According to Paul Ricoeur, the question “What is the just?” is interrelated with the question “Why be just?” which is in turn connected to “Who am I?” Ricoeur elaborates his conception of justice on the basis of his “little ethics,” which is founded on his conception of narrative identity. According to him, justice is basically rooted in the dialectic tension between alterity and identity, which constitutes the self. His analysis of selfhood, from the most elementary level in semantic analysis onwards, shows that features of justice are reflected in the ontological-existential structure. It can be said that these features as a whole are characteristic of human existence, which is prone to perversion by evil. His analysis of the narrative provide the framework for a further analysis of the just in political, juridical and criminological fields.