Doing Justice to Others 25tions with non- Chinese peoples— power appears to have counted for a great
deal more than law. Th e spirit of Kautilya, in short, was oft en more in evi-
dence than that of Confucius or Mencius.
Ancient Greece
Th e world of the ancient Greek city- states bore a certain broad resemblance
to the warring states of preimperial China and to ancient Mesopotamia, in
being a world fractured po liti cally but at the same time united to an extent
by cultural ties. In Greece, as in these other areas, there was a fairly signifi -
cant body of state practice in the key areas of treaty making, diplomatic rela-
tions, and warfare before there was any systematic thought on the subject of
justice in international relations between city- states.
One respect in which Greece diff ered from Mesopotamia and China was
in the prevailing attitude toward po liti cal fragmentation. In Greece, there
was a stronger ethos of in de pen dence of one city from another, in contrast
to the quasi- federalistic and hegemonic outlook of the Sumerians and to the
nominal deference of the Chinese to the state of Chou. Plato even expressed
misgivings in principle about contact of any sort between states, fearing that
it “produces a medley of all sorts of characters,” arising from the mixing of
diff erent customs. His ideal was a self- suffi cient, agriculturally based state—
with, for good mea sure, a complete prohibition on foreign travel by any one
under the age of forty.
In Greek culture in general, a high value was placed on the concept of
autarkeia (or self- suffi ciency). Aristotle, writing in the fourth century bc,
put autarkeia at the very center of the general human quest for the good life.
He readily conceded, however, that this noble goal was not attainable on an
individual basis. It could be achieved only collectively, through the institu-
tion of the polis (or city- state)—which therefore was, essentially by defi ni-
tion, a po liti cal entity capable of subsisting on its own resources, in de pen-
dently of other city- states. Moreover, Aristotle insisted on seeing the polis as
a natural phenomenon, as the inevitable result of the natural quest of the
human species for the goal of autarkeia. Th is principle of the in de pen dence
of each state from all other states was to have a very long history in interna-
tional law, although only in the nineteenth century would its full implica-
tions be rigorously drawn.