This course examines the unique status of "justice" as an idea whose very conception depends on its inherent relation to practice. Beginning with Plato, we explore why attempts to define the idea of "justice" result in theories of the polis or State, why ethical conceptions of justice require conceptions of freedom, and why conceptions of freedom require aesthetic and linguistic articulation. The aim of the course is to approach these critical issues gradually, through careful readings and discussion of ancient to modern texts, incl. Plato, Locke, Kant, Schiller, Kleist, Hegel, Adorno, Rawls, Derrida