Doing Justice to Others 11Plural Worlds
In the beginning, human po liti cal horizons— and hence loyalties— were in-
evitably narrow, at least for ordinary people. Th at the world was divided into
a welter of diff erent languages, customs, and religions appears to have been
taken as an ineradicable feature of the human condition. Th e biblical tale of
the Tower of Babel envisaged a united, monolingual humanity only in a
vague, prehistorical period. Th e normal mode of humanity in historical
time was confusion and scatter. A sense of “us” and “them” could hardly
have failed to have been acute, especially in an archaic age before the advent
of the great universal religions.
In the nineteenth century, the British phi los o pher Herbert Spencer ex-
pressed the opinion that human morality has a dual character that directly re-
fl ects this dichotomy between friends and strangers. Relations within a given
society, Spencer thought, were governed by what he called a “moral code of
amity,” which promotes mutual assistance and interpersonal justice and fair-
ness. In opposition to this is what he called a “code of enmity,” which applies
to relations with other societies. Somehow or other, the ethical systems by
which humans live must accommodate both of these “radically opposed ” con-
ceptions of social life. Th e result, Spencer believed, is that, at any given stage of
history, “an appropriate compromise” between the two will be devised—“not,
indeed, a defi nable, consistent compromise, but a compromise fairly well under-
stood.” Th is ethical modus vivendi must necessarily be “vague, ambiguous, il-
logical,” but also “for the time being authoritative.”
Similar opinions were expressed in the ancient world. One example is
found in the account by the historian Plutarch of the life of the renowned
fi ft h- century bc Athenian statesman Aristides “the Just.” Plutarch noted that
Aristeides’s famously acute sense of justice was said to have had sharp
geo graph i cal bounds. For all of his rectitude in dealing with his fellow Athe-
nians, he was not above acting opportunistically— and even dishonestly—
when advancing the interest of Athens against other states. In the following
century, the phi los o pher Plato, characterizing the rulers of his ideal city, lik-
ened them to pure- bred dogs, wishing them “to be as gentle as possible to those
they know and recognize, and the exact opposite to those they don’t know.”
Modern scientists have given the label “parochial altruism” to this phe-
nomenon of being altruistic and cooperative within small groups, while