Conclusions

Abstract In this concluding chapter, I summarize the most important findings of the book and draw some conclusions for the history of ideas as well as for contemporary moral, political, and legal philosophy. The marriage between freedom and justice goes back at least to the third millennium bce and predates archaic and classical Greece for centuries, but freedom and justice renew their vows in ancient Greek and Israelite laws, political reforms, philosophical ideas, and utopian visions. In early times of social hardship, freedom was more an urge and a drive than a clear vision to cope with and get away from unbearable situations, especially debt slavery. It was “freedom from” only, and it was not yet an idea to reflect upon. Nevertheless, forms of early freedom emerged as autonomous legal responsibility, self-mastery and free choice, inwardness and originality. Cultural coping strategies ensured resilient leeway to create new spaces of freedom. Early democratic institutions and rules of procedure are to be found, among others, in public debate and democratic knowledge production. Implicit connections between freedom and justice emerged in the ideas of legal responsibility and impartiality. Explicit ideas of freedom and justice got married as liberation and equity. Liberation, as an eminent idea in cultural memory, drives equity to unfold as situational justice and an ethic of subsistence for the needy. Here we find the beginning of the idea of “weighted prioritarianism” that weds freedom with justice.