Unit 8: A Battleground in Political Thought: The Idea of Justice

Introduction

Justice in everyday life is usually considered in relation to “the workings of police, courts, judiciary and related criminal agencies”. However, it is today commonly agreed that the idea of justice in political philosophy is multidimensional idea. This means that there are quite a number of different areas, or dimensions of human life, in every one which the idea of justice ought to be re-framed and re-established.

Origins of Contemporary Ideas of Justice: From Plato to Hume

Both in classical and contemporary ages, the idea of social justice is discussed in relation to various concepts such as rights, desert, merit, rule, covenant, consent, free-will, freedom, fairness, choice, well-being, poverty, inequality and so forth. The idea of justice that can be traced back to the ancient world is seen as a virtue of man and society in ancient Greek philosophy. Such an understanding of justice can easily be observed in the Republic, a wellknown work of Plato, in which the central issue is “justice” discussed in relation to the concept of “virtue”. In some of the very first dialogues between the fictional characters, justice is considered as a virtue and discussed in relation to actions of individuals in this work of Plato.

Such an understanding of justice can easily be observed in the Republic, a well-known work of Plato, in which the central issue is “justice” discussed in relation to the concept of “virtue”. In some of the very first dialogues between the fictional characters, justice is considered as a virtue and discussed in relation to actions of individuals in this work of Plato. In the dialogues that are mostly configured in a form of Socratic method of reciprocal talks, justice is granted as one of the most appreciated excellences of human beings and identified as the virtue of individual. According to Plato, each group and individual play roles to meet the needs of the whole in a well-ordered society that is a perfectly arranged society, where all institutions and groups are organized to perform a particular function. Such an understanding of society, where individuals and societal organizations are given roles to satisfy particular duties and actions can in fact be considered as an early reference to what we call in modern societies as “division of labor”. As briefly pointed out above through the emphasis of multi-dimensional nature of justice, there was no clear distinction between what we call criminal or legal justice and social or distributive justice in Plato’s work. However, we observe such a distinction in Aristotle’s work where the criminal justice was distinguished from the social justice first time in the history of political thought that we know.

It is important to be aware of that “neither Plato nor Aristotle held that justice was a matter of individual rights”. The introduction of the concept “rights” to the issue of justice took seven centuries after Aristotle.

Utilitarianism:Consequentialist, Welfarist, and Aggregative Idea of Justice

As a philosopher who paved the way heading towards one of the most influential theories of social justice, namely utilitarianism, David Hume is today given a prominent place in not only discussions regarding social justice, but quite a number of different subjects too. According to Hume, justice is a device to ensure the sustainability of social order. In this regard, justice, Hume’s account, was first and foremost concerned to the system of property; and injustice in a given society could be associated with the circumstances in which some groups acquire more than others. Hume’s emphasis on the public utility as the focal point of justice in a society has led the emergence and spread of the utilitarian perspective in the literature of not only social justice, but also economics, administration, politics, law as well as diplomacy. Similarly, the utilitarian account of social justice is also quite important and considered as one of the major perspectives in the literature of social justice today. Pioneers of the classical utilitarian account of social justice are considered as British reformist philosopher Jeremy Bentham and British philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill, both of whom are pointed out among the most influential scholars of social sciences. The modern form of utilitarian logic, in essence, does not much differ from its classical definition that is mostly discussed in line with Bentham and Mill’s works. The focal point of justice, in other words, the essence of justice in the contemporary utilitarian perspective is also the aggregate utility.

There are quite a number of problems in such perspective of social justice.

• First, it is consequentialist essence that proposes to advocate focusing on outcome in a sense that if the action, decision or policy yields happiness or not ignores the process in a sense that how this outcome is achieved.
• The second problem about utilitarian account of justice is associated with its welfarist characteristic that advocates focusing on a subjective well-being of individual, namely their happiness, to assess if the action, decision or the policy proposed is just or not.

Libertarianism: Process-Oriented, Entitlement And Individual-Focused Idea Of Justice

Different from the utilitarian model of social justice that advocates giving priority to the aggregative interests of society, the libertarian model of social justice highlights importance of certain inalienable rights of individual, such as earning and holding the private property. Utilitarian scholar Bentham’s proposition that stresses the priority of taking aggregative interests of society in consideration is in fact not only problematic in terms of ignoring the importance of eliminating intra-group inequalities, but also questionable in terms of putting the overall interests of society in front of what is called as “rights of a man”. In case of conflicting interest of individual with the overall interest of society, the utilitarian model that is originated in the idea of public utility chooses to take side next to the overall interests of society or public.

Mill thought that there was no possibility to increase the sum-total expediency of the public while rights of individuals were ignored. To sort out the potential conflicts between individuals’ rights and society’s overall interests, he identified six different sets of actions that could, according to him, help to identify what (un)just actions could be.

• The first set was composed of legal rights that everyone should respect and be equally entitled to.
• The second set of actions were constitutive logic of moral rights which could secure the just action in case of legal rights were insufficient to do so.
• The third set referred to a vague form of the idea of justice as desert, proposing that each person should obtain whether good or evil what s/he deserved, which was put by Mill as “unjust that he should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which he does not deserve”.
• The fourth set was more or less the same with what Hobbes had discussed within the Leviathan that was, in terms of justice, about keeping the promises in the covenant. In line with Hobbes’ view, Mill also agreed that it could be unjust to break the rules of a covenant or to violate an agreement.
• The fifth set was about the idea of impartiality. Nepotism or giving an unjustified privilege to a person over another is inconsistent with the very essence of the action that is deemed to be as just.
• The sixth set was about equal rights accompanied by the fifth set of actions and given to everyone equally.

Mill’s perspective, in some respect, illustrates what we call as liberal utilitarianism today. Although the contemporary form of the libertarian view on social justice has been greatly inspired from the works of classical liberals such as Adam Smith, it can also be argued for that the classical utilitarian view has also borrowed from the works of founding fathers’ of classical liberalism such as as that of Adam Smith. Robert Nozick who is the leading figure of the contemporary libertarian model of social justice. Nozick’s theory of entitlement primarily focuses on individuals’ holding of private properties and is established on three principles as follows:

• If a person acquires a holding in accordance with justice, then this person is entitled to this holding.
• If a holding transferred to a person from someone else entitled this holding before and, thus, acquired by this person in accordance with justice, then this person is entitled to this holding.
• Anyone is entitled to a holding unless the implications of principle one and two.

Justice As Fairness: Rawlsian Model Of Social Justice

In line with the definition that Michael Young provided in his famous work, namely The Rise of the Meritocracy, some define merit as “intelligence and effort”. Drawing on a meritocratic perspective, the libertarian model of social justice claims that inequalities are legitimate if they are outcomes of differences based on merit. This means that unequal distribution of wealth, or any type of value, in outcome is legitimate since justice is to give people their due and those dues are different and subject to change according to commitment of people or their endeavour to achieve a particular subject. However, as some egalitarians point out, merit does not occur on its own. But, it is derived from people’s class-background. John Rawls, who is one of the greatest political scientists of the 20th century, was aware about the fact that meritocracy on its own can lead to maintain the existing class inequalities originated in people’s social backgrounds.

Developing a comprehensive theory of justice known as “Justice as Fairness”, Rawls provided an approach that pays great attention to both liberal and egalitarian concerns embedded in the literature of social justice. It can be said that Rawlsian model of social justice has dominated discussions on social justice during the last four decades. Different from the utilitarian and the libertarian models that seek for equality in subjective well being of happiness and entitlements respectively, it seeks for fairness to solve the problems of the wealth distribution.

According to Rawls, fair principles of justice would inevitably result in the following principles:

• Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with a similar scheme for all.
• Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:
  • First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity;
  • Second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society”

Rawls identifies five categories of primary goods. These are pointed out as basic rights and liberties; freedom of movement and free choice of occupation; powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of authority and responsibility; income and wealth; and the social bases of self-respect.

One of the distinctive characteristics of the Rawlsian approach to social justice is associated with its institutional perspective. In Rawls’ approach, justice is considered as a “virtue of institutions” whilst the libertarian view considers it as “virtue of individuals” with the purpose of defining just action in the realm of individual’s rational choice. Lastly, it is crucial to point out how the principle of justice that Rawls specifies operates and distributes the social primary goods. In Rawls’ well-ordered society, the first two categories of the primary goods are equally guaranteed to everyone due to the first principle having priority over the second principle. Following this, everyone is given an equal chance to access the third category of primary goods based on the first part of the second principle. It is only after these conditions are satisfied that the second part of the second principle, namely “the difference principle”, that aims to compensate disadvantages of those who are worse-off by redistributing the fourth category of primary goods, namely income and wealth, can come into play.

The Capability Approach: A Freedom-Based Idea of Social Justice

Rawls’ idea of justice as fairness is a comprehensive political idea of justice that has taken a great interest from quite a number of political scientists in our era. Among others, Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate economist and philosopher, also discussed on the Rawlsian idea of justice extensively and pointed out several criticisms

• First of all, Sen criticizes Rawls with giving priority to the liberal rights over the economic ones.
• Second, Sen points out that the Rawlsian model of social justice is a transcendental one
• Third, he also criticizes Rawls’ focus on the means of good living instead of on the “actual living that people manage to achieve” account.

Based on the criticisms above, Sen proposes a different analytical framework to assess social justice. This framework is known as the capability approach in the literature. Suggesting that the individuals’ capability, or freedom, should be the basis of assessment regarding justice, Sen provides a promising way to overcome the problem that is related to people’s differentiated social and personal characteristics leading to inequalities in achieving a good life. Sen’s capability approach to justice claims that the primary objective of social arrangements should be based on the expansion of people’s capabilities or their substantive freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings that they attain value.

The capability-based assessment of justice is an actualization-oriented perspective since possession of certain set of rights or commodities is only means of a decent life and cannot be considered as an end-point of justice, or equality. Obviously, this does not mean a rejection of the importance of certain sets of rights and goods, but does involve taking attention on their relative value to allow people to achieve their valuable and reasoned ends. In such a line of reasoning of the capability approach, one of the distinctive features of justice is associated with considering it in relation with fairness, but not absolute equality. Briefly saying, the idea of fairness is valued in here in terms of two points.

• Firstly, fairness primarily focuses on outcome, but not on the initial position of individuals.
• The second point, which is in relation to the first one, is that it gives priority to the basic idea that justice requires an unequal treatment to people who are not equal

In this context, conceptualization of the justice in the capability approach is in line with the Rawlsian model and values fairness.

In addition to these classical roots, we can also observe a close convergence of a freedom understanding of the capability approach and some contemporary analysis of the subject. Isaiah Berlin’s analytical approach to the identification of liberty is one of them. According to Berlin, the term liberty is analytically divided into two parts.

• The first one is negative liberty, involving “an answer to the question: What is the area within which the subject –a person or group of persons– is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons”.
• The second, Positive liberty “is involved in the answer to the question what, or who, is the source of control or interference that determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that”.

In addition to Berlin’s conceptualization, some reflections of communitarian philosopher Charles Taylor’s emphasis on freedom are also observable in the capability approach. Taylor, like Berlin, divides the concept of freedom into two analytical parts which are complimentary to each other.

• The first part is the “opportunity part”, which illustrates an approach of that “being free is a matter of what we can do”.
• The second part is the “exercise part” that illustrates a perspective that is “one is free only to the extent that one has effectively determined oneself and shape of one’s life”.

The same point is also seen in the freedom conceptualization of Van Parijs. Van Parijs criticizes libertarian understanding of freedom, claiming that the libertarian view only focuses on negative freedom, in other words “being free from coercion”. However, “real freedom is not only a matter of having the right to do what one might want to do, but also a matter of having the means for doing it”. We can point out two additional reasons for the justification of this normative selection that advocates taking freedom as the primary criteria of assessing justice in a society.

• The first is inter-end variations, which acknowledges the different perceptions concerning “what good is” among individuals who hold different conception of good life.
• The second is inter-individual variation, which refers to individuals’ varied abilities to benefit from rights and commodities they hold.

Lastly, freedom in the capability approach is important both intrinsically and instrumentally. This means that substantive freedom is not only the primary ends of justice but the principle means of it as well. First, freedom is instrumentally important since more real freedom may give us more substantive opportunity to actualize valuable and reasoned ends. Second, freedom is intrinsically important in the normative perspective of the capability approach.

Briefly saying, different from the theories of justice discussed above, Sen’s capability approach proposes to focus on individuals’ freedom, or capability to achieve what they have reason to value in their life. In fact, this normative proposition is not only advocated so as to be used in assessing justice in a society, but also assessing development, well-being of individuals, welfare programs of countries, or particular social policies and programs for disadvantaged groups as well.

Complementary Contributions to The Idea of Justice

Apart from the approaches to social justice discussed above, there are also some other perspectives that are worth to briefly mention here. These perspectives are not comprehensive moral doctrines of justice, but normative approaches exclusively focusing on the question of what the focal point of justice should be. Among these approaches, we can point out Ronald Dworkin’s equality of resources, Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser’s recognition and redistribution, and Peter Townsend’s contribution of unjust distribution of resources and participation to the life of society.

Dworkin and Equality of Resources

Discussing on the idea of justice from a perspective of resource ownership, Dworkin suggests equality in resources for the foundational basis of justice. His position can be defined as an intermediate formation, attaching importance to both the libertarian perspective, which assigns responsibility to individual, and the egalitarian perspective, which assigns importance to redistribution. Dworkin rejects the idea of equality of welfare since it does not attain any responsibility to people in terms of their expensive tastes and, thus, compensates inequalities resulting from different preferences.

Fraser and Honneth: Recognition and Redistribution

It may not be wrong to stress that Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth are developers of the one of the most influential ideas towards justice in 21st century even though this is a quite new idea in comparison to other theories of justice discussed above. Fraser and Honneth share the same claim that an adequate understanding of justice should include both redistribution of wealth and recognition of different identities. They consider that the idea of justice focusing on only economic welfare is reductionist since there has been an increasing demand for recognition of different identities such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious groups, and so forth. Fraser’s approach is based on the concept of “bivalent collectivity”. Drawing on this concept, she refers to people who suffer from both unjust socioeconomic distribution and cultural misrecognition.

Townsend: Unjust Distribution of Resources and Participation to Life of Society

Peter Townsend is usually pointed out as one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century. Although most of his works focused on the reconceptualization of the issue of poverty, his works, in fact, moved much further than simply re-conceptualising our conventional understanding of poverty. According to Townsend, “poverty must be regarded as a general form of relative deprivation which is the effect of mal-distribution of resources.

The view put forward is therefore that the description, analysis and explanation of poverty in any country must proceed within the context of a general theory of stratification. Townsend built up this perspective based on the fact that human needs have a dynamic nature in terms of both the context and time in which they live. In this regard, against to the classical poverty definition of Rowntree and Booth, poverty, he claims, is a relative form of deprivation and it should be assessed in terms of not the physical subsistence of individuals but their abilities to participate in the customary life of the society which they belong. One of the criticism against to Townsend can be formulated as “being blind to individual heterogeneities”.