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CIAO DATE: 9/5/2006
Justice and Order
Richard Ned Lebow
January 2004
Center for International Studies University of Southern California
Abstract
My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
Bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
Your breath into my book of changes: may
The song I sing be seamless as its way
Weaves from the world’s beginning to our day.
- Ovid
Order is the proper starting point of the study of politics. Social order sustains political activity and makes it necessary. It provides the cement that binds people together in a community, but the very social proximity this allows breeds conflicts that require authoritative resolution. It is with good reason that Aristotle opens his Politics with the assertion that “Every state is a community of some kind.”
