper. Translated by Lawrence E. Lynch. 121 pp. New York: Pantheon Books. $2.75

Justice is the principle which makes our civil social order possible: and Dr. Pieper’s piercing essay is designed to refresh this generation’s memory of the meaning of that great word. “To each his own”; this classical definition remains the best expression of the concept. Relating the idea of justice to our modern disputes, Pieper—a German philosopher whose Leisure, the Basis of Culture, The End of Time and Fortitude and Temperance already are widely read in America—evokes the ideas of Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas to contend against the envy, egoism and false expectations that have been at work in our century with a dreadful power.