What we lack …

… Josef Pieper: Prophet of Pietas - Public Discourse.

Pieper presents the classical understanding of pietas in opposition to the modern, libertarian conception of how individuals relate in society. Pre-modern philosophers, from Aristotle and Cicero to Augustine and Aquinas, understood justice first through the prism of obligations: the duties one has to others rather than the rights that are one’s own. As Socrates asserts in Plato’s dialogues, “He who commits an injustice is worse off than he who suffers injustice.”