{"id":8087,"date":"2020-03-02T13:47:44","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T18:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/?p=8087"},"modified":"2020-03-02T13:47:44","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T18:47:44","slug":"justice-the-most-important-virtue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice: The Most Important Virtue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/courage-is-the-most-important-virtue\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Being brave<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/temperance-is-the-most-important-virtue\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Finding the right balance<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. These are core Stoic virtues, but in their seriousness, they pale in comparison to what the Stoics worshipped most highly: Doing the right thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is no Stoic virtue more important than justice, because it influences all the others. Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice is \u201cthe source of all the other virtues.\u201d Stoics throughout history have pushed and advocated for justice, oftentimes at great personal risk and with great courage, in order to do great things and defend the people and ideas that they loved.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/cato\/?utm_source=convert-kit&amp;utm_medium=convert-kit&amp;utm_campaign=must-never-accept\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cato gave his life<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> trying to restore the Roman Republic.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And Thrasea and Agrippinus gave theirs resisting the tyranny of Nero.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">George Washington and Thomas Jefferson formed a new nation\u2014one which would seek, however imperfectly, to fight for democracy and justice\u2014largely inspired by the philosophy of Cato and those other Stoics.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a translator <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/epictetus\/?utm_source=convert-kit&amp;utm_medium=convert-kit&amp;utm_campaign=must-never-accept\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of Epictetus<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, led a black regiment of troops in the US Civil War.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beatrice Webb, who helped to found the London School of Economics and who first conceptualized the idea of collective bargaining, regularly re-read <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/marcus-aurelius\/?utm_source=convert-kit&amp;utm_medium=convert-kit&amp;utm_campaign=must-never-accept\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marcus Aurelius<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Countless other activists and politicians have turned to Stoicism to gird them against the difficulty of fighting for ideals that mattered, to guide them towards what was right in a world of so much wrong. A Stoic must deeply believe that an individual can make a difference. Successful activism and political maneuvering require understanding and strategy, as well as realism\u2026 and hope. It requires wisdom, acceptance and also a refusal to accept the statue quo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was James Baldwin who most brilliantly captured this tension in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/geni.us\/czm48C\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Notes of a Native Son<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one\u2019s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but one must fight them with all one\u2019s strength.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Stoic sees the world clearly&#8230;but also sees clearly what the world <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">can<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> be. And then they are brave, and strategic enough to help bring it into reality. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>P.S.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/app.convertkit.com\/landing_pages\/284508?v=6\"><span class=\"s2\"><b><i>This was originally sent<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/a><b><i> on March 5, 2020. Sign up today for <\/i><\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/start\"><span class=\"s2\"><b><i>the Daily Stoic\u2019s email<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/a><b><i>\u00a0and get our popular\u00a0<\/i><\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/new-start-here\/\"><span class=\"s2\"><b><i>free 7-day course on Stoicism.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being brave. Finding the right balance. These are core Stoic virtues, but in their seriousness, they pale in comparison to what the Stoics worshipped most highly: Doing the right thing.\u00a0 There is no Stoic virtue more important than justice, because it influences all the others. Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice is \u201cthe source of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v15.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Justice: The Most Important Virtue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Justice: The Most Important Virtue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Being brave. Finding the right balance. These are core Stoic virtues, but in their seriousness, they pale in comparison to what the Stoics worshipped most highly: Doing the right thing.\u00a0 There is no Stoic virtue more important than justice, because it influences all the others. Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice is \u201cthe source of [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Daily Stoic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/dailystoic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-03-02T18:47:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Marcus.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@dailystoic\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@dailystoic\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ryan Holiday\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Daily Stoic\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/dailystoic\",\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/dailystoic\",\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/dailystoic\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dailystoic\"],\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#logo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/daily-stoic.png\",\"width\":351,\"height\":121,\"caption\":\"Daily Stoic\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#logo\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/\",\"name\":\"Daily Stoic\",\"description\":\"Stoic Wisdom For Everyday Life\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/\",\"name\":\"Justice: The Most Important Virtue\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-03-02T18:47:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-03-02T18:47:44+00:00\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/#webpage\"},\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#\/schema\/person\/62049dc1c11ca8e9b9d773a83783983f\"},\"headline\":\"Justice: The Most Important Virtue\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-03-02T18:47:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-03-02T18:47:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/justice-the-most-important-virtue\/#webpage\"},\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":\"Daily Stoic Emails\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/#\/schema\/person\/62049dc1c11ca8e9b9d773a83783983f\",\"name\":\"Ryan Holiday\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}