Lander, WY – Do you know what justice is? What is justice? Ohh wait, you know? Socrates’ “go-to” question is certainly interesting at first, obsessive once you get into it, and then, quite soon, haunting, unanswerable, and maybe even a little bothersome.
But while Socrates apparently died all those thousands of years ago and never really accepting anyone’s definition of justice or letting on that he had a sense of it himself no one else even now is really sure what justice is anyway.
This is particularly evident to WCC juniors who are haunted by the question as part of a philosophy paper that has doubled in length year over year compared to what the last batch of juniors had to write. “Do you know what justice is?” has almost edged out, “Do you know where Anselm is?” or “Where did Ryan go?” amid the most common phrases in use at WCC over the past few days as juniors stress over it in connection to the paper on magnanimity and happiness.
“I may not know what justice is, what magnanimity is, or what happiness is, but I certainly know that none of them are the prep for this paper,” commented junior Matthew White of Idaho. “And it wasn’t going to even be this bad. We were supposed to have all sorts of classes for talking about all sorts of justice. And then… zilch, nada, nihil. We get slammed with another paper on top of this other paper. And guess what? It’s not just another paper, not just one due an hour and twenty minutes from when it was announced but on something we hadn’t even talked about and in place of a a class that would have given us some help with both of these papers.”
But as if this wasn’t bad enough more happened, more disturbing things. According to another junior, Jane Cunningham of Oregon, rather than Dr. Papadopoulos assigning the surprise paper alone, there was a “weird sort of shiny thing behind him.”
“I squinted and looked again, thinking it was just sunlight reflecting oof of his polished mustache” added Jane. But no, it had a shape. And more it had a voice, mumbled, terrifying, and constantly repeating itself. “Do you know what justice is? Do YOU know what justice is? Do you know what justice is?”
Dr. Papadopoulos appeared not to notice at all, although just about every student, judging from a reported increase in fear/stress among the junior class, saw it, but even worse, the sighting continued for the entire class, a weird figure floating in mid-air, moving slightly, and constantly speaking. A voice with a Southern Greek accent, coming from a figure dressed in a white philosopher-like robe that “probably dated from the 90s” according to Matthew (the 390s that is) and a penetrating inquisitive expression on its face.
More than 200 years later, Socrates is haunting Wyoming Catholic College…