Paper's abstract

Stamatios Tzitzis, From Hellenic Justice to the Human Rights of the French Revolution
Classical (Greek) justice stems from a dialectical vision of cosmological things. In the frame of the polis, it comes from the didactic dialectic (Socrates and Plato). It is linked to caution and belongs to the sphere of political science (Aristotle). Hellenic justice has an ethical nature because it searches the kalon: what is morally beautiful. Moreover, political science studies at the same time moral nobility and what is just. The dikaiosyne concerns the polites, the member of the city, a member that participates in the history of the latter. On the contrary, human rights concern an a-historical human being. Closely related to political ideologies, they will be recuperated by national protagonists of States submitted to slavery. We allude to Regas Pheraios. This Greek hero gives a distorted interpretation of human rights in order to defend national causes : the liberation of Greece and other Balkanic countries from the Ottoman empire. European kings were not in favor of a change in the statu quo in Europe. Thus human rights imply the idea that despotism cannot be eternal.

Key Words : Socrates, Plato, Justice, Human rights
t. 36, 1991 : p. 241-252

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