Theory of Justice

Theory of Justice

Justice, on the classical view, is a virtue; specifically, it is a disposition to give each person his or her due. Naturally, there has always been some difference of opinion as to what, exactly, is due to whom under which conditions. The most influential account has probably been that offered by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. Distinguishing justice in distribution from justice in rectification, he argues that in the former case, goods are justly distributed according to the proportionate merit of the recipients, and that in the latter case, just punishments and compensations are proportionate to injuries caused (Aristotle, 1998, 33). The virtue of justice can thus be understood as a state of character that disposes people to act justly and wish for what is just, so defined.

It is important to observe that this duty of justice (as it is now often called) does not cover the whole range of our practical obligations. It does not, for example, include any obligations we might have to ourselves (prudential obligations) or to the natural world. Arguably, it does not even include all of what we owe to other human beings. The former is obvious, as can be seen from any number of examples. People subject to tyrannical governments often face tragic choices between self-preservation and justified resistance—that is, between giving priority to their prudential or to their justice obligations; similarly, there are many difficult public policy choices that pit important environmental aims against the demands of justice. However, when it comes to our obligations to other human beings specifically, justice sometimes seems to have an imperialistic tendency to engross the whole of morality (Dworkin, 2000, 47).

Aristotle himself observed the ambiguity this causes: When we describe a person as just, do we simply mean to say that he or she is virtuous or moral in general; or do we mean that he or she has some specific virtue or moral disposition in particular? The latter view is better. Sometimes, for example, strict justice demands punishments that, in the nature of the circumstances, would be inhumane. This was supposed to be one of the lessons in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure—that justice should be tempered with mercy. This tension is most naturally described as a conflict between competing moral obligations: our obligations of justice, on one hand, and our humanitarian obligations, on the other. For this conflict to even arise, justice cannot constitute the whole of morality.

If the duty of justice is roughly our obligation to observe the rules of shared institutions and practices, then it has to be asked—will any set of shared institutions and practices do? On this question turns the essential difference between the classical and the modern approach to the problem of justice. Classical political and moral thinkers (like Aristotle) for the most part took the institutions and practices they were already familiar with as given and addressed themselves to such related problems as these: Why should we be just? Can our justice obligations and our ...