UN General Assembly
1997

What more is required for the Republic of China to be admitted to United Nations membership? One may well ask. My answer: justice. The mention of justice evokes recollection of two very insightful observations which deserve to be shared in this noble Assembly. First, Reinhold Niebur, in his Foreword to “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness”, offered the following comment on justice: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but Man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” Well might we enquire as to the origin of this inclination to injustice. But the success or failure to identify that origin notwithstanding, an effective manner of dealing with that inclination is provided by Plato’s construct for education, which is centred on exposure of the soul to the right things. And second, in his Foreword to Allan Bloom’s thought-provoking study on American higher education — the number-one bestseller of its time, one decade ago, Saul Bellow offered a view that is particularly pertinent to the notion of exposure of the soul to the right things. Saul Bellow contends that: