Hellenic Roots of Justice and Inequality and a Jewish Ideological Alternative in Economic Science

This book explores the philosophical foundations of what we today understand as “justice”. Here we understand the present tendency in the world to see everything as a class struggle, yet the lack of effectiveness of that view in social arrangements, and for that, a renewed Jewish perspective is offered instead. The book argues that the classical understanding of equality as justice is tainted by an anti-Semitic portrayal of richness, which is completely rejected here. From an economic methodology perspective, it discusses how our present Hellenic view of equality does not do much to help those in need, and proposes a new mechanism of poverty alleviation based on generalized responsibility to help vulnerable neighbors, such as orphans, widows, aliens, the elderly, the sick and the oppressed, then putting the ordinary citizen at the center of social responsibility.