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Justice: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Justice
Justice, according to Plato, is not merely a legal concept but a state of balance and harmony within the soul and the state. In his seminal work The Republic, Plato constructs a metaphor of a chariot to explain the human psyche, where the charioteer represents reason, tasked with controlling two horses: one symbolizing spirit and the other desire. This ancient framework suggests that a just person is one who successfully aligns their internal conflicting aspects, ensuring that reason guides the spirited and desiring parts of the self. Plato argues that this internal order mirrors the ideal city, where each class performs its proper function without overstepping. He posits that only philosophers, who love wisdom and comprehend the nature of the good, should govern, much as one would trust a doctor with health rather than a farmer. Socrates later reinforced this with the parable of the ship, depicting an unjust city as a vessel crewed by a drunken captain representing the common people, manipulated by untrustworthy politicians, while the true navigator, the philosopher, is ignored. This philosophical foundation established justice as a structural necessity for both individual integrity and societal stability, a view that has persisted for over two millennia.
Divine Command and Moral Foundations
For centuries, the definition of justice was inextricably linked to the divine, with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition viewing justice as a governing concept derived directly from God. The Hebrew Bible describes God as having righteousness and justice as the foundation of His throne, a theme echoed in the New Testament where Jesus Christ displays justice alongside mercy. The divine command theory asserts that morality and justice are authoritative commands of God, meaning murder is wrong because God says it is so. This perspective was challenged early on by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro, which posed the famous dilemma: is what is morally good commanded by the gods because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by the gods? This question remains central to theological debates, implying that if justice is merely God's command, it is beyond mortal understanding, whereas if it exists independently, morality is subject to human judgment. In contrast, Buddhist ethics reject the notion of individuals receiving their due as a system of rewards and punishments. Instead, Buddhist justice focuses on the transformation of suffering through skillful actions rooted in generosity and compassion, viewing karma not as a ledger of debts but as the continuation of actions that shape future experience within an interconnected web of life. This approach emphasizes collective liberation and the cultivation of mindfulness over the assignment of blame.
Common questions
What is Plato's definition of justice in The Republic?
Plato defines justice as a state of balance and harmony within the soul and the state where reason controls spirit and desire. He argues that a just person aligns internal conflicting aspects so that reason guides the spirited and desiring parts of the self. This internal order mirrors the ideal city where each class performs its proper function without overstepping.
How does the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition define justice?
The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition views justice as a governing concept derived directly from God and describes God as having righteousness and justice as the foundation of His throne. The divine command theory asserts that morality and justice are authoritative commands of God meaning murder is wrong because God says it is so. This perspective was challenged early on by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro which posed the famous dilemma regarding the source of moral goodness.
What is the difference between natural law and legal positivism?
Natural law posits that inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles are discoverable through reason while legal positivism emphasizes that laws are rules created by human authorities and are not necessarily connected to moral principles. Thomas Aquinas argued that human beings possess reason which is a spark of the divine and all human lives are sacred and of infinite value. John Locke stressed natural law's role in justifying property rights and the right to revolution independent of enacted laws.
What are the three primary mechanisms of utilitarian justice according to John Stuart Mill?
Utilitarian justice fights crime through three primary mechanisms: deterrence which uses the credible threat of punishment to lead people to make choices that maximize welfare; rehabilitation which aims to change bad people into better ones by reducing the likelihood of causing unwanted things; and security which involves incapacitating irredeemable causers of bad things to protect society. Mill argued that our belief in the overwhelming importance of justice derives from the desire to retaliate against those who hurt us and the ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another's place known as sympathy.
What are John Rawls two principles of justice as fairness?
John Rawls argues that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. He also states that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. These principles are chosen behind a veil of ignorance that denies knowledge of personalities social statuses moral characters wealth talents and life plans.
What does modern research reveal about the biological roots of justice?
Modern research indicates that the sense of justice is deeply rooted in human biology and psychology suggesting that reactions to fairness are wired into the brain. Studies at UCLA in 2008 showed that fairness activates the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats while research conducted in 2003 at Emory University involving capuchin monkeys demonstrated that other cooperative animals also possess such a sense. Victims of crime find respectful treatment information and having a voice important for a sense of justice as well as the perception of a fair procedure.
The transition from divine command to natural law marked a pivotal shift in how humanity understood justice, positing that inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles are discoverable through reason. Thomas Aquinas argued that because human beings possess reason, which is a spark of the divine, all human lives are sacred and of infinite value, granting everyone an intrinsic set of rights that no one can remove. This theory was instrumental in challenging the divine right of kings and became an alternative justification for the establishment of social contracts and legal rights. John Locke, a proponent of natural law, stressed its role in justifying property rights and the right to revolution, arguing that certain rights and moral values are inherent in human nature and can be understood universally, independent of enacted laws. This stood in stark contrast to legal positivism, which emphasizes that laws are rules created by human authorities and are not necessarily connected to moral principles. The concept of natural law also influenced the development of classical republicanism, providing a philosophical basis for the idea that justice is a part of the natural order, accessible to all rational beings regardless of their social status or religious affiliation.
The Calculus of Consequences
In the 19th century, utilitarian thinkers like John Stuart Mill redefined justice as a derivative of the more basic standard of rightness, which is consequentialism. According to this framework, what is right is what has the best consequences, usually measured by the total or average welfare caused. Mill argued that our belief in the overwhelming importance of justice derives from two natural human tendencies: the desire to retaliate against those who hurt us and the ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another's place, known as sympathy. Utilitarian justice fights crime through three primary mechanisms: deterrence, which uses the credible threat of punishment to lead people to make choices that maximize welfare; rehabilitation, which aims to change bad people into better ones by reducing the likelihood of causing unwanted things; and security, which involves incapacitating irredeemable causers of bad things to protect society. This approach suggests that punishment might sometimes justify punishing the innocent or inflicting disproportionately severe punishments if that will have the best consequences overall, a notion that has sparked intense debate regarding the moral limits of utilitarianism and the potential for sacrificing individual rights for the greater good.
The Veil of Ignorance
John Rawls revolutionized modern political philosophy with his theory of justice as fairness, which uses a social contract argument to demonstrate that justice is a form of impartial distribution of goods. Rawls asks us to imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance that denies us all knowledge of our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents, and life plans. In this hypothetical scenario, we must choose a theory of justice to govern our society without knowing who we will be, ensuring that the decision excludes selfish bias. Rawls argued that each of us would reject the utilitarian theory of justice because of the risk that we might turn out to be someone whose own good is sacrificed for greater benefits for others. Instead, we would endorse his two principles of justice: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all, and social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. This imagined choice justifies these principles as the principles of justice for us, because we would agree to them in a fair decision procedure, creating a framework that prioritizes the needs of the least advantaged while maintaining the integrity of basic liberties.
The Property and Merit Debate
Robert Nozick challenged the prevailing theories of distributive justice in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, arguing that justice is not a matter of the whole distribution matching an ideal pattern, but of each individual entitlement having the right kind of history. He posited that a person has some good, especially property rights, if and only if they came to have it by a history made up entirely of events of two kinds: just acquisition, especially by working on unowned things, and just transfer, that is free gift, sale, or other agreement, but not theft. Nozick contended that all attempts to redistribute goods according to an ideal pattern, without the consent of their owners, are theft, and in particular, redistributive taxation is theft. This property rights theory also takes a consequentialist view, suggesting that property rights based justice has the effect of maximizing the overall wealth of an economic system through voluntary transactions that are Pareto efficient. In contrast, meritocratic theories argue that goods, especially wealth and social status, should be distributed to match individual merit, which is usually understood as some combination of talent and hard work. These competing views highlight the tension between the right to acquire and hold property versus the societal obligation to ensure a fair distribution of resources based on need or contribution.
The Psychology of Fairness
Modern research has revealed that the sense of justice is deeply rooted in human biology and psychology, suggesting that reactions to fairness are wired into the brain. Studies at UCLA in 2008 indicated that fairness activates the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats, consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need. Research conducted in 2003 at Emory University involving capuchin monkeys demonstrated that other cooperative animals also possess such a sense, and that inequity aversion may not be uniquely human. Victims of crime find respectful treatment, information, and having a voice important for a sense of justice, as well as the perception of a fair procedure. Pemberton et al. proposed a Big 2 model of justice in terms of agency, communion, and membership in a society, noting that victims experience a loss of perception of agency due to a loss of control, as well as a loss of communion if the offender is a member of their social group. This suggests that a sense of justice can be restored by increasing a sense of communion and agency, rather than through retribution or restoration, highlighting the psychological dimensions of justice that extend beyond legal frameworks and into the very fabric of human interaction and social cohesion.
Institutions and the Speed of Justice
In a world where people are interconnected but disagree, institutions are required to instantiate ideals of justice, yet these institutions often fail to live up to the ideal, sometimes due to deliberate opposition to justice despite understanding. The phrase justice delayed is justice denied refers to the problem of slow justice, with the right to a speedy trial enshrined in some jurisdictions, suggesting that higher quality justice tends to be speedy. In criminal law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function, generally involving a decree of imprisonment, a fine, and other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime. Laws may specify the range of penalties that can be imposed for various offenses, and sentencing guidelines sometimes regulate what punishment within those ranges can be imposed given a certain set of offense and offender characteristics. The most common purposes of sentencing include retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, reparation, and denunciation, each serving a distinct aim in the administration of justice. Civil cases are settled primarily by means of monetary compensation for harm done, known as damages, and orders intended to prevent future harm, such as injunctions, under some legal systems, an award of damages involves some scope for retribution, denunciation, and deterrence, covering a punitive effect, social disapprobation, and potentially, disgorgement.