Epeikonomia

This summer, I'm hoping to finish up on a book project, Divisions of Law, which originated as a textual study of Bodin's Juris Universi Distributio, but has evolved into other explorations of early modern jurisprudence. One major area of study is Bodin's theory of justice.  Bodin is not typically remembered as a theorist of justice in the history of moral philosophy.  But he should be, especially since he closes his major work on the state with the claim that the purpose of sovereignty is to realize justice.

Any not just any kind of justice.  He conceptualizes a specific form of justice that Bodin labels 'harmonic justice,' explicitly referencing the Pythagorean musical idea of harmonic ratios formed by octaves (1/2), perfect fifths (2/3), and perfect fourths (3/4).  This is presented as an alternative to the sort of justice represented by arithmetic ratios and geometric ratios in commutative and distributive justice, respectively.

Bodin, Juris Universi Distributio fol.F, s.v. Finis

One point that I found particularly striking, however, was the terminology Bodin uses to capture this notion of harmony.  Bodin invented a new term for this purpose:

'Epeikonomia' - a combination of 'nomos' (law) and 'epieikeia' (equity).  Colleagues specializing in Greek tell me it's a neologism.  It's also a good illustration of Bodin's tactic in this very unusual work, but also an important window into his dissatisfaction with both legal equality and meritorious equity.