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Ideas about Justice
Three big
themes
Virtue Ethics
Utilitarianism
Libertarianism
Categories of Justice
Just Deserts
Distributive
Retributive
Compensatory
Aristotle Virtue Justice
Kant Freedom Justice
Rawls Freedom and
Utilitarian Justice
Nozick Freedom Justice
MacIntyre back to Virtue
Justice
Aristotle and Justice
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Justice: giving people
what they deserve
Justice cannot be
“neutral” in this sense
Who should be
distributed guitars?
A=the best guitar
players!
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Justice also involves
teleological reasoning
Telos=end, or goal, or
purpose
So, what is the goal of a
guitar?
Treating people equally
requires, in a sense,
unequal treatment
Aristotle and Government
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What is the telos of
government?
A: to encourage the good
life (a life of virtue)
Who should hold
offices? Who should
rule?
A: those with civic
virtue, those skilled in
governance
Aristotle: the father of
political science
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“The polis is not an
association for…ending
injustice. …The end and
purpose of polis
(government) is the good
life.”
Kant and Justice
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Kant respects human
freedom
Rational beings are
beings who can be
freedom
Everyone is an end, not a
means to an end
How would Kant answer
the train dilemma?
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Do the right thing because it’s
right, not to gain something
We have a duty to do this?
How do we figure out the right
thing? Pure reason!
Ergo—everyone using pure reason
will agree on same right thing!
Implication: we create laws, based
on reason, which we then have a
duty to obey
(Which can lead to moral and
social disasters? Nazis?)
Kant and Society
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It can’t be based on
utility: everyone has a
different idea of
happiness, right?
It must be based on
freedom derived from
reason
Three Moderns
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Rawls, Nozick, and MacIntyre
Have significant new approaches
 Which are related to past approaches
 And show the continuing openness of debate
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Is that a good thing? After 2500 years?
Rawls on the Just State
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John Rawls (1921 – 2002)
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A Theory of Justice (1971)
Rawls and Justice
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Justice as fairness
A just society is one run on just principles
 A just society would be a fair society
 Fairness involves Distributive Justice
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There is a fair distribution of primary “social goods”
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wealth,
opportunities,
liberties and privileges,
bases of self respect (e.g. equality of political representation)
Rawls on the Just State
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What is a Fair Society?
Would a fair society would be one that any rational,
self-interested person would want to join?
 Not quite. They will be biased to their own talents.
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Rawls on the Just State
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The Veil of Ignorance
Suppose they chose from behind a Veil of Ignorance
where they didn’t know what their talents were or
where they would be placed in society?
 They would choose a society that would be fair to all
because they’d have to live with their choice
 So, a fair society is one that any rational, selfinterested person behind the veil of ignorance would
want to join
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Rawls asks, “What principles of justice
would people chose at the founding of
society?”
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A hypothetical, not real, moment – but still a
doable thought experiment.
A moment when people know nothing about
their future.
Class or social status.
 Intelligence or other capabilities.
 Social place in terms of gender, race, etc.
 Wealth.
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Rawls on the Just State
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The Original Position
Rawls is a Social Contract Theorist
 In forming a social contract we decide upon the
basic structure of society, and figure out what a just
society would look like
 We do so as self-interested and rational choosers,
from behind the veil of ignorance
 This choice position Rawls calls The Original Position
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Rawls asks, “What principles of justice
would people chose at the founding of
society?”
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A hypothetical, not real, moment – but still a
doable thought experiment.
A moment when people know nothing about
their future.
Class or social status.
 Intelligence or other capabilities.
 Social place in terms of gender, race, etc.
 Wealth.
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Rawls on the Just Society
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The Original Position
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How would we choose?
We are choosing fundamental social conditions
determining our life prospects
 We get to choose just once
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We would follow a maximin choice principle
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choose the setup in which your worst outcome is better
than your worst outcome in any other setup
We wouldn’t give up fundamental rights and liberties
Rawls and Justice
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Two Principles of Justice
1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate
scheme of basic rights and liberties, compatible with
the same scheme for all
2.Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two
conditions:
a. they are to be attached to positions and offices open to
all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity;
b. they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged members of society (The Difference Pinciple)
Rawls on the Just Government
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Prioritizing the Principles of Justice
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There are really three principles here:
Principle of Liberty
 Equality of Opportunity
 Difference Principle
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They can conflict. What happens in this case?
The Principle of Liberty must be satisfied before any
other principle.
 Equality of Opportunity must be satisfied before the
Difference Principle.
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Rawls on the Just State
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The Difference Principle
If primary social goods were distributed evenly, we
would have a perfectly egalitarian society.
 But there are good reasons for thinking that
everyone would be economically worse off in such a
society.
 One obvious reason is that incentives are needed for
people to work hard and use their talents to create
wealth
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Rawls: the Difference Principle
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The Difference Principle
Taxation is a means of redistributing wealth for the
benefit of the least well-off
 But, everyone, including the least well-off, would
suffer with excessive taxation
 On the other hand, too little taxation and the least
well-off suffer economically
 Between these extremes there will be an optimum
taxation level, according to the difference principle
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Nozick and Justice
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Robert Nozick (1938 – 2002)
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Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)
Nozick and Kant
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Justice as Respect
Recall Immanuel Kant’s Principle of Ends
Act to treat others as means not just as ends
 People can’t be used as ‘resources’
 A government committed to ‘distributive justice’
must treat its citizens as means to a distributive end
(i.e. increase taxes to get rid of poverty)
 For Kantians, this action would be unethical
 Therefore distributive justice can’t be an ethical goal
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Nozick on the Minimal State
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Government should not redistribute the goods
of a society
Distributive Justice DJ assumes wealth is just a
natural resource
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Nozick thinks that justice in wealth involves 3
factors:
1. Justice in original acquisition
2. Justice in transaction
3. No wealth is held justly except by combinations of 1 & 2
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Redistribution of wealth can’t produce justice
Nozick on the Minimal State
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Distributive Justice vs. Entitlements
There may be unjust holdings because of past
history but that doesn’t make a belief in entitlement
(compensatory justice) incorrect
 Is there a fair way to correct past injustices?
Slavery?
Lost property—internment?
Nazi policy?
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Government plays a minimal role
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Is there any hope for justice?
MacIntyre on today’s Moral
Order
Alasdair Macintyre (1929 – )
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After Virtue (1984)
MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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The current moral disorder
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Imagine a catastrophe where most scientific
knowledge and the habits of science were lost
MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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The current moral disorder
Imagine a catastrophe where most scientific
knowledge and the habits of science were lost
 Then suppose the survivors tried to reconstruct
science from the leftover fragments
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MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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The current moral disorder
Imagine a catastrophe where most scientific
knowledge and the habits of science were lost
 Then suppose the survivors tried to reconstruct
science from the leftover fragments
 They’d probably produce gibberish that ‘looked like’
science but wasn’t
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MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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The current moral disorder
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MacIntyre thinks there’s been a slow catastrophe
where most moral knowledge has been lost
MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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The current moral disorder
MacIntyre thinks there’s been a slow catastrophe
where most moral knowledge has been lost
 We have tried to reconstruct morality from the
fragments
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MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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The current moral disorder
MacIntyre thinks there’s been a slow catastrophe
where most moral knowledge has been lost
 We have tried to reconstruct morality from the
fragments
 We have produced gibberish that ‘looks like’ morals
but isn’t
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MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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The current moral disorder
Since moral arguments are gibberish they can’t be
conclusive in deciding what to do
 But we must decide what to do so we adopt another
method
 We use emotions, passions, self interest, …
 Since we have incompatible desires our politics has
become
civil war carried on by other means’
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MacIntyre on the Moral Order
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Bring back virtue!
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The Aristotelian version of ethics with an end
towards which we can aim makes sense of ‘ought’
statements.
‘We ought to do X to achieve this end’ is understandable
 ‘We ought to do X … just because’ is not
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Absent any conception of what human beings are supposed to
become if they realized their telos, there can be no ethical
theory, because it simply has no purpose. For people with no
destination, a road map has no value
MacIntyre and Moral Obligations
Each of us has a telos
 More than that, overlapping
teleological ends, freely
chosen. This is what it means
be a person today.
 Several “stories” can claim
us”: individual, cultural,
familial, national.
 We are part of a national
story, too.
 Ergo: we are tied to our
history—its glories and
injustices.