Civic Justice From Greek Antiquity to the Modern World

The work traces the journey of the civic idea of justice from its origins in the ancient Greek polis and Roman civitas, through its various transformations in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, to its adaptation by the American Republic and its place in the modern world. The author (Peter Murphy) systematically explores the meaning of civic justice in its philosophical, art-historical, architectural, sociological, and political dimensions. He also looks at its dramatic encounters with other concepts of justice, both traditional (patrimonial) and modern (liberal). Particular attention is paid to the way these conflicts express themselves in the texture of urban life. Murphy addresses fundamental questions about the use and abuse of space in city architecture, the quality of urban life, and the interplay of such notions as reason and authority, freedom and limits, and modernity and antiquity in relation to the idea of civic justice. The book concludes with a sustained reflection on the legacy of the American Republic.