The Greek legacy. Democracy, justice and anarchy: reasons of love or hatred genealogy?

This article describes some of the reasons why we love and hate democracy since Greek times. To this end, there is an emphasis, on the one hand, on the sovereign and violent dimension and the isogonic pathos that is necessarily involved within any equal ordering, and on the other hand, on the strange link that exists between democracy, justice and anarchy. This article also addresses the tensions of the political democratic form that holds an indisputable affinity with the arbitrary and unfounded nature of social divisions, to wit, the just order of the community. Even Plato and Aristotle - who feared the devastating effects of democracy as a government of anyone and the denial of supposedly natural (that is, without question) and hierarchical division in the parts of the community - were unable to give an unquestionable basis for this principle of division of the parts that would make possible the establishment of a true justice. This article, therefore, deals with these matters.