Ideas about Justice

1. Ideas about Justice Categories of Justice Just Deserts Distributive Retributive Compensatory Three big themes Virtue Ethics Utilitarianism Libertarianism Aristotle Virtue Justice Kant Freedom Justice Rawls Freedom and Utilitarian Justice Nozick Freedom Justice MacIntyre back to Virtue Justice

2. Aristotle and Justice • Justice: giving people what they deserve • Justice cannot be “neutral” in this sense • Who should be distributed guitars? A=the best guitar players! • 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

3. Aristotle and Government • 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 • “The polis is not an association for…ending injustice. …The end and purpose of polis (government) is the good life.”

4. Kant and Justice • 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? • 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?)

5. Kant and Society • It can’t be based on utility: everyone has a different idea of happiness, right? • It must be based on freedom derived from reason

6. Three Moderns • Rawls, Nozick, and MacIntyre • Have significant new approaches • Which are related to past approaches • And show the continuing openness of debate • Is that a good thing? After 2500 years?

7. Rawls on the Just State • John Rawls (1921 – 2002) • A Theory of Justice (1971)

8. Rawls and Justice • Justice as fairness • A just society is one run on just principles • A just society would be a fair society • Fairness involves Distributive Justice • There is a fair distribution of primary “social goods” • wealth, • opportunities, • liberties and privileges, • bases of self respect (e.g. equality of political representation)

9. Rawls on the Just State • 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.

10. Rawls on the Just State • 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, self-interested person behind the veil of ignorance would want to join

11. Rawls asks, “What principles of justice would people chose at the founding of society?” • 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.

12. Rawls on the Just State • 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

13. Rawls asks, “What principles of justice would people chose at the founding of society?” • 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.

15. Rawls on the Just Society • The Original Position • How would we choose? • We are choosing fundamental social conditions determining our life prospects • We get to choose just once • We would follow a maximin choice principle • 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

16. Rawls and Justice • 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)

17. Rawls on the Just Government • Prioritizing the Principles of Justice • There are really three principles here: • Principle of Liberty • Equality of Opportunity • Difference Principle • 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.

18. Rawls on the Just State • 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

19. Rawls: the Difference Principle • 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

20. Nozick and Justice • Robert Nozick (1938 – 2002) • Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)

21. Nozick and Kant • 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

22. Nozick on the Minimal State • Government should not redistribute the goods of a society • Distributive Justice DJ assumes wealth is just a natural resource • 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 • Redistribution of wealth can’t produce justice

23. Nozick on the Minimal State • 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? Government plays a minimal role

24. Is there any hope for justice? MacIntyre on today’s Moral Order • Alasdair Macintyre (1929 – ) • After Virtue (1984)

25. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • The current moral disorder • Imagine a catastrophe where most scientific knowledge and the habits of science were lost

26. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • 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

27. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • 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

28. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • The current moral disorder • MacIntyre thinks there’s been a slow catastrophe where most moral knowledge has been lost

29. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • 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

30. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • 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

31. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • 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’

32. MacIntyre on the Moral Order • Bring back virtue! • 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 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

33. 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.