In summary, for Socrates and the Stoics it's much, much worse to commit an act of injustice than to suffer it. So, from this perspective, preventing wrong really means preventing people from doing wrong rather than preventing people from suffering wrong. In other words, the best way to fight for justice is to do our best to make the world a wiser place where fewer people feel tempted to act unjustly. One step toward that goal is to stop seeing the world as consisting of victims and aggressors - good people and bad people. We are all fools and we all act unjustly all the time.
injustice is, of course, even for Stoics always a bad thing and should be stopped regardless of our chances to improve the degree of wisdom of either the person or persons committing the injustice or the person or persons suffering the injustice. It's unjust to deprive anyone of whatever they are entitled to regardless of whether they care about it or not and it's downright cruel to cause other people to suffer - even if they wouldn't suffer if they were wise. To this extent, Stoicism does align with our basics intuitions about injustice. But it also offers additional insights.
In text above I used eating someone's cake as an example of injustice. However, even if someone kills another person, the person who is most damaged in that act will be the one who's killing - not the one who's killed. Death is not a big deal.
"Socrates: 'A good person, we say, will suppose that for another like himself, even someone whose comrade he is, dying is not such a terrible thing.’
Adimantus: ‘We do.’
Socrates: ‘In that case, he won’t grieve, at least for his comrade’s sake, as if something terrible had happened to him.""
In summary, for Socrates and the Stoics it's much, much worse to commit an act of injustice than to suffer it. So, from this perspective, preventing wrong really means preventing people from doing wrong rather than preventing people from suffering wrong. In other words, the best way to fight for justice is to do our best to make the world a wiser place where fewer people feel tempted to act unjustly. One step toward that goal is to stop seeing the world as consisting of victims and aggressors - good people and bad people. We are all fools and we all act unjustly all the time.
injustice is, of course, even for Stoics always a bad thing and should be stopped regardless of our chances to improve the degree of wisdom of either the person or persons committing the injustice or the person or persons suffering the injustice. It's unjust to deprive anyone of whatever they are entitled to regardless of whether they care about it or not and it's downright cruel to cause other people to suffer - even if they wouldn't suffer if they were wise. To this extent, Stoicism does align with our basics intuitions about injustice. But it also offers additional insights.
In text above I used eating someone's cake as an example of injustice. However, even if someone kills another person, the person who is most damaged in that act will be the one who's killing - not the one who's killed. Death is not a big deal.
"Socrates: 'A good person, we say, will suppose that for another like himself, even someone whose comrade he is, dying is not such a terrible thing.’
Adimantus: ‘We do.’
Socrates: ‘In that case, he won’t grieve, at least for his comrade’s sake, as if something terrible had happened to him.""
- Socrates in Plato's Republic, 387d
"Be at war with men's vices, at peace with themselves."
- Publilius Syrus, Sayings, 636
Relevant here: The Empathy Trap - https://janniklindquist.substack.com/p/the-empathy-trap/