Page - 62 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2

63 | www.limina-graz.eu Isabella Guanzini | Ideas of Freedom lent to political citizenship, i.  e. to the positive freedom of participation in the construction of the common good. Consequently, liberty manifests it- self in the struggle against foreign despotism as well as in the forms of civic friendship and juridical cooperation marking the polis. In both cases, it is tightly connected with the constitution and protection of human sociality. The fundamental belief of ancient philosophy is that there exists an order, purpose, and justice intrinsic in reality, which human beings are called to respect and realize in theory and praxis. This vision finds its paradigmatic expression in the philosophy of Anaximander, as is testified by the only fragment of his writings that has reached us: “Whence things have their origin, Thence also their destruction happens, According to necessity; For they give to each other justice and recompense For their injustice In conformity with the ordinance of Time” (Curd 1996, 12). The universal principle of the apeiron – i.  e. what is divine, indefinite and infinite, eternal and imperishable – is the womb of all things, which it gen- erates and reabsorbs “according to necessity” in a cycle of birth and death as well as of struggle between opposing elements. What needs to be under- lined is the aspect of “injustice” that, for Anaximander, each entity carries with itself: individuation is unjust with respect to the whole because it gives substance to the singular to the detriment of the totality of the apeiron. Jus- tice [dike] rules the cosmic movements of men and things, thereby guar- anteeing the order at the root of the anthropological and ontological vision of the Greeks. Later, the polis becomes the manifestation of this cosmos: through the art of politics, man understands its nature as a social animal destined to live with others according to the principle of isonomia, which is to say the equality of all men before the law. A similar perspective is shared by the Stoic school, according to which rea- son is a cosmological-ontological principle that finds its expression in hu- man beings as their capacity to follow its rules. Being free means acting in conformity with the principles of reason and, therefore, acting out of Justice rules the cosmic movements of men and things. Individuation is unjust with respect to the whole.