On Justice Power and Human Nature

Woodruff notes that this word is usually translated as “necessity” but that he prefers “compel” or “compulsion,” which he believes more accurately conveys the element of human agency involved. Woodruff suggests that ananke, in the Greek sense, is about the dynamic created between people: one person’s actions triggering a response. It’s the difference between people having no choice and people believing that they have no choice.

Arete is often translated as “excellence,” “valor,” or “virtue.” Woodruff notes that traditionally, and especially in Homer’s writings, arete also means “doing good to one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies” (208). In Pericles’s Funeral Oration, Woodruff translates arete as “fine character,” presumably because the soldiers who died in battle were attempting to help their city and harm Sparta.

The literal meaning of autonomia in Greek is “having your own laws.” It also translates more loosely as “independent” (205). Greek city-states could consider themselves independent when they made and subscribed to their own laws.