At the heart of the problem of building a good society is the question concerning the nature of justice. This course follows three seminal thinkers, Cicero, Augustine, and Thomas More, as they grapple with the moral, political, and economic decline of the societies in which they live. Cicero investigates the conditions for a stable and successful commonwealth. Augustine defends a Christian concept of justice that places the dignity of the human person at the fore. More gives the problem of human dignity ironical treatment, raising questions of state intervention, the provision of social goods, and the abolition of private property reminiscent of debates in our own time.

Beyond the concepts themselves, this course investigates the careful composition of each text, their strategic use of myth, historical sources and dramatic irony, and how this enables each author to pose deeper philosophical problems, including the very possibility of a just society.