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Fallen Kingdom and The Get Down. All the Bright Places. Gorgias Plato named dialogues after both of them is remembered for a striking three-part statement of skepticism, holding that nothing really exists, that, even if something did exist, we could not grasp it, and that, even if we could grasp something real, we could never express it to anyone else. We can easily anticipate how readily Sophists would apply such relativism and skepticism to justice.
But the most significant Sophist statement regarding justice arguably comes from Antiphon, who employs the characteristic distinction between custom nomos and nature physis with devastating effect. He claims that the laws of justice, matters of convention, should be obeyed when other people are observing us and may hold us accountable; but, otherwise, we should follow the demands of nature.
The laws of justice, extrinsically derived, presumably involve serving the good of others, the demands of nature, which are internal, serving self-interest. He even suggests that obeying the laws of justice often renders us helpless victims of those who do not First , pp. If there is any such objective value as natural justice, then it is reasonable for us to attempt a rational understanding of it. On the other hand, if justice is merely a construction of customary agreement, then such a quest is doomed to frustration and failure. With this as a backdrop, we should be able to see what motivated Plato and Aristotle to seek a strong alternative.
Socrates easily demolishes this simplistic view with the effective logical technique of a counter-example: Secondly, Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, jumps into the discussion, espousing the familiar, traditional view that justice is all about giving people what is their due. But the problem with this bromide is that of determining who deserves what. Polemarchus may reflect the cultural influence of the Sophists, in specifying that it depends on whether people are our friends, deserving good from us, or foes, deserving harm.
It takes more effort for Socrates to destroy this conventional theory, but he proceeds in stages: If the first inadequate theory of justice was too simplistic, this second one was downright dangerous. The third, and final, inadequate account presented here is that of the Sophist Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus cannot mean physically stronger, for then inferior humans would be superior to finer folks like them. He clarifies his idea that he is referring to politically powerful people in leadership positions.
But, next, even the strongest leaders are sometimes mistaken about what is to their own advantage, raising the question of whether people ought to do what leaders suppose is to their own advantage or only what actually is so. Had Thrasymachus phrased this in terms of what serves the interest of society itself, the same appearance versus reality distinction would apply. But, beyond this, Socrates rejects the exploitation model of leadership, which sees political superiors as properly exploiting inferiors Thrasymachus uses the example of a shepherd fattening up and protecting his flock of sheep for his own selfish gain , substituting a service model in its place his example is of the good medical doctor, who practices his craft primarily for the welfare of patients.
Socrates suggests three criteria for judgment: Thus, by the end of the first book, it looks as if Socrates has trounced all three of these inadequate views of justice, although he himself claims to be dissatisfied because we have only shown what justice is not, with no persuasive account of its actual nature ibid.
Likewise, in Gorgias , Plato has Callicles espouse the view that, whatever conventions might seem to dictate, natural justice dictates that superior people should rule over and derive greater benefits than inferior people, that society artificially levels people because of a bias in favor of equality. Socrates is then made to criticize this theory by analyzing what sort of superiority would be relevant and then arguing that Callicles is erroneously advocating in justice, a false value, rather than the genuine one of true justice Gorgias , pp.
Glaucon reminds us that there are three different sorts of goods—intrinsic ones, such as joy, merely instrumental ones, such as money-making, and ones that are both instrumentally and intrinsically valuable, such as health—in order to ask which type of good is justice. Socrates responds that justice belongs in the third category, rendering it the richest sort of good. In that case, Glaucon protests, Socrates has failed to prove his point. If his debate with Thrasymachus accomplished anything at all, it nevertheless did not establish any intrinsic value in justice.
He proposes to do this in three steps: Almost as soon as Glaucon finishes, his brother Adeimantus jumps in to add two more points to the case against justice: In defending justice against this Sophist critique, Plato has Socrates construct his own positive theory. This is set up by means of an analogy comparing justice, on the large scale, as it applies to society, and on a smaller scale, as it applies to an individual soul. Thus justice is seen as an essential virtue of both a good political state and a good personal character. The strategy hinges on the idea that the state is like the individual writ large—each comprising three main parts such that it is crucial how they are interrelated—and that analyzing justice on the large scale will facilitate our doing so on the smaller one.
In Book IV, after cobbling together his blueprint of the ideal republic, Socrates asks Glaucon where justice is to be found, but they agree they will have to search for it together. If they can properly identify the other three of those four, whatever remains that is essential to a completely good society must be justice. Wisdom is held to be prudent judgment among leaders; courage is the quality in defenders or protectors whereby they remain steadfast in their convictions and commitments in the face of fear; and temperance or moderation is the virtue to be found in all three classes of citizens, but especially in the producers, allowing them all to agree harmoniously that the leaders should lead and everyone else follow.
Now we move from this macro-level of political society to the psychological micro-level of an individual soul, pressing the analogy mentioned above. A good soul is wise, in having good judgment whereby reason rules; it is courageous in that its spirited part is ready, willing, and able to fight for its convictions in the face of fear; and it is temperate or moderate, harmoniously integrated because all of its parts, especially its dangerous appetitive desires, agree that it should be always under the command of reason.
And, again, what is left that is essential is justice, whereby each part of the soul does the work intended by nature, none of them interfering with the functioning of any other parts. We are also told in passing that, corresponding to these four pivotal virtues of the moral life, there are four pivotal vices, foolishness, cowardice, self-indulgence, and injustice. One crucial question remains unanswered: The answer is that, of course, we can because justice is the health of the soul.
Now let us quickly see how Plato applies this theory of justice to a particular social issue, before briefly considering the theory critically. In a remarkably progressive passage in Book V of his Republic , Plato argues for equal opportunity for women. He holds that, even though women tend to be physically weaker than men, this should not prove an insuperable barrier to their being educated for the same socio-political functions as men, including those of the top echelons of leadership responsibility.
While the body has a gender, it is the soul that is virtuous or vicious. Despite their different roles in procreation, child-bearing, giving birth, and nursing babies, there is no reason, in principle, why a woman should not be as intelligent and virtuous—including as just—as men, if properly trained. As much as possible, men and women should share the workload in common Republic , pp.
Nevertheless, many of us today are sympathetic to this application of justice in support of a view that would not become popular for another two millennia. The negative part of it—his critique of inadequate views of justice—is a masterful series of arguments against attempts to reduce justice to a couple of simplistic rules Cephalus , to treating people merely in accord with how we feel about them Polemarchus , and to the power-politics mentality of exploiting them for our own selfish purposes Thrasymachus.
Thus, in refuting them, Plato, in effect, is refuting the Sophists. However, after the big buildup, the positive part—what he himself maintains justice is—turns out to be a letdown. His conception of justice reduces it to order. While some objective sense of order is relevant to justice, this does not adequately capture the idea of respecting all persons, individually and collectively, as free rational agents.
What, for example, of the Christian virtue of love or the secular virtue of benevolence? Finally, the argument from analogy, showing that justice must be intrinsically, and not merely instrumentally, valuable because it is like the combination good of health proves, on critical consideration, to fail.
Nevertheless, one cannot help hoping that a more cogent theory might yet be developed. After working with Plato at his Academy for a couple of decades, Aristotle was understandably most influenced by his teacher, also adopting, for example, a virtue theory of ethics. Book V of his great Nicomachean Ethics deals in considerable depth with the moral and political virtue of justice. It begins vacuously enough with the circular claim that it is the condition that renders us just agents inclined to desire and practice justice.
But his analysis soon becomes more illuminating when he specifies it in terms of what is lawful and fair. In general, citizens should obey such law in order to be just. The problem is that civil law can itself be unjust in the sense of being unfair to some, so that we need to consider special justice as a function of fairness. He analyzes this into two sorts: If a member of a community has been unfairly benefited or burdened with more or less than is deserved in the way of social distributions, then corrective justice can be required, as, for example, by a court of law.
Notice that Aristotle is no more an egalitarian than Plato was—while a sort of social reciprocity may be needed, it must be of a proportional sort rather than equal. Like all moral virtues, for Aristotle, justice is a rational mean between bad extremes. But, since individuals tend to be selfishly biased, the law should be a product of reason rather than of particular rulers.
Aristotle is prepared to distinguish between what is naturally just and unjust, on the one hand, such as whom one may legitimately kill, and what is merely conventionally just or unjust, on the other, such as a particular system of taxation for some particular society. But the Sophists are wrong to suggest that all political justice is the artificial result of legal convention and to discount all universal natural justice ibid.
What is allegedly at stake here is our developing a moral virtue that is essential to the well-being of society, as well as to the flourishing of any human being. A decent person might selfishly benefit from being a stickler regarding following the law exactly but decide to take less or give more for the sake of the common good. In this way, decency can correct the limitations of the law and represents a higher form of justice Nicomachean , pp. In his Politics , Aristotle further considers political justice and its relation to equality.
Justice rather requires inequality for people who are unequal. But, then, oligarchy is also intrinsically unjust insofar as it involves treating equals as unequal because of some contingent disparity, of birth, wealth, etc. Rather, those in a just political society who contribute the most to the common good will receive a larger share, because they thus exhibit more political virtue, than those who are inferior in that respect; it would be simply wrong, from the perspective of political justice, for them to receive equal shares.
Thus political justice must be viewed as a function of the common good of a community. But inferiors have a vested interest in thinking that those who are equal in some respect should be equal in all respects, while superiors are biased, in the opposite direction, to imagine that those who are unequal in some way should be unequal in all ways.
Thus, for instance, those who are equally citizens are not necessarily equal in political virtue, and those who are financially richer are not necessarily morally or mentally superior. All he can suggest, for example in some of his comments on the desirable aristocratic government, is that it must involve moral and intellectual virtue Politics , pp.
Let us now consider how Aristotle applies his own theory of justice to the social problem of alleged superiors and inferiors, before attempting a brief critique of that theory. While Plato accepted slavery as a legitimate social institution but argued for equal opportunity for women, in his Politics , Aristotle accepts sexual inequality while actively defending slavery. Anyone who is inferior intellectually and morally is properly socio-politically inferior in a well-ordered polis.
Aristotle holds that some are marked as superior and fit to rule from birth, while others are inferior and marked from birth to be ruled by others. It was the custom notice the distinction, used here, between custom and nature in antiquity to make slaves of conquered enemies who become prisoners of war. So the fact that a human being is defeated or captured is no assurance that he is fit for slavery, as an unjust war may have been imposed on a nobler society by a more primitive one.
If our moral intuitions are correct against Aristotle and some would even call his views here sexist and racist , he may be mistaken about a matter of fact or about a value judgment or both. Surely he is wrong about all women and non-Greeks, as such, being essentially inferior to Greek males in relevant ways, for cultural history has demonstrated that, when given opportunities, women and non-Greeks have shown themselves to be significantly equal.
But it appears that Aristotle may also have been wrong in leaping from the factual claim of inequality to the value judgment that it is therefore right that inferiors ought to be socially, legally, politically, and economically subordinate—like Plato and others of his culture for which he is an apologist here , Aristotle seems to have no conception of human rights as such.
Like Plato, he is arguing for an objective theory of personal and social justice as a preferable alternative to the relativistic one of the Sophists. It also leaves Aristotle with little viable means of establishing a universal perspective that will respect the equal dignity of all humans, as such. They were so focused on the ways in which people are un equal, that they could not appreciate any fundamental moral equality that might provide a platform for natural human rights.
This included such important post-Aristotelians as the enormously influential Roman eclectic Cicero, such prominent Stoics as Marcus Aurelius a Roman emperor and Epictetus a Greek slave of the Romans , and neo-Platonists like Plotinus. But the two dominant paths that medieval philosophy would follow for its roughly thousand year history had been blazed by Plato and Aristotle.
More specifically, Augustine uses Platonic and neo-Platonic philosophy to the extent that he can reconcile it with Christian thought; Aquinas, many centuries later, develops a great synthesis of Christian thought including that of Augustine and Aristotelian philosophy. A great difference, however, between their philosophies and those of Hellenic thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle stems from the commitment of these Christians to the authority of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Aquinas would later agree with Augustine who is accepting the mandate of Isaiah 7: Righteousness is identified with mercy as well as with justice e. The ten commandments of the Old Testament Exodus In the Beatitudes beginning the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expands on this gospel of love by advocating that his followers go beyond the duties of justice to behave with compassion in certain supererogatory ways Matthew 5: All of this scriptural tradition essentially influenced medieval thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas in a way that distinguishes them from ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.
Aurelius Augustine was born and raised in the Roman province of North Africa; during his life, he experienced the injustices, the corruption, and the erosion of the Roman Empire. This personal experience, in dialectical tension with the ideals of Christianity, provided him with a dramatic backdrop for his religious axiology. Philosophically, he was greatly influenced by such neo-Platonists as Plotinus. These are prudence substituted for wisdom , fortitude or courage, temperance, and justice.
This was to have a profound and ongoing influence on Christian ethics. In his masterpiece, The City of God , Augustine draws the dramatic conclusion from this position that the Roman Empire was never a truly just political society. A genuinely just society must be based on Christian love, its peaceful order established by the following of two basic rules—that people harm nobody and that they should try to help everyone to the extent that they can do so City , pp. In a letter to Marcellinus, Augustine uses scripture to deny that Christian doctrine is committed to pacifism, though wars should be waged, when necessary, with a benevolent love for the enemy.
In a letter to Boniface, he maintains that godly, righteous people can serve in the military, again citing scripture to support his position. Again Augustine makes it clear that he is no pacifist Political , pp. While this is a very valuable application of his theory of justice, this doctrine of the just war standing the test of time to this very day, the general theory on which it is based is more problematic. The unoriginal and uninspired conception of justice as giving others their due had already become familiar to the point of being trite. It remains vulnerable to the serious problems of vagueness already considered: But, also, Augustine should have an advantage over the ancient Greeks in arriving at a theory of justice based on universal equality on account of the Christian doctrine not to mention because of the influences of Cicero, the Stoics, and Plotinus that all humans are equally children of God.
Thus, while he has some sense of some moral or spiritual equality among humans, it does not issue in equal respect for all persons as free, rational agents, allowing him, for example, to accept the institution of slavery as a just punishment for sin, despite the belief that God originally created humans as naturally free, because of the idea that we have all been corrupted by original sin City , pp. Aquinas discusses the same four cardinal moral virtues, including that of justice, in his masterpiece, the multi-volume Summa Theologica. No more a socio-political egalitarian than Plato, Aristotle, or Augustine, he analyzes it as calling for proportional equality, or equity, rather than any sort of strict numerical equality, and as a function of natural right rather than of positive law.
Natural right ultimately stems from the eternal, immutable will of God, who created the world and governs it with divine providence. Natural justice must always take precedence over the contingent agreements of our human conventions. In this case, the general category to which justice belongs is that it is a moral habit of a virtuous character.
What specifically distinguishes it from other moral virtues is that by justice, a person is consistently committed to respecting the rights of others over time. Strictly speaking, the virtue of justice always concerns interpersonal relations, so that it is only metaphorically that we can speak of a person being just to himself. Justice is a rational mean between the vicious extremes of deficiency and excess, having to do with our external actions regarding others.
Like many of his predecessors, Aquinas considers justice to be preeminent among the moral virtues. Aquinas applies this theory of justice to many social problems.
He maintains that natural law gives us the right to own private property. Secondly, Aquinas refines the Augustinian just war theory by articulating three conditions that must jointly be met in order for the waging of war to be just: It is not justifiable deliberately to slay innocent noncombatants. Even acting in self-defense must be done in reasonable proportion to the situation, so that it is wrong to employ more force than is necessary to stop aggression.
Even killing another unintentionally can be unjust if done in the course of committing another crime or through criminal negligence. Thirdly, while Aquinas thinks we should tolerate the religious beliefs of those who have never been Christians, so that it would be unjust to persecute them, he thinks it just to use force against heretics who adhered to but then rejected orthodox Christianity, even to the point of hurting them, as in the Inquisition, for the good of their own souls. Fourth, like Augustine, Aquinas accepts slavery, so long as no Christian is the slave of a non-Christian ibid.
His applications of the theory can be regarded as indicative of its problematic character: Here again the Christian belief that all humans are personal creatures of a loving God is vitiated by an insufficient commitment to the implications of that, regarding socio-political equality, so that only some humans are fully respected as free, rational agents. The rationalistic theories of Plato and Augustine and the classical empirical theories of Aristotle and Aquinas all leave us hoping that preferable alternatives might be forthcoming.
In investigating these and various other crimes Robert became privy to the shortcomings of the justice system, as well as just how far human depravity can go. This is Justice. The essential tracks, all in one playlist. 37 songs. Play on Spotify. 1. www.farmersmarketmusic.comce • Justice. 2. We Are Your Friends - Justice Vs.
Although only half as much time elapses between Aquinas and Hobbes as did between Augustine and Aquinas, from the perspective of intellectual history, the period of modernism represents a staggering sea-change. We have neither the time nor the space to consider the complex causal nexus that explains this fact; but, for our purposes, suffice it to say that the Protestant Reformation, the revolution of the new science, and the progressive willingness publicly to challenge authority both political and religious converge to generate a strikingly different philosophical mentality in the seventeenth century.
In the previous century, the Protestant Reformation shattered the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church, so that thinkers need not feel so constrained to adhere to established orthodoxy. The naturalistic worldview of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that eventuated in an empirical and experimental non-dogmatic methodology in both natural and political science set an example for philosophers. Thinkers of the modern era became increasingly comfortable breaking from the mainstream to pursue their own independent reasoning.
Although the influence of great ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle and of great medieval thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas would persist, there was no returning to their bygone perspectives. This vitally affects moral and political theory, in general, and views on justice, in particular. As we shall see in this section, views of justice as relative to human needs and interests became prominent as they had not been for a couple of millennia.
This will locate Hobbes and Hume closer to the Sophists than had been fashionable since pre-Socratic times in philosophy, regarding justice as a social construct. Whereas Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas all offer accounts of justice that represent alternatives to Sophism, Thomas Hobbes, the English radical empiricist, can be seen as resurrecting the Sophist view that we can have no objective knowledge of it as a moral or political absolute value. His radical empiricism does not allow him to claim to know anything not grounded in concrete sense experience.
This leads him in Leviathan , his masterpiece, to conclude that anything real must be material or corporeal in nature, that body is the one and only sort of reality; this is the philosophical position of materialistic monism, which rules out the possibility of any spiritual substance. Like other animals, man is driven by instinct and appetite, his reason being a capacity of his brain for calculating means to desirable ends.
Another controversial claim here is that all actions, including all human actions, are causally determined to occur as they do by the complex of their antecedent conditions; this is causal determinism. What we consider voluntary actions are simply those we perform in which the will plays a significant causal role, human freedom amounting to nothing more exalted than the absence of external restraints. Like other animals, we are always fundamentally motivated by a survival instinct and ultimately driven by self-interest in all of our voluntary actions; this is psychological egoism.
It is controversial whether he also holds that self-interest should always be our fundamental motivation, which is ethical egoism. In his most famous Chapter XIII, Hobbes paints a dramatic and disturbing portrait of what human life would be like in a state of nature—that is, beyond the conventional order of civil society.
We would be rationally distrustful of one another, inclined to be anti-social, viewing others as threats to our own satisfaction and well-being. Interpersonal antagonism would be natural; and, since there would exist no moral distinctions between right and wrong, just and unjust, violent force and fraudulent deception would be desirable virtues rather than objectionable vices. Reason discovers a couple of basic laws of nature, indicating how we should prudently behave if we are to have any reasonable opportunity to survive, let alone to thrive. The first of these is double-sided: The second law of nature maintains that, in order to achieve peace with others, we must be willing to give up our right to harm them, so long as they agree to reciprocate by renouncing their right to harm us.
What is conspicuously missing here is any sense of natural justice or injustice. In the state of nature, all moral values are strictly relative to our desires: But as we move from this state of nature to the state of civil society by means of the social contract, we create the rules of justice by means of the agreements we strike with one another. Prior to the conventions of the contract, we were morally free to try to do whatever we wished. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust ; and the definition of injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant.
What is not unjust, is just in civil society. This turns out to be the third law of nature, that, in the name of justice, we must try to keep our agreements. In civil society, we may justly do anything we have not, at least implicitly, committed ourselves not to do. A just person typically does just actions, though committing one or a few unjust actions does not automatically render that person unjust, especially if the unjust behavior stems from an error or sudden passion; on the other hand, a person who is typically inclined to commit unjust actions is a guilty person.
Still, if we are as selfishly motivated by our own desires as Hobbes maintains, why should we not break our word and voluntarily commit injustice, if doing so is likely to pay off for us and we imagine we might get away with it remember the problem posed by Glaucon with the story of the ring of Gyges? Clearly one more element is needed to prevent the quick disintegration of the rules of justice so artificially constructed by interpersonal agreement. This is the power of sovereign authority. We need laws codifying the rules of justice; and they must be so vigilantly and relentlessly enforced by absolute political power that nobody in his right mind would dare to try to violate them.
One of the most crucial problems of political philosophy is where to strike the balance between personal liberty and public order; Hobbes is, perhaps, more willing than most of us to give up a great deal of the former in order to secure the latter. As we have with earlier thinkers, let us see how Hobbes applies this theory of justice, as a prelude to evaluating it critically. Its rationale is to enforce obedience to the law itself and, thus, to promote security and public order.
The severity of punishment should be relative to the severity of the crime involved, since its rationale is to deter future violations of civil law Leviathan , pp. While this is a decent consequentialist theory of crime and punishment, the more general view of justice from which it is derived is far more problematic. It does stand in sharp contrast to the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas.
It does revive something like the Sophist theory to which they were all advocating alternatives. And it does reflect the naturalistic approach represented by the new science. However, all the foundational elements supporting it are quite dubious: Without these props, this theory of justice as artificially constructed by us and purely a function of our interpersonal agreements seems entirely arbitrary. But in addition to its being insufficiently justified, this theory of justice would justify too much.
For example, what would prevent its involving a justification of slavery, if the alternative for the slaves were death as enemies in a state of nature? Even apart from the issue of slavery, in the absence of any substantive human rights, minorities in civil society might be denied any set of civil liberties, such as the right to adopt religious practices to which they feel called in conscience. As a transition between Hobbes and Hume, brief mention can be made of John Locke, the most important political philosopher between them.
The reason he is not being considered at length here is that he does not offer a distinctive general theory of justice. In order to protect such property rights, people agree to a social contract that moves them from that state of nature to a state of political society, with government established to enforce the law. Another great social contract theorist between Hobbes and Hume who is worth mentioning here again he gives us no distinctive theory of justice is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In The Social Contract , he maintains that, in a well-ordered society, the general will rather than the will of any individual or group of individuals must prevail. True freedom in society requires following the general will, and those who do not choose to do so can legitimately be forced to do so. A human being is allegedly so transformed by the move from the state of nature to that of civil society as to become capable of such genuine freedom as will allow each citizen to consent to all the laws out of deference to the common good.
Like Hobbes, Hume is a radical empiricist and a determinist who is skeptical of justice as an objective, absolute virtue. Any virtue, he maintains, is desirable in that it provides us with the pleasant feeling of approval; and any vice, including that of injustice, is undesirable in that it provides us with the painful sense of disapproval. Hume offers us a unique and fascinating argument to prove his point. He imagines four hypothetical scenarios, in which either human nature would be radically different utterly altruistic or brutally selfish or our environment would be so with everything we desire constantly and abundantly available or so destitute that hardly anyone could survive , allegedly showing that, in each of them, justice would not be a virtue at all.
His conclusion is that justice is only a virtue because, relative to reality, which is intermediate among these extremes, it is beneficial to us as members of society. He holds a very conservative view of property rights, in that, normally, people should be allowed to keep what they already have acquired. The rationale for such principles of international justice is that they reduce the horrors of war and facilitate the advantages of peace.
Yet the rules of justice that are normally conducive to public utility are never absolute and can be legitimately contravened where following them would seem to do more harm than good to our society. Whether that is or is not the case in specific circumstances becomes a judgment call. Hume is important here because of a convergence of several factors. First, like the Sophists and Hobbes, he makes justice a social construct that is relative to human needs and interests.
Second, like Hobbes, he associates it fundamentally with human passions rather than with reason. Third, the virtue of justice and the rules of justice are essentially connected to the protection of private property. And, fourth, he considers public utility to be the sole basis of justice. This theory would prove extremely influential, in that Kant will take issue with it, while utilitarians like Mill will build on its flexibility.
While it may be attractive to allow for exceptions to the rules, this also creates a kind of instability. Is justice merely an instrumental good, having no intrinsic value?
If that were the case, then it would make sense to say that the role of reason is simply to calculate the most effective means to our most desirable ends. But then, assuming that our ends were sufficiently desirable, any means necessary to achieve them would presumably be justifiable—so that, morally and politically, anything goes, in principle, regardless how revolting.
Is this the best we can do in our pursuit of an adequate theory of justice? As justice is both a moral and a political virtue, helping to prescribe both a good character and right conduct, the question of how such obligations arise is crucial. But, then, what is the logical link here? Why should we, morally speaking, act for the sake of agreeableness and utility? For Kant, the reason we should choose to do what is right has nothing to do with good consequences.
It is merely because it is the right thing to do. Then we shall consider the utilitarian response to this, as developed by the philosopher who is, arguably, the greatest consequentialist of modern times, John Stuart Mill, who, as an empiricist, like Hobbes and Hume, will make what is right a function of what is good.
Even though he was not convinced by it, Kant was sufficiently disturbed by it that he committed decades to trying to answer it, creating a revolutionary new philosophical system in order to do so. This system includes, but is far from limited to, a vast, extensive practical philosophy, comprising many books and essays, including a theory of justice. It is well known that this practical philosophy—including both his ethical theory and socio-political philosophy—is the most renowned example of deontology from the Greek, meaning the study or science of duty.
Justice categorically requires a respect for the right, regardless of inconvenient or uncomfortable circumstances and regardless of desirable and undesirable consequences. On this view, matters of right will be equally applicable to all persons as potentially autonomous rational agents, regardless of any contingent differences, of gender, racial or ethnic identity, socio-economic class status, and so forth. If Kant can pull this off, it will take him further in the direction of equality of rights than any previous philosopher considered here.
It is a test we can use to help us rationally to distinguish between right and wrong; and he offers three different formulations of it which he considers three different ways of saying the same thing: For the dignity of all persons, rendering them intrinsically valuable and worthy of respect, is a function of their capacity for moral autonomy. In his Metaphysics of Morals , Kant develops his ethical system, beyond this foundation, into a doctrine of right and a doctrine of virtue.
The former comprises strict duties of justice, while the latter comprises broader duties of merit. Obviously, it is the former category, duties we owe all other persons, regardless of circumstances and consequences, that concerns us here, justice being a matter of strict right rather than one of meritorious virtue. In his Metaphysical Elements of Justice , which constitutes the first part of his Metaphysics of Morals , Kant develops his theory of justice. To say that we have duties of justice to other persons is to indicate that they have rights, against us, that we should perform those duties—so that duties of justice and rights are correlative.
Three conditions must be met in order that the concept of justice should apply: Kant approvingly invokes three ancient rules of justice: Kant distinguishes between natural or private justice, on the one hand, and civil or public justice, on the other. He has an intricate theory of property rights, which we can only touch upon here.