Idea of Justice

Sphere of Application

• Political thinkers have long attempted to define the concept of justice.
• With the rise of democracy and socialism, the concept of justice has transformed into social justice.
• The contemporary problem of justice concerns the logical criteria for the allocation of goods, services, opportunities, benefits, power, honours, and obligations, especially in a situation of scarcity.
• The quest for justice involves the just allocation of both benefits and burdens.
• Justice is primarily a moral philosophy issue, but also a political philosophy problem, as it must be implemented by a political order.
• The search for justice is not relevant in:
  • Authoritarian systems, where allocation is based on the dictates of an established authority.
  • Competitive systems, where allocation is determined by the market forces.
  • Communist systems, where the rule of allocation according to need is assumed, thus eliminating the problem of justice.
• The search for justice is relevant only in an open society in a scarcity situation, where there is a demand for social advantages that are in short supply.
• Criteria of allocation must be determined in a way that is acceptable to all individuals or categories concerned.
• No final word can be given on justice, and systems should provide channels of appeal and protest to revise the criteria when needed.
• Authoritarian system: A system where everything conforms to an established order, regulated by a recognized authority.
• Open society: A society where there is freedom to criticize the existing order and reform or reformulate institutions by gaining public support for proposed changes.

Philosophical Context

• Justice is primarily about discovering the ‘right’ course of action, which requires distinguishing between right and wrong.
• The distinction between right and wrong is different from the distinction between good and evil.
• Good is akin to useful, profitable, or beneficial, while bad or evil implies harmful or damaging.
• Good and bad do not fall into absolute categories; something may be partly good and partly bad.
• Good and bad form a continuum, where they can be located anywhere on a scale between the two extremes.
• Right and wrong are absolute categories; something can only be either right or wrong, similar to true and false.
• Right and wrong are mutually exclusive categories; if something is partly right, it is considered wrong.
• Continuum represents a range of variables between two opposites, allowing easy access from one extreme to another.
• Dichotomy rules out any possibility of middle ground between two conflicting positions, like the two banks of a river with no connection.
• Good and bad are marked by quantitative differences, while right and wrong are marked by qualitative differences.
• Good and bad can be measured and quantified; right and wrong cannot.
• Utilitarianism, founded by Jeremy Bentham, deals with good and bad by balancing pleasure and pain in the felicific calculus.
• Utilitarianism does not focus on justice, which is why it is indifferent to the problem of justice.
• John Stuart Mill focused on the qualitative differences between pleasures, marking a departure from mainstream utilitarianism.
• Utilitarianism aims for the greatest happiness for the greatest number, but tends to subordinate the individual to the collectivity.
• Mill prioritized the liberty of the individual over the majority’s opinion, moving closer to the concept of justice.
• Mill’s focus on the moral worth of policies, rather than just cost-benefit analysis, contributed to the development of Rawls’s theory of justice.
• Rawls opposed utilitarianism and emphasized the importance of justice over utilitarian principles.

Justice as Dynamic Idea

• Justice implies the quality of being ‘just’, ‘right’, or ‘reasonable’, and is opposed to what is ‘unjust’, ‘wrong’, or ‘unreasonable’.
• Justice embodies an ideal akin to ‘absolute truth’, but it is a dynamic idea because our understanding of it evolves continuously.
• Our realization of justice depends on the development of our social consciousness, which changes over time.
• What was once considered just may no longer be viewed as such due to changing social attitudes and values.
• Examples of changing views on justice include the abolition of slavery and serfdom, the ending of untouchability in India, the recognition of women’s equality, and the fight against racial discrimination.
• The changing outlook on these issues is evidence of the dynamic character of the idea of justice.
• The concept of justice should always be based on reason.
• A person’s capacity for reasoning develops according to the social consciousness of their time.
• The true meaning of justice should be determined in light of the prevalent social consciousness or modern consciousness, as described by D.D. Raphael in his book Problems of Political Philosophy.
• While this definition may not represent the perfect idea of justice, social consciousness is an ever-growing phenomenon.
• We must be open to accepting new and progressive ideas that are supported by reason.

Relation between Equality, Liberty and Justice

• Justice represents a synthesis of the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, acting as a unifying thread that reconciles their conflicts and contradictions.
• Justice is the final goal to which these values should conform.
• The demand for liberty in human relations stems from our sense of justice and the recognition of human dignity.
• Reason should govern human relations, treating each individual as an ‘end-in-itself’, not a means to an end.
• Equality dictates that no individual should be treated as superior or inferior due to factors like birth, race, religion, language, sex, or economic status.
• All individuals have the potential to acquire excellence and contribute to the social good and should be afforded equal freedom of personal development.
• The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) emphasizes equality in rights and social distinctions based on public utility.
• Liberty must be qualified by equality to prevent one individual’s liberty from becoming a threat to another’s.
• Absolute liberty is contradictory and needs to be regulated to align with the liberty of all.
• Barker explains that the liberty of one person must be such that it can coexist with the liberty of others, thus requiring regulation.
• Equality is not a final principle of justice, especially in the economic sphere, where the absence of discriminationalone may not be sufficient.
• In a society with disparities in wealth, prestige, and power, justice demands special protection for the deprived and underprivileged.
• The principle of fraternity extends the principle of equality to ensure the weaker sections are not left at the mercy of market forces or competition.
• Any discrimination in favour of weaker sections must be justified as being in the interests of justice and fraternity.
• Justice requires the regulation of human relations by liberty, which is qualified by equality, and equality is further qualified by fraternity.
• The goal of justice is for each individual to receive a fair share of the advantages of organized social life, ensuring a common civic minimum.
• Work should be rewarded based on its value to public welfare, and privileged sections should not monopolize wealth, prestige, or power.
• Justice demands not only formal liberty and equality but also a transformation of social conditions that enable the weaker sections to enjoy substantive freedom and equality.