LAL2303_03_de_Ville 324..364


Mythology and the Images of Justice
Jacques de Ville*

Abstract: This essay enquires into the depictions of Justice through the ages, as well as into the
myths surrounding these depictions, more particularly in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as in
modern times. The essay departs in significant respects from traditional interpretations by seeking
to gain from the insights in relation to mythology and the use of symbols provided by psychoanal-
ysis, structuralism, Heidegger’s thinking on Being, and deconstruction. Insofar as psychoanal-
ysis is concerned, of importance in the present context is Freud’s analysis of symbolism in the
interpretation of dreams and in myths, specifically his contention that the symbols employed there
almost invariably have a sexual connotation. The approach of Claude Lévi-Strauss is the focus of
the detour through structuralism, with Lévi-Strauss challenging certain of the most prevalent
ideas in relation to myth, such as that there is some original version of a myth, usually believed
to be the earliest version. In the case of Heidegger, of particular importance is his challenge to us
“moderns” not to be too quick to believe that we understand ancient texts or the ancient concep-
tions of deities. He more specifically questions the common belief that the gods and goddesses are
persons or that they are abstract personifications of concepts. Derrida, in his analysis of the texts
of Freud, Lévi-Strauss, and Heidegger, further develops the ideas of each of these thinkers,
seeking thereby to go beyond the Oedipus complex, beyond the security of structure, and beyond
Being. After an analysis of depictions of the goddesses Ma’at, Themis, Dike, and Justitia, based
on the insights gained in the preceding analysis, the essay concludes with a reading of the
blindfold of Justice in her modern guise, which seeks to exceed metaphysics. Drawing specifically
on Derrida’s analysis of blindness in drawing, it arrives eventually not at the essence, but at the
an-essence, of justice.

Keywords: Ma’at/Themis/Dike/Justitia/Derrida/Freud/Heidegger/Lévi-Strauss

324

Law & Literature, Vol. , Issue , pp. –. ISSN -x, electronic ISSN -. ©  by The
Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Per-
missions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: ./lal....



I N T R O D U C T I O N

Modern depictions of Justice in drawings, paintings, and sculptures usually
show a female figure holding a sword and scales. She is often blindfolded.
These depictions are found all over the world in a great variety of locations,
including marketplaces, town halls, public fountains, court buildings, and
churches.1 Images of Justice are also often found on book covers and in
the title pages of law books, in caricatures, and these days, even decorating
a variety of products unrelated to law. Her most well-known forebears
in mythology are the Egyptian goddess Ma’at and the Greek goddesses
Themis and Dike. The Romans referred to her as Justitia, as she remains
known today, or alternatively as (Lady) Justice.2 Other accessories asso-
ciated with these figures through the ages include a protractor and a plumb
line, a cornucopia, fasces, an olive branch, a (law) book or books, a globe, a
skull, a foundation stone, a feather, an ostrich, a crane, an eagle, a dove, a
snake, a dog, and a lion (Figure 1).

These images traditionally have been interpreted along the following
lines: the measuring instruments, such as the scale, the protractor, and

F I G U R E : Justice, after Raphael: a seated female figure looking at a balance that she
holds up in her right hand, her other hand resting on the neck of an ostrich.
Engraving, attributed to Andrea Procaccini, ca. –. (Location: British Museum,
London, UK. © The Trustees of the British Museum)

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

325



the plumb line, are understood as ensuring or rectifying order and
equilibrium; and the sword as symbolizing power or authority. The blind-
fold is understood as ensuring impartiality and equal treatment, or meant
as criticism, especially in caricatures, of justice that has failed.3 The (law)
books are said to point to the binding nature of written law and thus to
legal certainty.4 Kissel interprets the cornucopia as a reference to fairness:
whereas the scale symbolizes exact calculation, the cornucopia, associated
with superfluity and blessing, is said to point to a somewhat less strict
enforcement of the law with reference to ethical principles.5 The fasces
are generally understood as referring to authority and power, specifically
to punish.6 According to Ripa and Maser, the skull refers to human mor-
tality, which does not affect Justice, as Justice is eternal.7 The association
of Justice with animals is usually understood in terms of the qualities
associated with them: the crane pointing to vigilance, the lion to truth
and wisdom, and the eagle to strength and power.8 According to Ripa
and Maser, the dog refers to friendship and the snake to hatred, neither
of which are permitted to influence her judgment.9 The association of
Justice with an ostrich has been explained with reference to the equality
between the two sides of the ostrich feather—the even length of the feath-
ers and the even spread of feathers on both sides of the body—as well as
with reference to the ostrich’s reputed digestive ability, which points to
the way evidence should be evaluated in court.10

The present essay departs in significant respects from the traditional
interpretation of these images. The enquiry to be undertaken will seek
to gain from the insights that have been provided in relation to mythology
and from the use of symbols by psychoanalysis, structuralism, Heidegger’s
thinking on Being, as well as deconstruction, to arrive eventually not at
the essence, but the an-essence of justice. Our detour through psychoana-
lysis will confront us with Freud’s analysis of symbolism in the interpreta-
tion of dreams and in myths. Of importance in this context is specifically
Freud’s contention that the symbols employed in dreams and in myths
almost invariably have a sexual connotation. The approach of Claude
Lévi-Strauss will be the focus of our detour through structuralism. We
will see how he challenges certain of the most prevalent ideas about myth,
such as that there is some original version of a myth, usually believed to
be the earliest version. Additionally, the role of mediators is of great
importance for Lévi-Strauss in the analysis of myth and can assist us

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

326



greatly in understanding the role of the goddesses into which we enquire.
In Heidegger’s reflections on Being, he challenges us “moderns” not to be
too quick to believe that we understand ancient texts or the ancient con-
ceptions of deities. To understand something of ancient thinking we need
first to rid ourselves of certain preconceptions. In the discussion of the
texts of Freud, Lévi-Strauss, and Heidegger, this essay will briefly refer
to Derrida’s reading of and intervention in these texts.11 We will see that
in each instance he adopts the ideas of these thinkers and simultaneously
develops them in a different direction. After a brief exposition of the
insights to be gained from these thinkers, we will enquire in detail into
some of the different ways the figures associated with Justice have been
depicted through the ages, as well as into the myths surrounding these
goddesses and the readings that have been and could be given to these
images and myths. The essay will conclude with an attempted reading
of (all) the images of justice, which will seek to exceed metaphysics, draw-
ing specifically on Derrida’s analysis of blindness in drawing.12

F R E U D A N D S Y M B O L I S M

Because of the insights it provides into the workings of the unconscious,
Freud believed that psychoanalysis could explain the themes in myth in
a way similar to the interpretation of dreams. This is because in myth,
as in fairy tales, folk sayings and songs, ritual, colloquial language, jokes,
and poetic imagination, the same elements or symbols are employed as
one finds in dream images and situations.13 This does not mean that there
is a complete overlap in relation to the use of symbols. The symbols that
one finds in dreams do not necessarily appear elsewhere, and vice versa.
In dreams, the symbols employed (a disguised representation of latent
thoughts) almost exclusively give expression to sexual objects and sexual
relations, whereas in other fields this is not necessarily the case, at least
not at first sight.14 One way of explaining this, of which Freud approves,
would be with reference to Hans Sperber’s theory that language originated
in sexual desire—the calling to oneself of a sexual partner.15 Linguistic
roots developed further through the performance of work, as a substitute
for sexual activity. Sexual words thus attained an additional meaning in
the working context. These words later lost their sexual connotation and
attained an independent meaning related to work.

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

327



The identity in the unconscious between a word and a thing, and the fact
that the thing was originally referred to by the same word that was used to
refer to genitals, thus makes it possible for the thing to become a symbol for
genitals in a dream.16 This explains why tools in dreams represent the male
sexual organ and why those materials on which work is performed represent
the female sexual organ. This in addition explains why dreams employ such
a large number of sexual symbols that, as Freud points out, “preserve
something of the earliest conditions.”17 The symbols employed in dreams
and myths thus appear to stand in an intimate relation to sexuality18—
specifically childhood sexuality. Freud was in particular alerted to the impor-
tance of the use of symbols in dreams by the observation that his patients
could make no associations in relation to these images and events in their
dreams. It was also clear that this did not result from resistance. As pointed
out above, the same symbols employed in dreams are used in myths and
elsewhere. These symbols thus appear to belong to unconscious mental life
and are the same despite great differences in language and culture.19

To understand the nature of Derrida’s intervention in relation to Freud’s
sexual symbolism, a brief excursus into his “approach” is required here.20

The readings that Derrida undertakes of Freud and others are informed
by the insights of Freud and at the same time keep a certain distance from
Freud because of the latter’s continuing reliance on the concepts and logic
of metaphysics.21 Derrida, like Freud, is of the view that texts are not
completely dominated by the intentions of their authors. Texts are hetero-
geneous or marked by tensions, and they tend to “repress” something in
dealing with the main thesis. By rigorously analyzing the repressed element
and its relation to the rest of the text, Derrida shows that that which was
repressed actually provides the condition of possibility of the text. The text
is then through this deconstructive reading repositioned or reframed. This
heterogeneity is of course also a feature of Freud’s texts that makes possible
a reading of Freud that exceeds metaphysics. Of importance in this regard is
specifically the repositioning by Derrida of the Oedipus complex in relation
to Freud’s own notion of the death drive.22 Derrida’s contention in this
regard is that the Oedipus complex already involves a “repression” or
dissimulation of the “desire” for death, which Derrida couples more closely
than Freud with sexual pleasure, a “desire” in other words for absolute
pleasure. This “desire beyond desire” thus exceeds and “precedes” the
Freudian unconscious.

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

328



Derrida’s reading of Freud has important implications for the latter’s
sexual symbolism. Freud’s symbolism is based on the restricted economy
of the Oedipus complex and retains the metaphysical assumption of a fixed
origin. As appears from Derrida’s analyses of signs and symbols, in for
example Speech and Phenomena and Of Grammatology, these cannot be said
to be anchored in a signified.23 Any signified is itself in the position of sig-
nifier. This does not give way to meaninglessness, however, at least not in
its traditional sense. The signs and symbols by means of which we relate to
ourselves in everyday life as well as in dreams and myths are made possible
by a certain dislocation in the self, of death lodged inside of life, and not
through self-presence as is supposed by metaphysics. Freud’s symbols
themselves thus take part in a “play” of symbols, which makes them lose
their value as symbols, as we will further see below.24 In other words,
Freud’s symbols should no longer be understood simply in their Oedipal
sense, but in terms of the “desire” for death or for absolute pleasure.

L É V I - S T R A U S S A N D S T R U C T U R A L I S M

Lévi-Strauss revolutionized the field of anthropology and, more specifi-
cally, the study of myth. The idea of an evolutionary and progressive
development in man’s rational abilities (of which hints can still be found
in Freud) finds its nemesis in Lévi-Strauss. He asserts in this regard that
the thinking of “primitive” man is not radically different from that of
“modern” man’s scientific, logical, and rational mode of thinking. Accord-
ing to Lévi-Strauss, all human beings in fact share the same mode of
thought.25 The rigor in thinking moreover remains the same across the
ages; only the nature of the things to which such thinking is applied
changes, as shown by myth.26 Lévi-Strauss specifically challenges the tradi-
tional idea that myths have an original meaning, usually said to be located
in the earliest version of the myth. In his analysis of myth, Lévi-Strauss
inter alia addresses the Oedipus myth, which we know is of central impor-
tance to Freud.27 In the case of Lévi-Strauss, however, this analysis is not
undertaken to find the literal meaning of the myth, but more importantly
to illustrate the mechanism at work or the structural law of the myth. This
“law” does not seek to show “how men think in myths, but how myths
operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact.”28

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

329



In his analysis, Lévi-Strauss includes all versions of the Oedipus myth,
attempting to find a general pattern. This approach is based on the above-
noted premise that there is no true version of the myth, and that an earlier
version is not necessarily to be privileged over later versions.29 This
approach ties in with Saussure’s insight into the relation between meaning
and language, which is that the value of a sign within language is not an
inherent characteristic of such sign, but a consequence of the differences
between signifiers and signifieds.30 According to Lévi-Strauss, the myth
in all its forms is an attempt to deal with the contradictory views in Greek
thinking concerning the origins of man, that is, whether he is autochtho-
nous (from the earth itself, born of himself through the agency of nature,
as Oedipus, abandoned as a child, appears to be) or whether he comes
from the sexual union between man and woman. In its derivative form,
the question it seeks an answer to is whether man is born from the same
or from what is different. Lévi-Strauss arrives at this interpretation
through an analysis of the different versions of the myth according to
the Saussurean distinction between parole (the different versions of the
myth) and langue (the underlying structure), as well as between the syn-
chronic and diachronic aspects of language. In this way, the myth, includ-
ing all known versions, is shown to have a layered structure.

In this analysis of the various versions of the Oedipus myth, which we
cannot explore here in detail, Lévi-Strauss points to the important role
played by “mediators” in myth. The sphinx in the Oedipus myth appears
to play a similar mediating role to the ambiguous and equivocal characters
he mentions from other myths, such as the trickster in the form of a raven
or a coyote. These are intermediaries between carnivorous and herbivo-
rous, like mist between sky and earth.31 Other intermediaries mentioned
by Lévi-Strauss include a scalp (between war and agriculture, a scalp being
a war-crop), corn smut (between wild and cultivated plants), garments
(between nature and culture), refuse (between the village and the outside),
and ashes (between the roof/sky and hearth/ground). The sphinx is a
hybrid, mythic creature and, as Lévi-Strauss points out in a footnote, also
a female monster or phallic mother who terrifies and then rapes young
men. Segal aptly refers to the sphinx as an “anomalous hermaphrodite
monster.”32 Lévi-Strauss speaks in this regard of a chain of mediators that
can easily replace each other in mythology, as they have essentially the
same function, and that probably also characterize daily experience.

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

330



He refers in the latter respect to the French word for plant smut (nielle),
which comes from the Latin nebula (mist), and to the luck-bringing power
associated with refuse (an old shoe) and ashes (kissing the chimney
sweep).33 The gods in mythology, Lévi-Strauss points out, similarly act
as mediators, which explains why they have contradictory attributes, for
example, being both good and bad at the same time.34

Lévi-Strauss again deals with the issue of mediation in The Origin of
Table Manners. He contends that food taboos, good manners, the taboos
on menstruating women, women who have recently given birth or miscar-
ried, grave-diggers, widows and widowers, and those performing sacred
rites, as well as puberty rites, education for girls, table and other mediatory
utensils (such as combs, hats, head-scratchers, gloves, straws, forks) all have
a similar mediating function. They seek to ward off the dangers of
extremes, that is, of a cessation of regular periodicity or of overly rapid pe-
riodicity. In mythical thinking, Lévi-Strauss points out, extremes are often
described such as eternal day or eternal night, as well as barrenness, prema-
ture aging, and madness. In the case of human beings as well as in nature,
the manifestation of such extremes can be the consequence of nonadherence
to these restrictions. It is believed that women, being periodic creatures
themselves, are most in need of education and social subordination.35 They
are constantly threatened, and through them the whole world is threatened,
either by the slowing down or the acceleration of the flow of events.36

Daily, monthly, and seasonal periodicity as well as periodic menstruation,
pregnancy, and childbirth need to be ensured.37 Lévi-Strauss ties this need
for periodicity in women to the transition from nature to culture:

The transition from nature to culture demands that the feminine organism
should become periodic, since the social as well as the cosmic order would
be endangered by a state of anarchy in which regular alternation of day and
night, the phases of the moon, feminine menstruation, the fixed period for
pregnancy and the course of the seasons did not mutually support each other.38

A certain distance therefore needs to be imposed to reduce the tension
between the poles. This is done through insulators or mediators—that is,
utensils, education, and taboo—that are imbued with inertia to “moderate
our exchanges with the external world, and superimpose on them a domes-
ticated, peaceful and more sober rhythm.”39 Lévi-Strauss here specifically

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

331



mentions the celestial canoe, which has a similar function in relation to the
course taken by the sun (and the moon) as well as in the choice of marriage
partners, which we will encounter again in our discussion of the goddess
Ma’at.

According to Derrida, structuralism takes certain important steps in
questioning the assumptions of metaphysics. Structuralism’s relation to
metaphysics nonetheless remains ambivalent, and at times it is not vigilant
enough about its reliance on the concepts of metaphysics in its critique
thereof. This for example is the case in relation to the opposition between
nature and culture referred to above. In the case of Lévi-Strauss, this con-
tinual attachment to metaphysics follows from both the fact that the full
implications of the idea of a classificatory structure are not grasped as
yet and from a residual nostalgia for origins and pure presence.40 The
notion of a structure, as Derrida points out, has operated since the incep-
tion of Western philosophy with the idea of a center, point of presence, or
fixed origin that keeps the structure in place.41 This center has in addition
the role of limiting the “play” of the structure, the field of infinite substi-
tutions, as Derrida refers to it.42 Within the traditional concept of struc-
ture, “play” in this sense is allowed, but only within certain definable
limits. The center is therefore inside the structure, yet it is also “outside”
the structure in the sense that it is not itself subject to the play of the
structure.43

A certain reading of Lévi-Strauss must be adopted if the metaphysics
implicit in his texts is to be exceeded. The heterogeneity of Lévi-Strauss’s
texts indeed allows for this. In the analysis of myths, as Derrida points
out, Lévi-Strauss in fact abandons the idea of a center, a subject, a privi-
leged reference, an origin, or an absolute archia.44 Derrida refers here to
the Bororo myth that Lévi-Strauss analyzes in The Raw and the Cooked,
but the same could be said to apply to the analysis of the Oedipus myth
referred to above. In his discussion of the Bororo myth that he employs
as a “reference” or “key” myth, Lévi-Strauss points out that the myth
nevertheless does not have any referential privilege and that it is simply
a transformation of other myths in operation in Bororo society or bor-
rowed from other societies.45 Furthermore, the myth has no unity, nor
absolute force; it has an a-centric structure. The discourse on myth should,
according to Lévi-Strauss, follow suit and can therefore not be a scientific
or philosophical discourse. To give a unity to myth would have to involve

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

332



a projection. The discourse on myth must therefore renounce the
epistemic discourse that requires an origin, founding basis, or center. It
must also do without a subject and an author, as myths are themselves
anonymous. Consequently, a book on myth must itself be a kind of myth,
mythopoetic, or as Derrida refers to it, “mythomorphic.”46 Myth and the
discourse on myth thus have no center that halts and grounds the play of
substitutions.47

In his Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, we find an indication of
this more radical idea of play48 in what Lévi-Strauss says about notions
such as the Melanesian mana (a kind of force).49 The notion of mana
(and we will see below that the same can be said of the goddesses of jus-
tice) is according to Lévi-Strauss not simply characterized by polysemia,
but by overabundance and excess, which disrupts presence.50 Notions such
as mana as well as the mediators referred to above with the inertia imbued
in them, are in this sense similar to that “spot” in a dream which, as Freud
notes in The Interpretation of Dreams, is unplumbable: “a navel, as it were,
that is, its point of contact with the unknown.”51 The latter, in turn, ties in
with the insights of Freud in relation to what was termed above the
“desire” for death.52 Lévi-Strauss’s mediators thus become radicalized in
Derrida’s intervention in structuralism by way of the new “concepts” he
invents. Derrida’s “open chain of undecidable ‘concepts,’” such as différ-
ance, the supplement, and the pharmakon, does not keep in place a stable
structure, but disrupts that structure in a radical way.53 This calls for a
slightly different kind of analysis of myth than we find in Lévi-Strauss.
Such analysis likewise requires invoking different versions of the same
myth and ascertaining its underlying law. The law at stake does not how-
ever involve a structure and therefore a fixed origin, but instead a stricture
or a pre-origin.

H E I D E G G E R A N D B E I N G

From Heidegger we get the admonition that we should not assume that
we understand the concepts used by the Greeks as they understood
them—or that we properly understand the gods and goddesses who are
said to personify certain of these concepts. According to Heidegger, with
the translation of ancient Greek texts into Latin, the original or authentic

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

333



meaning of words had been bypassed. This ties in with what happened to
Being with Plato: Being was interpreted as idea.54 In other words, Plato
thought Being from the perspective of and with reference to (the essence
of) beings.55 Plato’s interpretation of Being as idea, according to Heideg-
ger, has shaped the whole history of Western philosophy. One could say
that all philosophy since Plato is “idealism”: Being is thought in the idea,
the idea-like, and the ideal.56 Conceptuality, or the idea of the essential
meaning of a word, also has its foundation in Plato and ties in with this
understanding of Being.57 This development and the mistranslations fol-
lowing upon it had a profound influence on the Middle Ages and still
affect our understanding today.58 In modernity, Being has become that
which the human subject posits for himself.59 Heidegger’s attempt to
rethink the meaning of Being beyond this metaphysics of presence takes
place at first through a reflection on the Being of Dasein, and later, on
Being itself. In Being and Time, Heidegger shows that death, different
from the way in which it is thought in metaphysics, does not stand apart
from life or beyond life, but is connected to the life of Dasein in a funda-
mental way. More specifically, death is “Dasein’s ownmost possibility.”60

This understanding of death has profound implications for conceptual-
ity and also for the concept of justice. In his later enquiry into Being,
Heidegger sought to go back to the thinkers known as the pre-Socratics
(a reference that Heidegger takes exception to) to understand the premeta-
physical and preconceptual experience of Being. He for example contends
in this regard that the Latin translation of the early Greek word physis as
natura (nature) is inaccurate: it does not account for the word’s original
meaning. Instead, physis refers to “the unfolding that opens itself up, the
coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting
in appearance—in short, the emerging-abiding sway.”61 Physis, in other
words, gives expression to the experience of Being of the early Greeks.

The same problems arise when we seek to understand the essence of the
Greek gods and goddesses. We should be careful in assuming too quickly
that at stake here are persons or that they are abstract personifications of
concepts.62 In speaking of Aletheia, Heidegger for example points out in
his reading of Parmenides that she is not the goddess of truth.63 If she
had been such, truth would simply have been entrusted to her; truth
would have stood on one side and the goddess on the other. This is the
case with Artemis, the goddess of hunting and of animals. They stand

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

334



under her protection. In the case of Aletheia, truth does not simply stand
under her protection; she is the truth, the goddess “truth.” Truth, or in
Heidegger’s terminology (as translated), “unconcealment,” is in other
words experienced as a goddess. The same can be said of the goddess
Dike. For Parmenides, as Heidegger points out, Dike “is the goddess.”64

She furthermore “guards the keys that alternately close and open the
doors of day and night.” Heidegger’s profound reflections need to be
taken seriously and, in the analysis below of Themis and Dike, attention
will specifically be paid to the reflections of Erik Wolf, who is acutely
aware of the importance of Heidegger’s insights.

There are nonetheless certain limitations in Heidegger’s thinking that
can be overcome only through a careful reading of his texts. As Derrida
has noted, Heidegger still believes that death can be appropriated by
Dasein, which, in light of Freud’s thinking on the death drive, must be
placed in question. Moreover, Heidegger tends to privilege the gathering
and presencing of Being in his thinking rather than its disjoining or
dissemination. In these respects his texts still show signs of belonging to
metaphysics. Heidegger’s belief in an original and authentic meaning that
can still be found in the primordial thinkers—that is, Anaximander,
Parmenides, and Heraclitus—also portrays an attachment to metaphysics.
Yet something in Heidegger’s texts at the same time exceeds metaphysics,
for example when he speaks of death as “the possibility of the absolute
impossibility of Dasein.”65

This is similarly the case in Heidegger’s discussion in On Time and
Being of the giving of Being and of time, and of the play of this gift.66

This gift ultimately gives nothing and, as it precedes economy, it expects
no return. In the case of Heidegger’s reflections on the Anaximander frag-
ment and his argument that dike should be understood in a way that goes
beyond juridical-moral determinations of justice,67 Derrida sees a similar
relation between dike and adikia, with adikia corresponding with the other
of Being or the perfect gift.68 From Derrida’s reading it follows that it is
not only through a reflection on premetaphysical Greek thinking and non-
Western cultures69 that a way beyond metaphysics can be found. All
societies are after all characterized by a search for origins and presence.
At the same time, these societies (and the same applies to Western
metaphysics) do not constitute a totality and at some points exceed this
desire for presence. The images of Justice, which as we saw are usually

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

335



read in terms of a restricted economy, can consequently all be read in this
transgressive sense, irrespective of the age in which they appear. It is to
such a reading that we now turn.

T H E G O D D E S S E S O F J U S T I C E

Ma’at70

Ma’at (mэ’t) is a goddess in Egyptian mythology, a word in the Egyptian
language, and also a central concept in Egyptian culture.71 The word is
written in hieroglyphics by a rectangular and wedge-shaped plinth or base,
as well as by a feather.72 Ma’at the goddess is then also usually depicted as
a young woman standing on a foundation stone with a feather in her hair
and with an ankh (the symbol of life) in her hand. Sometimes she has a
scepter in her one hand (said to symbolize eternal rule)73 and is depicted
with feathered wings (Figure 2).74

F I G U R E : Goddess Ma’at spreads her wings for protection. Mural painting, staircase,
Tomb of Nefertari, Valley of the Queens, Thebes, Egypt. (Photo by S. Vannini,
© DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, New York)

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

336



Although there are different understandings of what Ma’at means as a
concept, she is usually associated with order, as represented by the foun-
dation stone,75 and stands in this respect in a dynamic relation with chaos
or disorder (Isfet). (The latter is not simply to be understood in negative
terms76: as Assmann contends, Isfet, and not Ma’at, represents the natural,
given structure of the world.77) Ma’at is also associated with measure,
balance, harmony, justice, law, and truth. Strictly speaking, however,
and this needs to be emphasized, as a concept Ma’at is untranslatable.78

Reliefs, paintings, drawings, and sculptures depict her in a variety of ways.
Together with Thoth (associated with the ibis and the baboon), she for
example stands in the bow of the boat that conveys Re during the day
and at night through the underworld.79 In the Book of the Dead, she
appears on top of and her feather on one side of the scale against which
the heart of the deceased is weighed to establish whether he is to die a sec-
ond death by being devoured by Ammit, or may proceed to the afterlife
(Figure 3).

Ma’at is often said to stand both for cosmic order and for social order,
although these distinctions were not strictly drawn at the time and are
therefore perhaps best avoided.80 Everyone, especially the king, must
speak, do, and uphold ma’at.81 As Assmann points out, the King in this
respect in a sense repeats and continues the act of creation, of which we
will speak more below.82 This subduing of chaos is a continuous process
as the world permanently threatens to fall back into disorder or

F I G U R E : Page from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer, from Thebes, Egypt, th
Dynasty (ca.  BCE). (Location: British Museum, London, UK. © The Trustees of
The British Museum)

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

337



immobility.83 Assmann in this respect speaks of Ma’at as a mediator
(Mittler) or third term, in a similar sense as referred to above in our dis-
cussion of Lévi-Strauss.84 According to Assmann, this role is also fulfilled
by Thoth, the baboons who welcome the sun, and the king.85

In the Instruction of Amenemope (chapter 20), Ma’at is spoken of as a
“great gift of God.”86 This idea of Ma’at as gift as well as the closely
related offering of Ma’at is usually understood in terms of a relation of
exchange and reciprocity between man and the gods.87 The doing and
speaking of Ma’at are part of this relationship of exchange. In a great
number of illustrations, a miniature figure of Ma’at is offered in a ritual
to one of the gods by the king or some other royal figure as a sacrifice
(Figure 4).88

Nonroyal donors also at times hold the figure of Ma’at, but this seems
to involve a different ceremony as these depictions are usually to be found
in the funerary context, analogous to the weighing of the soul, which one
finds in the Book of the Dead.90 When Ma’at is presented as an offering,
she is usually seated, has an ostrich feather in her hair, and sits on a basket

F I G U R E : Pharaoh Seti I, th Dynasty (– BCE), holding Ma’at, Goddess of
Truth. Silver, gilded, from a ceremonial bark. (Location: Louvre, Paris, France.
Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York)

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

338



or nb hieroglyph.91 This base is also to be found under the clepsydra,
indicating the close relation between Ma’at and time.92 Sometimes in these
scenes she holds a staff, usually an ankh.93 In one scene, Ma’at is depicted
in the form of an ointment jar.94 As Teeter points out, all offerings made
to the gods are in a sense associated with Ma’at “[a]s the symbol or icon of
the cosmic order.”95 The gods themselves are consequently also said to
live by and from Ma’at.96 A god is sometimes the one who presents Ma’at,
most frequently Thoth. Sometimes Thoth is in the role of recipient or wit-
ness.97 The presentation of the offering of Ma’at is said to reciprocate for
the divine gift of Ma’at (and/or of life) and reaffirms the legitimacy of the
King’s rule.98 To be noted, however, is that the inscriptions accompanying
the offering of Ma’at do not in all instances speak of a reciprocal relation-
ship between donor and recipient. Instead, there is at times simply an
acknowledgement of the gift from the gods without any return being
expected from the offering of Ma’at.99 In a similar kind of offering, involv-
ing that of the name of the king to the gods, the name of the king is
sometimes equated with Ma’at.100 Teeter reads this as an attempt to stress
the association between the king and Ma’at to ensure legitimacy.101 A
number of kings moreover incorporated the word ma’at into their official
names, thereby seeking further to establish a close association between
themselves and Ma’at.102

Ma’at is usually said to be the daughter of Re, the sun-god.103 How-
ever, there are also a great variety of other myths in which she is asso-
ciated in different ways with the gods. This can partly be explained by
the fact that at different times, depending on political influence and power,
certain (local) gods in Egypt became stronger than others, and the lesser
gods either disappeared or were incorporated into the family structure
of the (temporarily) stronger gods.104 As the earlier discussion indicates,
there are additional and perhaps more important “unconscious” reasons
which necessarily play a role in these variations.105 Re for example is also
said to sit on the lap of Ma’at, suggesting that she is the mother of Re.106

She is explicitly referred to as the mother of Amun, with whom Re is
often equated in the form of Amun-Re.107 In one of the only narratives
of Egyptian mythology where Ma’at plays a central role, stemming from
around 1200 BC, Ma’at (Truth) is presented as a man who gets blinded
as punishment through the deception of his brother, Falsehood (grg).
Truth is ultimately avenged by his son, and Falsehood also ends up being

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

339



blinded.108 The air god Shu (life) is, like Ma’at (herself an air-goddess
who gives life), depicted with a feather.109 He and his sister Tefnut, with
whom Ma’at is often identified, are born from the auto-erotic actions of
Atum or Re-Atum.110

In other accounts, Shu and Tefnut (also referred to as Ma’at) are the
primary gods, who together with Atum form a kind of sexually charged
trinity.111 In the account where they are brother and sister, Shu and
Tefnut give birth to the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. Geb
and Nut remain in a passionate embrace until separated by Shu. This allows
for creation to commence. In another account, Shu loses his wife (Tefnut)
to his son, Geb.112 Ma’at is furthermore identified with the goddess Nsrt
(Nesret), the flaming eye of the sun (Re).113 Ma’at is at the same time
the royal serpent on the forehead of Re and of the King, and in addition
is referred to as the scale of the king.114 Ma’at is also known as the wife of
Thoth, the (sometimes) subversive moon god of death and writing.115

With the rise in importance of Thoth, in accordance with the Hermopolis
creation myth, the Ogdoad (the eight-fold) is said to have emanated from
Thoth.116 These are eight gods, in four male-female pairs in the form
usually of snakes (female) and frogs (male) or in human form with snake
and frog heads, who represent the primordial chaos before the birth of
Re from an egg. Certain sources indicate that Ma’at is the mother of the
Ogdoad,117 which ties in with her being represented as the mother of
Re. She is also said to have risen with Re from the primeval waters at
the time of the creation.118

These creation myths can be better understood when account is taken
of the (partly) intransitive nature of the model at stake here. Assmann
points out in this regard that in Egyptian myths the act of creation is
not to be understood only in terms of the transitive model of a subject
vis-à-vis an object. Creation also takes place intransitively: the world
appears as a self-unfolding process.119 The gods in terms of this model
therefore do not precede the creation and cannot be understood separate
from it. A combination of these two models is to be found in Egyptian
creation myths.120

In light of what was said earlier, one should resist the temptation to
view the role and function of Ma’at only in circular or reciprocal terms,
or, closely tied to this, viewing her simply as a “moral ideal.”121 When
account is taken of what can, with reference to Assmann, be called

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

340



“exceptional texts,”122 there is clearly a dimension to her that goes beyond
the circular return and instead sets this circulation in motion. Of great
importance for our reading is the understanding of Ma’at as a force:
“die Kraft, die ‘der unbegrenzten Bewegung Grenzen, Ziel und
Bewußtsein gibt,’”123 which stands in tension with Isfet, the latter threat-
ening to bring the circular flow of the creation process to a standstill.124

Ma’at in other words stands in tension with inertia or death. As we saw
above, however, Ma’at herself is often associated with death. She is said
to reside in and to satisfy the sacred necropolis, as well as to be the Mis-
tress of the West, and is thus closely associated with the goddess Imntt,
who shares with her the feather emblem.

Being “joined with Ma’at” was moreover a euphemism for death. Her
association with death thus went far beyond the judgment of the dead.125

She can be said to embody the relation between life and death. This also
enables us to understand differently the incorporation of Ma’at into the
name of the kings and the offering of the name of the king to the gods,
especially where the name was equated with Ma’at. The proper name, as
Derrida has shown, is subject to the law of iterability, and therefore can
be said to announce death, as it will always survive the bearer of the
name. The name, as Derrida puts it, “is always and a priori a dead man’s
name, a name of death.”126 The incorporation of death into the name of
the king can be said to give expression to this law. The offering of the
name of the king (in association with Ma’at) can similarly be read as a
confirmation of this law and, as we will see below, perhaps as a pure gift.
In both respects the association of Ma’at with the subversive god of
writing, the god of death, Thoth, is also important (Figure 5).127

Like Thoth, Ma’at has no fixed identity: she is a woman and a man, the
daughter and the mother of Re, and takes on many different forms.128

This problematizes the understanding of Ma’at as a “concept” in the tradi-
tional philosophical-juridical sense, as she has no essence, but instead an
an-essence. When we take account of Freud’s symbolism, the representa-
tion of Ma’at with a scepter and an ankh in her hands, the bird feather,129

as well as her connection with snakes and frogs (her children), baskets and
jars, and blindness, clearly alludes to sexuality, but as pointed out earlier,
in a more transgressive sense than we usually find in Freud.130 At stake
here is the desire for death, a pleasure without end.131 Moreover, accord-
ing to Freud, the sun is a sublimated father-symbol.132 Although Egyptian

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

341



mythology can be said to be father-centered (e.g., Re is the one who gives
life through his rays, that is, sperm),133 with Ma’at upholding this order,
the order is as we saw, not an origin in itself, but constituted from a more
primordial chaos.

This relation between order and chaos is not to be understood in opposi-
tional or dialectical terms, but as that which gives rise to the dialectic as well
as the sending of Being.134 The chaos must itself be understood in close
connection to sexuality, although the latter should not be restricted by
chaos’s connotations. Perhaps the idea of Ma’at as gift best explains her
strange nature. As indicated, this is not to be understood in terms of a cir-
cular return, which would disqualify the gift as gift.135 Ma’at, as we saw,
serves as food or nourishment for gods, humans, and all living beings:
she willingly offers herself to be consumed. As Freud points out,136 eating
and sexuality stand in close (unconscious) relation to each other as well
as to self-destruction or making a gift of oneself.137 It is thus through a
sacrifice or perfect gift of herself that the circular return of the sun becomes
possible. She “contains within herself” the forces of both order and disor-
der, as well as the relation between them. This is not a relation of simple
opposition, and her role is also not a mediating one in the dialectical sense.

F I G U R E : Blue glazed composition amulet in the form of a crouching ibis; the beak is
supported by a maat-feather; pierced suspension ring behind the head, Late period.
(Location: British Museum, London, UK. © The Trustees of the British Museum)

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

342



Themis

Themis is known as a titan goddess, the daughter of Ouranus (sky) and of
Gaia/Ge (earth), and thus stems from a time preceding the Olympic gods.
Gaia is, together with Eros (the Begetter), Nyx (Night), Tartaros (the
Underworld), and Erebus (the void), one of the first to be born from
Chaos.138 The latter should not be understood in terms of its modern
meaning of confusion or turmoil, but as “a measureless, supportless, and
groundless yawning.”139 As Wolf points out, Gaia (earth) is not to be
understood in (Ptolemaic or Copernican) planetary terms, but as an all-
embracing, all-powerful primal force that creates gods, men, and other
things in association with other primal forces. Gaia’s essence, he contends,
consists in that which joins, forms a boundary, is fixed, and stands in the
light, in distinction to and dividing herself from the formless, limitless,
and unfathomable, as well as from the darkness that characterizes her
brothers and sisters Nyx, Erebus, and Tartaros. Wolf does not mention
Eros here and with good reason, because without Eros, himself formless,
limitless, unfathomable, and dark,140 Gaia herself could not have come
into existence,141 nor would it have been possible for her to bring forth
anything else.

The close association of Gaia with joining, limit, fixity, and light
should thus not be taken too far. Wolf clearly realizes this. As he points
out, at stake in the distinction between Gaia and her brothers and sisters
is not a simple opposition, but an overlapping coming-into-being and
departure. The “binding force,” itself springing from chaos, and the one
who brings the difference to unity, is Eros, the begetter.142 Themis is her-
self an earth-goddess and can scarcely be distinguished from her
mother.143 Themis is also one of the Moirai (the Fates or Destiny), who
are later said to have initiated the marriage between Zeus and Themis
and to be her daughters (with Zeus as their father).144 Themis is moreover
said to have “nursed” Zeus at birth in the sense that she brought him to
the goat Amaltheia, who suckled him.145 When the Olympic gods become
dominant, Themis becomes the second wife and also the adviser to Zeus,
both in relation to what he should do and to what he should leave.146 He
followed her advice without exception, so that one can in a sense equate
Themis and Zeus.147 With her advice, Zeus for example decides to set
in motion the Trojan War to free the earth of the overbearing presence

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

343



of man.148 She also assists Zeus in creating the world.149 Tying in with
this, she has a number of children with Zeus, including the three seasons
(Hoirai): Eunomie (Good Order), Dike (usually understood as Justice),
and Eirene (Peace). Wolf contends that, like Themis, these daughters
have as main function the maintaining of order and consequently of ensur-
ing that the cosmos stays on course.150

Wolf contests the interpretation that seeks to explain the transformation
that takes place in Themis from the pre-Olympian (titanic) to the Olym-
pian era as one from a personification of the laws of nature to a represen-
tation of the positive legal order, or from a representation of physis
(nature) to one of nomos (law). According to Wolf, these interpretations
are based on assumptions that do not tally with the life-world of the
Greeks at the time.151 He sees the difference as an unfolding or develop-
ment in the essential nature of Themis, rather than as a transformation.
The role she plays as wife and advisor and the motherly care she shows
toward Zeus, Apollo, and Athene are performed in light of destiny; her
own inclinations and the wishes of the other gods have no influence.
She does not do this out of love for Zeus or because of an interest she
has in the “old” or the “new” order. In what she does, one can instead
see the necessary relation between the different generations of gods.152

Wolf thus seems to view Themis as another name for Being, also and per-
haps especially, for the Being of Dasein.153 Themis retains her role as one
of the Moirai in Olympus, where she declares both to gods and to human
beings their destiny, a role she takes over from Gaia.154 In one of the most
well-known depictions of Themis, on red ceramic dating from 430 BC, she
sits on a tripod at Delphi. The childless King Aigeus of Athens approaches
her for an oracle concerning the birth of a son. She has a phiale or bowl in
her left hand and a laurel sprig in her right hand (Figure 6).155

Hirzel sees her role here not as that of prophetess in the sense of one
who predicts the predetermined future, but as one who gives firm advice
concerning how one should act.156 This role as oracle is tied to her being
one of the Moirai.157 Thus the future is also predetermined by a fixed
order.158 Themis, because of her role as conveyer of hidden sayings and
destiny, is called Ichnaia—the hidden, the one who tracks down, who
traces.159 Wolf sees the binding, joining role of Themis also being played
out in her opening of the symposia of the gods and provision of the meal,
as well as in her summoning of the gods to an assembly, on Zeus’s

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

344



command, and dissolving it again.160 She does the same in relation to the
councils of men, assisting them in overcoming their search for self-interest
and proceeding to a discussion of their mutual interests.161

It should be clear from the above discussion that much of what was said
regarding Ma’at is also applicable to Themis. Their roles extend far beyond
the legal order. Wolf’s acute observations on the nature of Themis and Gaia
are of specific relevance here. Although he emphasizes the ordering function
of Themis, he at the same time notes the chaos from which she arises. This
chaos is moreover not left behind, but finds expression in the an-essence
that appears from the narratives surrounding Themis, as well as the acces-
sories usually associated with her. Apart from the tripod, laurel leaf, and
phiale referred to above, and her association with mother-Earth, we also
find depictions of Themis with a stick-like torch and a tray or offering
basket (kanoun).162 There is furthermore a (somewhat uncertain) depiction
of her with an oinochoe (libation jug).163 Freud again assists us in grasping
the sexual nature of these symbols,164 which again need to be understood

F I G U R E : Aegeus receiving the oracle of Delphi from the priestess Themis, who is
sitting on the tripod. Kylix (drinking cup), from Vulci, painted by Kodros, ca.  BCE.
(Location: Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. Photo by Johannes
Laurentius, credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, New York)

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

345



in light of his own insights in relation to the desire for absolute pleasure. In
this regard, and in light of the earlier remarks on the gift, it is interesting to
note that Themis, as well as Dike, is associated with hospitality.165 The per-
fect gift and absolute hospitality, as we know from Derrida’s texts, are other
names for this desire.166

Dike

As Kissel points out, images of Dike are somewhat closer to our contem-
porary idea of Justice than those of Themis.167 Dike is born in Olympia,
as daughter of Zeus and Themis.168 As noted above, she is one of the
Horai (Seasons), and her sisters are Eunomia (Good Order, Good Pas-
ture, Lawfulness) and Eirene (Peace, Spring).169 Her daughter is Hesykhia
(Tranquility). Like her mother Themis, Dike plays the role of advisor to
Zeus and tells him of all man’s actions, which she observes carefully. She
also seeks his advice and his protection and assistance for man. Her task in
this respect, imposed by Zeus, is to preserve, guard, and maintain the
law.170 Dike does not exercise any power herself: in a case where the
law is disregarded, it falls upon Zeus to punish, to avenge, or to retali-
ate.171 He fulfils this task unerringly, as Wolf points out. In the tragedies,
however, Dike herself plays the role of the punisher of wrongs, employing
a sword made for her by Aesa. In later accounts, she increasingly takes on
the role of judge, and specifically of imposing criminal punishment.172

Wolf sees these two sides of Dike as related to her belonging to the Horai
as well as the Moirai. As one of the Horai, she brings to light the hidden
truth, similar to the goddess Aletheia. Wolf sees here a close age-old rela-
tion among truth, light, and law.173 As one of the Moirai, she is a veiled,
metamorphosing, destiny goddess who works in secret and brings calam-
ity to people.174 She herself imposes punishment. Even here she does
not wreak vengeance, but simply expiates the injustice that has been
done.175 The balancing function she fulfils presumably motivates the refer-
ence in the poets to the scale of Dike.

Wolf sees in this respect an important development in the role ascribed
to Dike.176 At first she lives amongst men, does not exercise any power
herself, and simply reports to Zeus, with the latter imposing punishment.
In later mythology, however, the chthonic-dark side of Dike is increas-
ingly emphasized, and a gradual fusion takes place between the previously

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

346



sharply distinguished Themis and Dike. Dike in later times takes up her
seat also in Hades and is described as a cosmic power in relation to the
whole world. In this respect she inter alia ensures that the star constella-
tions that have lost their way are brought back to the order that charac-
terizes their essence. This is what she requires of every being.177 She is
in this respect also closely associated with time, as she ensures that things
occur in their time as it has been ordained. The Pythagorians, as Wolf
points out, even attributed to Dike the function of ruling the underworld
“als richtende und vergeltende Unterweltsmacht, das Schattenreich
‘chthonisher’ Mächte und der Toten.”178 Like Ma’at, she weighs the guilt
and merit of the departed to determine their destiny in the afterlife.179 In
this model, Themis rules in the world of the gods, and Nomos (as god)
rules in the human world. Wolf appears to view this double-sidedness
of Dike as a necessary rather than an accidental or negative feature. Wolf
specifically describes her role of securing order as necessary, because of a
certain an-essence that characterizes all beings, and even herself:

Es [i.e., the failure (verfehlen) in her essence] geschieht, weil im Sein jedes
Daseienden die anfängliche Möglichkeit liegt zu verfallen, seinem wahre
Selbst auszuweichen, ins Unwesen abzugleiten. Ihm gegenüber setzt sich
Dike nicht einfach “von selbst” durch: sie muß immer neu angerufen und
dadurch in die Anwesenheit gebracht werden. Dikes lichtende Gegenwart
ist stets in Gefahr, verkannt, verdunkelt, verstellt, vertrieben zu werden.180

The well-known depiction of Dike beating Adikia (a tattooed, allegedly
barbarian woman) with a hammer seems to give expression to this idea
(Figure 7).

Adikia is usually translated as injustice,181 an interpretation that has
been placed in question by Derrida’s reading of Heidegger’s The Saying
of Anaximander.182 The relation between Dike and Adikia appears to be
more complex than that of a simple hierarchical opposition. According
to Wolf, we also see something of this complexity in Dike’s relation to
Eris, another of her rivals, together with Adikia, Hybris, and Lethe.183

Lethe herself is the daughter of Eris.184 Eris again is the daughter of
Nyx (Night, which must here be understood in the sense of annihilation—
the Night, which as Heidegger puts it, “lets all that is present disappear
into concealment”).185 The relation between these forces, however, is not

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

347



to be viewed in oppositional terms, but as one of différance, the pre-origin
of metaphysical oppositions, as also expressed by the relation between Dike
and Adikia. Dike’s other, which nonetheless does not belong to her, must
again be understood as the desire for absolute pleasure. In this respect it
can be noted that the hammer/staff (with which Dike hits Adikia), as
Freud assures us, is undoubtedly a male sexual symbol.186 Pindar’s refer-
ence to the “unsullied fountain Dike,” also does not escape from sexual
symbolism.187 It can moreover be noted that Dike’s daughter Hesykhia is
born to her without the need for sexual intercourse with a man.188 She
remains a virgin,189 which of course does not make her devoid of (absolute)
pleasure.

Justitia

Unlike Ma’at, Themis, and Dike, the Roman goddess Justitia was not
reckoned among the major gods. As with most of the other Greek gods
taken over in Roman mythology, she is mentioned in very few narrative
accounts. From the texts of Ovid and Virgil, one obtains the image of a
goddess of Justice who has left the earth because of man’s corrupt and
wicked nature and who now scarcely concerns herself any longer with
human affairs. From these and other accounts, it furthermore appears that
Justitia does not only show analogies with Dike (with whom she is usually
equated),190 but also with Astraia/Astraea, another daughter of Themis

F I G U R E : Dike beats Adikia with a hammer, Attic red figure (ca. – BCE).
(© Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria)

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

348



and Zeus, alternatively regarded as the daughter of Astraeus and Eos.191

She is in this respect known as the constellation Virgo, the virgin of the
stars, and as the nurse of the whole universe. No images of Justitia from
Roman times have remained, and where mention is made of sculptures,
the latter appear to show some correspondence with Dike and Nemesis
and to be of Greek rather than Roman origin.192 It was Aequitas (fairness)
rather than Justitia who was personified by the Romans. Kissel explains
this with reference to the fact that Justitia was (mostly) equated with posi-
tive law, whereas Aequitas required the balancing of all the circumstances
of the case. In later times, Aequitas and Justitia were not clearly distin-
guished from each other as symbols. We thus find Aequitas or Justitia
depicted on coins with a cornucopia and with scales, sometimes with a
scepter or a staff, sometimes without any attributes. Sometimes only the
head of a woman appears, with the transcription, “Justitia.”193

In the Middle Ages, images of Justitia are characterized by a combina-
tion of Christian and Greek-Roman thinking.194 In this regard, the sword
of Dike and the scales of Aequitas/Justitia begin to play an important
role. Justitia now becomes one of the Christian virtues entering into battle
with the vices. She is personalized and sometimes depicted with acces-
sories, such as a scale. In exceptional instances, Justitia is a male figure.195

In one image from the eleventh century, Justitia is depicted with a
protractor and (optical) plummet, together with three other virtues. The
crucified Christ is in the middle with the female figures Ecclesia and
Synagoga on his right and left, respectively. Synagoga, representing
Judaism, the Old Testament, and old law, is depicted blindfolded with
a broken staff. Ecclesia, the New Law, the Church, wears a crown.196 In
depicting the Last Judgment and the weighing of the soul of man, use
is sometimes made of some of the accessories usually associated with
Justitia. In this way, Christ is depicted with a sword as judge of the world,
alternatively with a palm branch, a lily, or a scale.197 Albrecht Dürer, in a
copperplate print from 1500, portrayed Christ with sword and scales as
“sun of justice” (Figure 8).198

From around the twelfth century, the archangel Michael, standing next
to Christ, and with increasing emphasis, takes over the role of weighing
man’s soul, showing some similarity with our earlier discussion of Ma’at.
From around the thirteenth century, there are images in which Michael
also divides the deceased into good and evil and executes punishment.199

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

349



Michael is from then on, as a rule, depicted with a scale and often also
with a sword, in addition to a lance, which becomes less emphasized.
From around the sixteenth century, the archangel Michael is depicted on
his own as angel of justice and judgment, with a sword and scales in asso-
ciation with the last judgment.200 Justitia herself is at times depicted with
the wings of an angel.201

From around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Justitia starts being
depicted with a sword and scale (although not exclusively so) and at times
separate from the other virtues.202 Kissel expresses his frustration at the
impossibility of adequately explaining the reason for this development.
He nevertheless attempts to do so partly with reference to the revival in
Roman law from the eleventh century onward, as well as the Renaissance
in general. This revival, as he points out, also was accompanied by a
renewed interest in the symbols associated with the law in antiquity,
including the goddesses of justice.203 The cornucopia, with its associations
of superabundance and giving, was not really suited for incorporation.
The scale of the Roman goddess of Justice, however, fitted well with

F I G U R E : Albrecht Dürer, Die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit (Sol iustitiae), The Sun of
Righteousness (ca. –). (Location: C.G. Boerner Gallery, Düsseldorf. © C.G.
Boerner, Düsseldorf, New York)

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

350



the spirit of the times as it called for a careful and emotionless balancing of
arguments. The scale also conformed with the emphasis placed on the
synallagma, that is, the reciprocal obligations between the parties to a con-
tract. The sword in the hand of Justitia, Kissel points out, was similarly
well suited because of its association with judicial power, specifically in
relation to criminal matters, coupled with the widespread reliance on the
death penalty. Justitia with a sword was also important for another reason,
that is, the attempts to establish a separate jurisdiction for the state
vis-à-vis the church.204 The sword as symbol could in this respect assist
in secularizing (Christian) natural law. The (secular) Justitia with sword
and scales now stood over against the (spiritual) archangel Michael,
himself with sword and scales. Justitia herself also takes on a double role.
Justitia as religious symbol and Christian virtue was now associated with
the after-life, whereas Justitia as secular symbol was associated with
worldly justice.205

The blindfold of Justitia appears for the first time in 1494 in a woodcut
by Albrecht Dürer, illustrating Sebastian Brant’s poem Stultifera Navis
(Ship of Fools) (Figure 9).

F I G U R E : Albrecht Dürer, Ship of Fools (). (Courtesy of Special Collections,
University of Houston Libraries)

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

351



It shows Justitia being blindfolded by a fool (under the heading
“Quarrelling and Going to Court”).206 According to Kissel, the depiction
aims at showing that such blindfolding will not have the effect of hushing
up the truth or of preventing Justice from setting itself through.207 At
around the same time there is an association between a blindfolded Justice
(or judgment) and a more negative connotation: in an illustration by
Johann of Schwarzenberg in the Bamberg Halsgerichtsordnung (Procedure
for the Judgment of Capital Crimes) of 1507/1516, judges and assessors
are all depicted wearing fool’s caps and blindfolds.208 The inscription indi-
cates that this illustration was a criticism of the application of customary
law in criminal matters.209 In a hand-painted allegorical representation
of Peter Vischer from 1524, the blindfold however seems to bear a positive
connotation. Justitia, naked and without any accessories, is depicted
placing a blindfold over the eyes of the Emperor. It is interpreted in its
Reformation context as saying that no Pope is needed, but only a just
emperor.210 This was the first time that the blindfold in this context was
given a positive connotation in the fine arts.211 As Kissel points out, after
the Middle Ages and until about the nineteenth century, Justitia has
predominantly retained the form she attained in the thirteenth century,
allowing for small changes depending on the fashion of the times212 and
ignoring caricatures.213 Images of her also increasingly adorned public
and private spaces. Especially since the twentieth century, experimentation
with different shapes of Justitia has taken place, and at times she is named
Themis.

J U S T I C E : T H E V I S I B L E A N D T H E I N V I S I B L E

The outline of a reading that would exceed, to a certain extent, metaphys-
ics has already been given above in relation to Ma’at, Themis, Dike, and
Justitia. It remains to say a few words about the blindfold of Justitia
(Figure 10), which, as we will see, ties in closely with what was said above
regarding the other figures of justice.214 According to Freud, a clear rela-
tion appears from myth, dreams, and fantasies between the eye and the
male sexual organ.215 The anxiety about blindness therefore represents a
fear of castration, and Oedipus’s self-blinding can be understood as a miti-
gated form of the punishment of castration.216 Derrida’s understanding of

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

352



blindness seeks to go beyond the restricted economy of the Oedipus com-
plex.217 In a number of texts, Derrida points to a relation among blindness,
death, and desire.218 We see the same relation expressed in Memoirs of the
Blind.219 Here, Derrida points out that Western philosophy, since its
Greek origins, has posited a natural relation among seeing, knowing,
the sun, light, the father, the eidos, and the truth.220 Derrida specifically
seeks to interrogate the idea of painting as originating in present percep-
tion. He contends first that a drawing (and something similar can clearly
be said in relation to painting and sculpting) is blind; and second, that a
drawing depicting someone who is blind is in a sense a self-portrait of
the draftsman, of the draftsman as “blind.”221 This is because drawing is
based not on present perception, as is often believed, but on memory,
understood in a certain way.222 This follows from the fact that in drawing,
the vision of the object that is being drawn must be “switched off.” Draw-
ing must in a sense take place in “blindness”; the trait or strokes of draw-
ing, “must proceed in the night.”223 We can also say that one draws only
“on the condition of not seeing.”224

F I G U R E : Hans Rudolf Manuel, Divine Justice (). Drawing for a glass window
with the coats of arms of the Law Lords of the Republic of Berne. (Wikimedia
Commons, Public Domain)

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

353



Being blind(folded) can hence be understood as going against nature in
the above sense: it says that one does not want to see, “would like not to
know,” that one desires not to bear witness to the truth.225 This does not
simply involve the positing of an opposition between sight and blindness,
between truth and lying, between sight and memory. A presentation of
blindness or of being blindfolded as an object to sight indeed no longer
privileges seeing or the truth in alluding to the memory that must be
invoked when drawing. However, there is more to it. At stake is a struc-
tural law of blindness as the condition of possibility of truth, knowledge,
and vision.226 Blindness as the theme of a drawing thus represents the
unrepresentable. This can be explained further as follows: someone who
is blind(folded) bears witness to what can be referred to as the an-essence
of memory. This an-essence is constituted by the fact that memory itself
proceeds from out of a certain more radical blindness. One could also
say, following Derrida, that memory itself entails “the law of dispropor-
tion, dissymmetry, and expropriation” or that “in anamnesis itself, there
is amnesia.”227 We have to turn to Archive Fever and “Freud and the Scene
of Writing,” where Derrida deals with the “origin” of memory, and which
he implicitly relies on in this context, to understand what is at stake
here.228 From these texts it appears that what is here named “blindness”
involves the annihilation of memory, which itself ensures the possibility
of memorization, of repetition, and of reproduction.229

Blindness is thus not to be understood in its literal sense, but as a refer-
ence to the ultimate form of blindness, that is, death,230 or more precisely,
referring again to the above-mentioned texts, the desire for death.231 It is
only through a dissimulation of this desire that works of art, as well as
other acts of the imagination, such as law, become possible. Thus, Justitia
blindfolded portrays something of the condition of possibility of law.232 As
we saw earlier, works of art (including depictions of Justice) say some-
thing about the artist, about the process of the creation of art, as well as
of mankind in general. They, in other words, bear witness to the desire
for death that exceeds circular exchange. A reading of the blindfold of
Justitia as allowing for inner perception and impartiality or as a critique
of being blindfolded in favor of sight, would on the other hand entail
reinscribing blindness into an economy of exchange.233

In conclusion, it can be said that in the depictions of Justice through the
ages, different ways have been found in which to give expression to the

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

354



inscription of mankind in différance. This explains in a way why these
images of Justice have captured the fascination of humanity, as well as
why some features have remained and others have disappeared. What
becomes visible in the Egyptian Ma’at, the Greek Themis and Dike,
and the Roman and modern Justitia is, as we saw, usually understood in
the sense of order and balance—a relation of exchange, in other words.
However, as Derrida points out, the becoming visible does so only on
condition of the absolutely invisible withdrawing from sight.234 The latter,
with reference to “Force of Law,” can be referred to as unconditional
justice, a form of giving that expects no return, and that distinguishes itself
from law and sovereignty.235 What we view as traits of Justitia, Themis,
Dike, and Ma’at, whether in their conventional or psychoanalytical sense,
are, as we also saw, in each appearance accompanied and remain haunted
by a certain retrait (withdrawal) of chaos, darkness, death, and desire. The
nature of this absolute invisibility is perhaps best expressed by Derrida,
with reference to Merleau-Ponty:

To be the other of the visible, absolute invisibility must neither take place
elsewhere nor constitute another visible, that is, something that does not
yet appear or has already disappeared—something whose spectacle of
monumental ruins would call for reconstitution, regathering from memory,
rememberment. This nonvisible does not describe a phenomenon that is
present elsewhere, that is latent, imaginary, unconscious, hidden, or past; it
is a “phenomenon” whose inappearance is of another kind.236

* Professor of Law, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. A shortened version of this
essay was presented at the Derrida Today Conference, July 19–21, 2010, London. My sincere
thanks to the participants for their comments on the paper as well as to Peter Goodrich for
his comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

. For a variety of these images, see Christian-Nils Robert, La justice: vertu, courtisane et bourreau
(Genève: Georg Editeur, ); Wolfgang Pleister & Wolfgang Schild, eds., Recht und Gerechtigkeit
im Spiegel der europäïschen Kunst (Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, ); Robert Jacob, Images de la jus-
tice: essay sur l’iconographie judiciare du Moyen Âge à l’âge classique (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, );
Otto Rudolf Kissel, Die Justitia: Reflexionen über ein Symbol und seine Darstellung in der bildenden
Kunst, nd ed. (München: CH Beck, ); Christian-Nils Robert, La Justice dans ses Décors
(XV e–XVI e siècles) (Genève: Droz, ); Michael A. Dean, Images of the Goddess of Justice,
–, at http://mdean.tripod.com/justice.html (accessed July ); and Judith Resnik &
Dennis Curtis, Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic
Courtrooms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ).

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

355



. These are the most well-known figures of justice. However, it appears that in all cultures words
exist that give expression to the “experience” associated with these goddesses; see, for example,
the discussions of mana and seriti below.

. Kissel, supra note , at , –, –, .
. Id. at .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at ; Césare Ripa & Edward A. Maser, Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery: The –

Hertel Edition of Ripa’s ‘Iconologia’ with  Engraved Illustrations (New York: Courier Dover
Publications, ), .

. Ripa & Maser, supra note , at .
. Kissel, supra note , at , –; Resnik & Curtis, supra note , at –.
. Ripa & Maser, supra note , at .

. Dennis Curtis & Judith Resnik, “Images of Justice,”  Yale Law Journal –,  n.
(); Resnik & Curtis, supra note , at , , –; Judith Resnik & Dennis E. Curtis,
“Representing Justice: From Renaissance Iconography to Twenty-First Century Courthouses,”
 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society –,  (June ).

. The analysis undertaken here draws from the more elaborate account given of Derrida’s thinking
and its relation to law in Jacques de Ville, Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality
(New York & London: Routledge, ).

. It would also be possible to provide a reading to every specific image of Justice in line with the
“approach” sketched here in broad outlines.

. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
Volumes I–XXIV (London: Vintage, ), V:, XV:, .

. Id. at XV:, .
. Id. at V: n.; XV:–.
. Id. at XV:.
. Id.
. Id. at XV:.
. Id. at XV:; see for example Freud’s interpretation of the Greek myth of Prometheus (id. at

XXII:–).
. “Approach” is placed in quotation marks here, because, as is well-known, deconstruction does

not constitute a method, and at the same time it does not proceed in an arbitrary fashion; see
Jacques Derrida, Positions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), –.

. See in this respect, Jacques Derrida & Elisabeth Roudinesco, For What Tomorrow . . . A Dialogue
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ), –. What Derrida terms the “metaphysics
of presence” involves setting up a hierarchical opposition, such as that between proper/improper,
meaning/nonsense, original/imitation, normal/abnormal, speech/writing, nature/culture,
reason/madness, wherein the first term serves as foundation or as a form of “presence” and
the second term represents a “fall” from that presence. Metaphysics is thus characterized by
binary oppositions and furthermore by the understanding of Being as presence, as elaborated
by Heidegger, that is, the belief in, for example, the self-presence of the cogito, consciousness,
or subjectivity, which implicitly organizes this oppositional structure; see Jacques Derrida, Of
Grammatology (Baltimore & London: John Hopkins University Press, ), .

. Freud, supra note , at XVIII:–; Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and
Beyond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), –.

. Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs (Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, ); Derrida, Of Grammatology, supra note .

. See also Derrida, Of Grammatology, supra note , at .

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

356



. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning: Five Talks for Radio by Lévi-Strauss (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, ), .

. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, ), .
. Id. at –. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Totemism (London: Merlin Press, ), , describes “myth”

as follows: “The notion of ‘myth’ is a category of thought which we use arbitrarily in order
to bring together under one word attempts to explain natural phenomena, products of oral
literature, philosophical speculations, and cases where linguistic processes emerged to full
consciousness.”

. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), .
. Lévi-Strauss, supra note , at : “There is no single ‘true’ version of which all the others are

but copies or distortions. Every version belongs to the myth.”
. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (Chicago: Open Court, ), .
. Lévi-Strauss, supra note , at .
. Robert Alan Segal, Structuralism in Myth: Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Dumézil, and Propp (London:

Taylor & Francis.Segal, ), .
. Lévi-Strauss, supra note , at .
. Id. at . We will see below that at least one commentator refers to Ma’at as a mediator.
. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Origin of Table Manners, vol.  of Introduction to a Science of Mythology

(London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, ), –.
. Id. at .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at –. We will see below that the goddesses of justice, Ma’at, Themis, and Dike, are all

explicitly associated with this role of ensuring regularity or order.
. Id. at . According to Lévi-Strauss this is still the case today, although no longer in such a

determined and calculated fashion.
. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), .
. Id. at .
. Id. at , . The notions of “play,” substitution/supplement, and writing in Derrida’s texts all

bear a quasi-psychoanalytical connotation.
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. See also Claude Lévi-Strauss, “A Jivaro version of Totem and Taboo,” in A Reader in the

Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, ), –, ,
where he points out that the original form of myth “is and remains forever elusive. However
far back we may go, a myth is known only as something that has been heard and repeated.”

. Derrida, supra note , at –.
. Id. at .
. In Glas, Derrida refers to “play” in this sense as a “pure essenceless by-play, a play that plays

limitlessly”; Jacques Derrida, Glas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, ), a. See also
Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, ), –.

. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss (London: Routledge, ), –.
. Derrida, supra note , at ; see also at –, where the passage in question is quoted (at )

and discussed; and see further Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, ), –, –, on the notion of mana. A word that plays a similar
role in the African context is seriti (force), which is in turn linked to the well-known notion of
ubuntu; see Augustine Shutte, Philosophy for Africa (Rondebosch, ZA: University of Cape Town
Press, ) –; Cornel du Toit, “Implications of a technoscientific culture on personhood in
Africa and in the West,”  HTS Theological Studies –, – (); Maome Bethuel

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

357



Rathete, The Reality and Relevance of Seriti in the Past and Present: Its Essence and Manifestation in
an African Religion Perspective with Special Reference to the Northern Sotho (University of South
Africa, PhD thesis, ).

. Freud, supra note , at IV: n..
. Jacques Derrida, Resistances in Psychoanalysis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ),

–.
. See in this respect the explanation offered in Derrida, supra note , at –.
. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,

), .
. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vols. III, IV (New York: HarperCollins, ), IV:–.
. Id. at IV:.
. Id. at III:–; Heidegger, supra note , at –.
. Heidegger, supra note , at . Viewing justice as an ideal would be metaphysical thinking par

excellence.
. Heidegger, supra note , at IV:.
. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: HarperCollins, ), .
. Heidegger, supra note , at .
. Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking: The Dawn of Western Philosophy (New York:

HarperCollins, ), .
. Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, ), .
. Heidegger, supra note , at .
. Heidegger, supra note , at . For an analysis of this passage and similar ones in Heidegger,

see Jacques Derrida, Aporias (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ), –.
. Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), –;

Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ),
–; Derrida, Glas, supra note , at a–a.

. Heidegger, supra note , at , seeks to understand dike as “the ordering and enjoining Order”
and adikia as disjunction, Disorder.

. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New Interna-
tional (New York: Routledge, ), –.

. See Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language (New York: HarperCollins, ), –.
. I would like to express my gratitude to Faith Zulu whose research on Ma’at assisted me in the

writing of this section.
. Jan Assmann, Ma’at: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten (München: CH Beck,

), .
. Id. at .
. See Jacobus van Dyk, “The Armana Period and the Later New Kingdom (c. – BC),”

The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ),
–, .

. Freud, supra note , at XXIII:, sees in the animal shapes of many Egyptian gods a relation to
totemism. In a letter to Fliess (July , ) Freud already expressed the view that the gods portrayed
in myth were the successors to totem animals; see Sigmund Freud, The Complete Letters of Sigmund
Freud to Wilhelm Fliess – (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ).

. Lucie Lamy, New Light on Ancient Knowledge: Egyptian Mysteries (London: Thames and Hudson,
), –, equates Ma’at with (cosmic) consciousness.

. Assmann, supra note , at ; see however at –, where Isfet does take on negative
connotations.

. Id. at .
. Id. at .

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

358



. Id. at –.
. Id. at –, –; Rodney Peter van Wyk, Ma’at in Egipte—en Veranderinge in die Armana

Periode. (MPhil thesis, University of the Western Cape, ), –; Vincent Arieh Tobin,
“Ma’at and ΔIKH: Some Comparative Considerations of Egyptian and Greek Thought,” 
Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt –,  (). Assmann, supra note , at
, also points out that in Egypt the cosmos was not understood in spatial terms, but as a pro-
cess, and in this sense Ma’at amounts to a regulative energy that directs human life as well as
cosmic forces.

. Assmann, supra note , at , –.
. Id. at .
. Id. at , –.
. Id. at . A specific reference is to be found here to the work of Mauss and Durkheim in this respect.
. Id. at –.
. The Instruction of Amenemope, http://www.touregypt.net/instructionofamenemope.htm

(accessed July ); see also Assmann, supra note , at –, , ; Miriam Lichtheim,
Maat in Egyptian Autobiographies and Related Studies (Freiburg Schweiz: Universitätsverlag,
), .

. Maulana Karenga, Maat: The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt: A Study in Classical African Ethics
(Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press, ), –; Assmann, supra note , at –;
Emily Teeter, The Presentation of Maat: Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, ), .

. See generally, Teeter, supra note .
. The description provided by Art Resource reads “offering to Ma’at,” which should presumably

be “offering of Ma’at,” as it appears on the Louvre website.
. Teeter, supra note , at , , .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at , .
. Id. at .
. Assmann, supra note , at –; Teeter, supra note , at ; and Lichtheim, supra note , at

.
. Teeter, supra note , at –, –.
. Id. at –.
. Id. at .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at –.
. Id. at , , .
. Assmann, supra note , at .
. Van Wyk, supra note , at –.
. See further Freud, Totem and Taboo, supra note , at XIII:–; and Moses and Monotheism,

supra note , at XXIII:–.
. Assmann, supra note , at  n..
. Id. at  n..
. Robert A. Armour, Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo

Press, ), –; and Lichtheim, supra note , at .
. Assmann, supra note , at –.
. Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient

Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –; and Lamy, supra note , at .

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

359



. Assmann, supra note , at –.
. Pinch, supra note , at .
. Assmann, supra note , at –.
. Id. at –. Ma’at is at least once depicted (in sculpture) as wearing the Royal uraeus (cobra);

see Teeter, supra note , at .
. For an analysis of Thoth, see Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (London: Continuum, ), –.
. Lamy, supra note , at –.
. Patricia Turner & Charles Russell Coulter, Dictionary of Ancient Deities (Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, ), ; Simson Najovits, Egypt, The Trunk of the Tree, vol. I, The Contexts
(New York: Algora Publishing, ), .

. Armour, supra note , at .
. Assmann, supra note , at ; also Lamy, supra note , at –.
. Assmann, supra note , at , .
. This happens for example with Karenga, supra note .
. Assmann, supra note , at .
. Id. at , also at . My translation: “The force ‘which gives to the unlimited movement limits,

aim, and consciousness.’”
. Id. at .
. Teeter, supra note , at –.
. Derrida, The Ear of the Other, supra note , at .
. See in this respect again Derrida, supra note , at –.
. Freud, supra note , at XXIII:, describes this characteristic depiction of the Egyptian gods in

apt terms: “The hymns in honour of these gods say almost the same things about all of them, and
identify them with one another unhesitatingly, in a manner hopelessly confusing to us. The
names of gods are combined with one another, so that one of them may almost be reduced to
being an epithet of the other.”

. The ostrich feather is very interesting symbolically because a bird in dreams usually represents
the phallus, its erection being similar to a bird’s flight, suspending the laws of gravity (Freud,
supra note , at V:, XXII:). The long (phallic) neck of the ostrich could perhaps be said
to make up symbolically for its inability to fly. The equation Freud (id. at XV:) draws
between woods and bushes with pubic hair could perhaps also be applied to an ostrich’s feathers.
In general, birds in dreams represent sexual intercourse (id. at V:). From Ma’at’s association
with Imntt one could furthermore contend that the feather represents death. Levi-Strauss, supra
note , at –, similarly draws a relation between feathers (birds belonging to both the sky
and the earth (at ) and pubic hair as mediators (quillwork and scalps are also mentioned here).

. See Freud, supra note , at XII:–, XV:–.
. Derrida, supra note , at . Two observations of Freud, supra note , at XXIII:–n and

X:, need to be juxtaposed here: “No other people of antiquity did so much [as the Egyptians]
to deny death or took such pains to make existence in the next world possible.” And: “According
to psycho-analytic theory, I told him [the Rat Man] every fear corresponded to a former wish
which was now repressed.”

. Freud, supra note , at XII:, –; XV:.
. See in this regard Freud, id. at XII:,  (Schreber case).
. Derrida, Glas, supra note , at a.
. Derrida, Given Time, supra note , at –.
. Freud, supra note , at XVII:–.
. See Derrida, Glas, supra note , at b, b, b.
. Erik Wolf, Griechisches Rechtsdenken: Vorsokratiker und frühe Dichter (Frankfurt am Main:

Vittorio Klostermann, ), .

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

360



. Heidegger, supra note , at III:; C. Kerényi, The Gods of the Greeks (London: Thames and
Hudson, ), ; Wolf, supra note , at .

. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, The Theogony of Hesiod, , at http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/
hesiod/theogony.htm (accessed July ), Part II, para. –: “Eros (Love), fairest among
the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all
gods and all men within them.”

. See Aristophanes, The Birds,  BC, at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/birds.html
(accessed July ): “At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep
Tartarus. Earth, the air and heaven had no existence. Firstly, black-winged Night laid a germless
egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages,
sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest.
He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our
race, which was the first to see the light. That of the Immortals did not exist until Eros had
brought together all the ingredients of the world, and from their marriage Heaven, Ocean, Earth
and the imperishable race of blessed gods sprang into being.”

. Wolf, supra note , at .
. Id. at , –; Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, nd ed.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , ; Harm Vos, “Themis,” in Homerisches Recht
& Themis, Rudolf Köstler and Harm Vos, – (New York: Arno Press, ), . Prometheus refers in
this respect to “my mother Themis and Gaia, one form called by many names” (Aeschylus, Prometheus
Bound, ca.  BC, http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/prometheus.html (accessed July ).

. Wolf, supra note , at , refers to them as the younger Moirai and explains that she could only
give birth to them because she herself was a Moirai.

. Rudolf Hirzel, Themis, Dike und Verwandtes: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rechtsidee bei den
Griechen (Hildesheim: Georg OlmsVerlagsbuchhandlung, ), ; Wolf, supra note , at .

. Hirzel, supra note , at –.
. Id. at –; Walter Jones, The Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks: An Introduction (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, ), .
. Hirzel, supra note , at ; Vos, supra note , at –.
. Vos, supra note , at .
. Wolf, supra note , at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at –.
. Vos, supra note , at –.
. The laurel leaf (sacred to Apollo) was burnt as incense on the altar of the oracle at Delphi, more

specifically by the Pythia (the medium) before ascending the tripod. The tripod from which the
Pythia pronounced the oracle stood over a chasm in the earth from which intoxicating smoke was
from time to time emitted. The smoke is said to have caused delirium; see William Smith, A Dictio-
nary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, nd ed. (New York: Little, Brown and Co, ), –.

. Hirzel, supra note , at –.
. Wolf, supra note , at .
. Kissel, supra note , at .
. Wolf, supra note , at .
. See also Hirzel, supra note , at , –; and Vos, supra note , at –.
. Hirzel, supra note , at .
. See Aaron J. Atsma, Theoi Greek Mythology: Exploring Mythology in Classical Literature and Art,

–, at http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/K..html (accessed July ), where Themis
is depicted with the Thracian goddess, Bendis.

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

361



. See Amy C. Smith, Athenian Political Art from the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BCE: Images of Political
Personifications, , at http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_personifications?page=&-
greekEncoding= (accessed July ).

. See Freud, supra note , at XV: (the sacred number ),  (watering cans),  and 
(mother Earth, landscapes),  (vessels and receptacles); at V: (hollow objects and vessels).

. Jones, supra note , at , , ; Hirzel, supra note , at ; Vos, supra note , at .
. See for example Derrida, Given Time, supra note ; and Jacques Derrida & Anne Dufourmantelle,

Of Hospitality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ).
. Kissel, supra note , at .
. Wolf, supra note , at .
. Tykhe (chance) is sometimes said to be Dike’s sister (Wolf, id. at ), and one of the Moirai

(fates). She is a daughter of Tethys and Okeanos, alternately of Zeus. In Roman mythology
she is known as Fortuna. Wolf describes Tykhe as portraying something of the Titanic nature
of her mother Themis (Wolf’s source in this respect is not clear), more specifically in her circum-
vention of strict boundaries, her taking of detours, and the abysmal chaos that is part of her na-
ture and that also characterizes Dasein. Wolf’s remarks in this regard can be favorably compared
with those of Jacques Derrida, Psyche: Inventions of the Other, vol. I (Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, ), –.

. Wolf, supra note , at .
. Kissel, supra note , at ; Wolf, id. at . The position is the same in relation to Themis and

Nemesis (retribution), with only the latter playing the role of avenger. Nemesis also had the
more general function of ensuring the proper measure and in this respect was sometimes depicted
with a cubit. It is thus not only Justice who has been associated with the scale and similar kinds
of instruments. As Kissel, id. at , points out, Kairos, the god of opportunity, was also some-
times depicted with a scale (and a cutting blade).

. Wolf, supra note , at ; Kissel, supra note , at .
. Wolf, id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at , .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at –. This role of securing order at first did not have moral or legal connotations (Tobin,

supra note , at –, ; Wolf, supra note , at ). Dike, like themis, is thus a word that
expresses Being; see also Heidegger, supra note , at .

. Wolf, supra note , at . My translation: “as judging and avenging netherworld-power, the
shadowy realm of chthonic powers and the dead.”

. Id. at .
. Id. at . My translation: “This happens because in the Being of every Dasein the initial possi-

bility lies to decay/deteriorate, to depart from its true self, to slide into a terrible state of affairs
(literally: an-essence). Dike does not set herself through automatically against such decay: she
must always be called upon anew and in this way be brought to presence. The clearing presence
of Dike remains threatened, to become unrecognized, obscured, misplaced, and expelled.” See
also Wolf, id. at . Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, ), , says something remarkably similar when he talks about lethe (oblivion):
“Lethe, oblivion, is a concealment that withdraws what is essential and alienates man from
himself, i.e., from the possibility of dwelling within his own essence.”

. Kissel, supra note , at .
. Derrida, supra note , at –.
. Wolf, supra note , at –.
. Heidegger, supra note , at .

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

362



. Id. at .
. Freud, supra note , at XV:.
. Id. at XV:–.
. Wolf, supra note , at .
. Id. at .
. The Romans equated Camenta (the goddess of childbirth and prophecy) as well as Anna Perenna

(the goddess of the turning of the year) with Themis; see Vos, supra note , at  n.; and
Hirzel, supra note , at .

. See also Kissel, supra note , at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at –, .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at .
. Id. at –. Sometimes the angel with these accessories is not specifically referred to as Michael.
. Id. at .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at .
. Id. at –.
. Id. at , .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Kissel, id. at , points out that in Germany, Justitia with blindfold dominated especially in the

eighteenth century, whereafter she was again depicted with eyes open.
. Id. at –.
. Interesting readings relating to the blindfold have recently been given by Martin Jay, “Must

Justice be Blind? The Challenge of Images to the Law,” Law and the Image: The Authority of
Art and the Aesthetics of Law, eds. Costas Douzinas & Lynda Nead (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, ), –, and Costas Douzinas, “The Legality of the Image,”  The Mod-
ern Law Review – (). Jay’s reading relies on the insights of feminism, and Douzinas
provides us with a Lacanian-Levinasian reading. Although admirable, these readings in my view
remain contained within metaphysics.

. Freud, supra note , at XVII:. In relation to those accessories that have not as yet been
specifically discussed in relation to psychoanalysis, it can be mentioned that, according to Freud,
and as can be expected, long sharp weapons stand for the male sexual organ (at V:). This is
also the case with the rods to be found in the fasces (at V:). Any threatening with weapons,
according to Freud (at XV:), points to sexual intercourse. Freud says nothing specifically
about a scale, but the fact that it is predominantly depicted in tripartite fashion points to a similar
reading (see Freud, id. at XV:–). Wild animals (and here we can think of the ostrich and
the lion) “mean people in an excited sensual state, and further, evil instincts or passions” (at
XV:). This latter insight informs Derrida’s analysis in The Beast & The Sovereign ().

. Freud, id. at XVII:.

d e V i l l e • I m a g e s o f J u s t i c e

363



. It needs to be noted that the gouging out of Oedipus’s eyes is not a feature of the Homeric account;
see Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, ), .

. Derrida, Of Grammatology, supra note , at –; Derrida & Dufourmantelle, supra note ,
at –.

. For helpful commentaries, which however move in somewhat different directions from the read-
ing proposed here, see Michael Newman, “Derrida and the Scene of Drawing,”  Research in
Phenomenology – (); and John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida:
Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ), –.

. Derrida, supra note , at –. See further Derrida, supra note , at –; and see Resnik
& Curtis, supra note , at –, who point to the close relation that traditionally exists between
sight, the sun, truth, and justice. See further Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, ), –, for a problematization of the view of the relation
between the truth and woman (viewed in a traditional way) by way of a reading of Nietzsche.

. Derrida, supra note , at .
. Id. at . Perception itself is also from the outset based on recollection (at ).
. Id. at .
. Id. at .
. Id. at . This seems to imply that even though no causal relation can be shown between the

blindfolded Synagogue and Justitia’s blindfold (see Kissel, supra note , at ), there is in fact
a “deeper” relation; see Derrida, supra note , at –.

. Derrida, supra note , at .
. Id. at  and .
. See Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

), and Derrida, supra note , at –.
. Derrida, supra note , at ; and Derrida, supra note , at .
. Derrida, supra note , at . See also Derrida, supra note , at : “the blind are beings of

the fall, the manifestation always of that which threatens erection or the upright position.”
Derrida’s analysis here of drawing corresponds closely with his analysis elsewhere of writing
and communication in, for example, “Plato’s Pharmacy” (Derrida, supra note , at –),
Of Grammatology (Derrida, supra note ), and Limited Inc (Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, )). This also appears from Derrida, supra note
, at : “Language is spoken, it speaks to itself, which is to say, from/of blindness. It always
speaks to us from/of the blindness that constitutes it.” See also Derrida’s essay “A Number of
Yes” (Jacques Derrida, Psyche: Inventions of the Other, vol. II (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, ), –, about the limitless “yes” as the arche-word of language.

. See Derrida, supra note , at .
. This is of course the same when she is not blindfolded, and as indicated above, her figure itself

and all her other “accessories” need to be read in a similar way as proposed here.
. See also Derrida, supra note , at .
. Id. at –.
. Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge, ), –.
. Derrida, supra note , at .

L a w & L i t e r a t u r e • Vo l u m e 2 3 , N u m b e r 3

364

















<<
  /ASCII85EncodePages false
  /AllowTransparency false
  /AutoPositionEPSFiles false
  /AutoRotatePages /None
  /Binding /Left
  /CalGrayProfile (Gray Gamma 2.2)
  /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1)
  /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2)
  /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1)
  /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning
  /CompatibilityLevel 1.4
  /CompressObjects /Tags
  /CompressPages true
  /ConvertImagesToIndexed true
  /PassThroughJPEGImages false
  /CreateJobTicket false
  /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default
  /DetectBlends true
  /DetectCurves 0.0000
  /ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged
  /DoThumbnails false
  /EmbedAllFonts true
  /EmbedOpenType false
  /ParseICCProfilesInComments true
  /EmbedJobOptions true
  /DSCReportingLevel 0
  /EmitDSCWarnings false
  /EndPage -1
  /ImageMemory 1048576
  /LockDistillerParams false
  /MaxSubsetPct 100
  /Optimize true
  /OPM 1
  /ParseDSCComments true
  /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true
  /PreserveCopyPage true
  /PreserveDICMYKValues true
  /PreserveEPSInfo false
  /PreserveFlatness false
  /PreserveHalftoneInfo false
  /PreserveOPIComments false
  /PreserveOverprintSettings true
  /StartPage 1
  /SubsetFonts false
  /TransferFunctionInfo /Remove
  /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve
  /UsePrologue false
  /ColorSettingsFile ()
  /AlwaysEmbed [ true
  ]
  /NeverEmbed [ true
  ]
  /AntiAliasColorImages false
  /CropColorImages false
  /ColorImageMinResolution 150
  /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK
  /DownsampleColorImages false
  /ColorImageDownsampleType /Average
  /ColorImageResolution 300
  /ColorImageDepth 8
  /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1
  /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000
  /EncodeColorImages true
  /ColorImageFilter /FlateEncode
  /AutoFilterColorImages false
  /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG
  /ColorACSImageDict <<
    /QFactor 0.15
    /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
  >>
  /ColorImageDict <<
    /QFactor 0.15
    /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
  >>
  /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict <<
    /TileWidth 256
    /TileHeight 256
    /Quality 30
  >>
  /JPEG2000ColorImageDict <<
    /TileWidth 256
    /TileHeight 256
    /Quality 30
  >>
  /AntiAliasGrayImages false
  /CropGrayImages false
  /GrayImageMinResolution 150
  /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK
  /DownsampleGrayImages false
  /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average
  /GrayImageResolution 300
  /GrayImageDepth 8
  /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2
  /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000
  /EncodeGrayImages true
  /GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode
  /AutoFilterGrayImages false
  /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG
  /GrayACSImageDict <<
    /QFactor 0.15
    /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
  >>
  /GrayImageDict <<
    /QFactor 0.15
    /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
  >>
  /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict <<
    /TileWidth 256
    /TileHeight 256
    /Quality 30
  >>
  /JPEG2000GrayImageDict <<
    /TileWidth 256
    /TileHeight 256
    /Quality 30
  >>
  /AntiAliasMonoImages false
  /CropMonoImages false
  /MonoImageMinResolution 1200
  /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK
  /DownsampleMonoImages false
  /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average
  /MonoImageResolution 1200
  /MonoImageDepth -1
  /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000
  /EncodeMonoImages true
  /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode
  /MonoImageDict <<
    /K -1
  >>
  /AllowPSXObjects false
  /CheckCompliance [
    /None
  ]
  /PDFX1aCheck false
  /PDFX3Check false
  /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false
  /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true
  /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [
    0.00000
    0.00000
    0.00000
    0.00000
  ]
  /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true
  /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [
    0.00000
    0.00000
    0.00000
    0.00000
  ]
  /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2)
  /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier (CGATS TR 001)
  /PDFXOutputCondition ()
  /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org)
  /PDFXTrapped /Unknown

  /CreateJDFFile false
  /Description <<
    /ENU ([Based on 'AP_Press'] Use these settings to create PDF documents with higher image resolution for high quality pre-press printing. The PDF documents can be opened with Acrobat and Reader 5.0 and later. These settings require font embedding.)
  >>
  /Namespace [
    (Adobe)
    (Common)
    (1.0)
  ]
  /OtherNamespaces [
    <<
      /AsReaderSpreads false
      /CropImagesToFrames true
      /ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue
      /FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false
      /IncludeGuidesGrids false
      /IncludeNonPrinting false
      /IncludeSlug false
      /Namespace [
        (Adobe)
        (InDesign)
        (4.0)
      ]
      /OmitPlacedBitmaps false
      /OmitPlacedEPS false
      /OmitPlacedPDF false
      /SimulateOverprint /Legacy
    >>
    <<
      /AllowImageBreaks true
      /AllowTableBreaks true
      /ExpandPage false
      /HonorBaseURL true
      /HonorRolloverEffect false
      /IgnoreHTMLPageBreaks false
      /IncludeHeaderFooter false
      /MarginOffset [
        0
        0
        0
        0
      ]
      /MetadataAuthor ()
      /MetadataKeywords ()
      /MetadataSubject ()
      /MetadataTitle ()
      /MetricPageSize [
        0
        0
      ]
      /MetricUnit /inch
      /MobileCompatible 0
      /Namespace [
        (Adobe)
        (GoLive)
        (8.0)
      ]
      /OpenZoomToHTMLFontSize false
      /PageOrientation /Portrait
      /RemoveBackground false
      /ShrinkContent true
      /TreatColorsAs /MainMonitorColors
      /UseEmbeddedProfiles false
      /UseHTMLTitleAsMetadata true
    >>
    <<
      /AddBleedMarks false
      /AddColorBars false
      /AddCropMarks false
      /AddPageInfo false
      /AddRegMarks false
      /BleedOffset [
        9
        9
        9
        9
      ]
      /ConvertColors /NoConversion
      /DestinationProfileName (U.S. Web Coated \(SWOP\) v2)
      /DestinationProfileSelector /WorkingCMYK
      /Downsample16BitImages true
      /FlattenerPreset <<
        /ClipComplexRegions true
        /ConvertStrokesToOutlines false
        /ConvertTextToOutlines false
        /GradientResolution 300
        /LineArtTextResolution 1200
        /PresetName ([High Resolution])
        /PresetSelector /HighResolution
        /RasterVectorBalance 1
      >>
      /FormElements true
      /GenerateStructure false
      /IncludeBookmarks false
      /IncludeHyperlinks false
      /IncludeInteractive false
      /IncludeLayers false
      /IncludeProfiles true
      /MarksOffset 6
      /MarksWeight 0.250000
      /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings
      /Namespace [
        (Adobe)
        (CreativeSuite)
        (2.0)
      ]
      /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /UseName
      /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault
      /PreserveEditing true
      /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged
      /UntaggedRGBHandling /LeaveUntagged
      /UseDocumentBleed false
    >>
  ]
  /SyntheticBoldness 1.000000
>> setdistillerparams
<<
  /HWResolution [2400 2400]
  /PageSize [630.000 810.000]
>> setpagedevice