The Social Good - Theories of Justice (Excerpts from: https://www.iep.utm.edu/justwest/) Citation: Pomerleau, Wayne. “Western Theories of Justice.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Justice is one of the most important moral and political concepts. The word comes from the Latin jus, meaning right or law. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the “just” person as one who typically “does what is morally right” and is disposed to “giving everyone his or her due,” offering the word “fair” as a synonym. But philosophers want to get beyond etymology and dictionary definitions to consider, for example, the nature of justice as both a moral virtue of character and a desirable quality of political society, as well as how it applies to ethical and social decision-making. This article will focus on philosophical conceptions of justice. These will be the greatest theories of ancient Greece (those of Plato and Aristotle), two early modern ones (Hobbes and Hume), and two from more recent modern times (Kant and Mill). Typically the article considers not only their theories of justice but also how philosophers apply their own theories to controversial social issues—for example, to civil disobedience, punishment, equal opportunity for women, slavery, war, property rights, and international relations. Western philosophers generally regard justice as the most fundamental of all virtues for ordering interpersonal relations and establishing and maintaining a stable political society. By tracking the historical interplay of these theories, what will be advocated is a developing understanding of justice in terms of respecting persons as free, rational agents. One may disagree about the nature, basis, and legitimate application of justice, but this is its core. 1. On Plato & Aristotle (p.1-6) 1a. Plato Plato’s masterful Republic is most obviously a careful analysis of justice, although the book is far more wide-ranging than that would suggest. Socrates, Plato’s teacher and primary spokesman in the dialogue, gets critically involved in a discussion of that very issue with three interlocutors early on. Socrates provokes Cephalus to say something which he spins into the view that justice simply boils down to always telling the truth and repaying one’s debts. Socrates easily demolishes this simplistic view with the effective logical technique of a counter-example: if a friend lends you weapons, when he is sane, but then wants them back to do great harm with them, because he has become insane, surely you should not return them at that time and should even lie to him, if necessary to prevent great harm. Secondly, Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, jumps into the discussion, espousing the familiar, traditional view that justice is all about giving people what is their due. But the problem with this bromide is that of determining who deserves what. Polemarchus may reflect the cultural influence of the Sophists, in specifying that it depends on whether people are our friends, deserving good from us, or foes, deserving harm. It takes more effort for Socrates to destroy this conventional theory, but he proceeds in stages: (1) we are all fallible regarding who are true friends, as opposed to true enemies, so that appearance versus reality makes it difficult to say how we should treat people; (2) it seems at least as significant whether people are good or bad as whether they are our friends or our foes; and (3) it is not at all clear that justice should excuse, let alone require, our deliberately harming anyone (Republic, pp. 5-11; 331b-335e). If the first inadequate theory of justice was too simplistic, this second one was downright dangerous. The third, and final, inadequate account presented here is that of the Sophist Thrasymachus. He roars into the discussion, expressing his contempt for all the poppycock produced thus far and boldly asserting that justice is relative to whatever is advantageous to the stronger people (what we sometimes call the “might makes right” theory). But who are the “stronger” people? Thrasymachus cannot mean physically stronger, for then inferior humans would be superior to finer folks like them. He clarifies his idea that he is referring to politically powerful people in leadership positions. But, next, even the strongest leaders are sometimes mistaken about what is to their own advantage, raising the question of whether people ought to do what leaders suppose is to their own advantage or only what actually is so. (Had Thrasymachus phrased this in terms of what serves the interest of society itself, the same appearance versus reality distinction would apply.) But, beyond this, Socrates rejects the exploitation model of leadership, which sees political superiors as properly exploiting inferiors (Thrasymachus uses the example of a shepherd fattening up and protecting his flock of sheep for his own selfish gain), substituting a service model in its place (his example is of the good medical doctor, who practices his craft primarily for the welfare of patients). So, now, if anything like this is to be accepted as our model for interpersonal relations, then Thrasymachus embraces the “injustice” of self-interest as better than serving the interests of others in the name of “justice.” Well, then, how are we to interpret whether the life of justice or that of injustice is better? Socrates suggests three criteria for judgment: which is the smarter, which is the more secure, and which is the happier way of life; he argues that the just life is better on all three counts. Thus, by the end of the first book, it looks as if Socrates has trounced all three of these inadequate views of justice, although he himself claims to be dissatisfied because we have only shown what justice is not, with no persuasive account of its actual nature (ibid., pp. 14-21, 25-31; 338c-345b, 349c354c). Likewise, in Gorgias, Plato has Callicles espouse the view that, whatever conventions might seem to dictate, natural justice dictates that superior people should rule over and derive greater benefits than inferior people, that society artificially levels people because of a bias in favor of equality. Socrates is then made to criticize this theory by analyzing what sort of superiority would be relevant and then arguing that Callicles is erroneously advocating injustice, a false value, rather than the genuine one of true justice (Gorgias, pp. 52-66; 482d-493c; see, also, Laws, pp. 100-101, 172; 663, 714 for another articulation of something like Thrasymachus’ position). In the second book of Plato’s Republic, his brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, take over the role of primary interlocutors. They quickly make it clear that they are not satisfied with Socrates’ defense of justice. Glaucon reminds us that there are three different sorts of goods—intrinsic ones, such as joy, merely instrumental ones, such as money-making, and ones that are both instrumentally and intrinsically valuable, such as health—in order to ask which type of good is justice. Socrates responds that justice belongs in the third category, rendering it the richest sort of good. In that case, Glaucon protests, Socrates has failed to prove his point. If his debate with Thrasymachus accomplished anything at all, it nevertheless did not establish any intrinsic value in justice. So Glaucon will play devil’s advocate and resurrect the Sophist position, in order to challenge Socrates to refute it in its strongest form. He proposes to do this in three steps: first, he will argue that justice is merely a conventional compromise (between harming others with impunity and being their helpless victims), agreed to by people for their own selfish good and socially enforced (this is a crude version of what will later become the social contract theory of justice in Hobbes); second, he illustrates our allegedly natural selfish preference for being unjust if we can get away with it by the haunting story of the ring of Gyges, which provides its wearer with the power to become invisible at will and, thus, to get away with the most wicked of injustices—to which temptation everyone would, sooner or later, rationally succumb; and, third, he tries to show that it is better to live unjustly than justly if one can by contrasting the unjust person whom everyone thinks just with the just person who is thought to be unjust, claiming that, of course, it would be better to be the former than the latter. Almost as soon as Glaucon finishes, his brother Adeimantus jumps in to add two more points to the case against justice: first, parents instruct their children to behave justly not because it is good in itself but merely because it tends to pay off for them; and, secondly, religious teachings are ineffective in encouraging us to avoid injustice because the gods will punish it and to pursue justice because the gods will reward it, since the gods may not even exist or, if they do, they may well not care about us or, if they are concerned about human behavior, they can be flattered with prayers and bribed with sacrifices to let us get away with wrongdoing (Republic, pp. 33-42; 357b-366e). So the challenge for Socrates posed by Plato’s brothers is to show the true nature of justice and that it is intrinsically valuable rather than only desirable for its contingent consequences. In defending justice against this Sophist critique, Plato has Socrates construct his own positive theory. This is set up by means of an analogy comparing justice, on the large scale, as it applies to society, and on a smaller scale, as it applies to an individual soul. Thus justice is seen as an essential virtue of both a good political state and a good personal character. The strategy hinges on the idea that the state is like the individual writ large—each comprising three main parts such that it is crucial how they are interrelated—and that analyzing justice on the large scale will facilitate our doing so on the smaller one. In Book IV, after cobbling together his blueprint of the ideal republic, Socrates asks Glaucon where justice is to be found, but they agree they will have to search for it together. They agree that, if they have succeeded in establishing the foundations of a “completely good” society, it would have to comprise four pivotal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. If they can properly identify the other three of those four, whatever remains that is essential to a completely good society must be justice. Wisdom is held to be prudent judgment among leaders; courage is the quality in defenders or protectors whereby they remain steadfast in their convictions and commitments in the face of fear; and temperance (or moderation) is the virtue to be found in all three classes of citizens, but especially in the producers, allowing them all to agree harmoniously that the leaders should lead and everyone else follow. So now, by this process-of-elimination analysis, whatever is left that is essential to a “completely good” society will allegedly be justice. It then turns out that “justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own.” So the positive side of socio-political justice is each person doing the tasks assigned to him or her; the negative side is not interfering with others doing their appointed tasks. Now we move from this macro-level of political society to the psychological micro-level of an individual soul, pressing the analogy mentioned above. Plato has Socrates present an argument designed to show that reason in the soul, corresponding to the leaders or “guardians” of the state, is different from both the appetites, corresponding to the productive class, and the spirited part of the soul, corresponding to the state’s defenders or “auxiliaries” and that the appetites are different from spirit. Having established the parallel between the three classes of the state and the three parts of the soul, the analogy suggests that a “completely good” soul would also have to have the same four pivotal virtues. A good soul is wise, in having good judgment whereby reason rules; it is courageous in that its spirited part is ready, willing, and able to fight for its convictions in the face of fear; and it is temperate or moderate, harmoniously integrated because all of its parts, especially its dangerous appetitive desires, agree that it should be always under the command of reason. And, again, what is left that is essential is justice, whereby each part of the soul does the work intended by nature, none of them interfering with the functioning of any other parts. We are also told in passing that, corresponding to these four pivotal virtues of the moral life, there are four pivotal vices, foolishness, cowardice, selfindulgence, and injustice. One crucial question remains unanswered: can we show that justice, thus understood, is better than injustice in itself and not merely for its likely consequences? The answer is that, of course, we can because justice is the health of the soul. Just as health is intrinsically and not just instrumentally good, so is justice; injustice is a disease—bad and to be avoided even if it isn’t yet having any undesirable consequences, even if nobody is aware of it (ibid., pp. 43, 102-121; 368d, 427d-445b; it can readily be inferred that this conception of justice is non-egalitarian; but, to see this point made explicitly, see Laws, pp. 229-230; 756-757). Now let us quickly see how Plato applies this theory of justice to a particular social issue, before briefly considering the theory critically. In a remarkably progressive passage in Book V of his Republic, Plato argues for equal opportunity for women. He holds that, even though women tend to be physically weaker than men, this should not prove an insuperable barrier to their being educated for the same socio-political functions as men, including those of the top echelons of leadership responsibility. While the body has a gender, it is the soul that is virtuous or vicious. Despite their different roles in procreation, child-bearing, giving birth, and nursing babies, there is no reason, in principle, why a woman should not be as intelligent and virtuous— including as just—as men, if properly trained. As much as possible, men and women should share the workload in common (Republic, pp. 125-131; 451d-457d). We should note, however, that the rationale is the common good of the community rather than any appeal to what we might consider women’s rights. Nevertheless, many of us today are sympathetic to this application of justice in support of a view that would not become popular for another two millennia. What of Plato’s theory of justice itself? The negative part of it—his critique of inadequate views of justice—is a masterful series of arguments against attempts to reduce justice to a couple of simplistic rules (Cephalus), to treating people merely in accord with how we feel about them (Polemarchus), and to the power-politics mentality of exploiting them for our own selfish purposes (Thrasymachus). All of these views of a just person or society introduce the sort of relativism and/or subjectivism we have identified with the Sophists. Thus, in refuting them, Plato, in effect, is refuting the Sophists. However, after the big buildup, the positive part—what he himself maintains justice is—turns out to be a letdown. His conception of justice reduces it to order. While some objective sense of order is relevant to justice, this does not adequately capture the idea of respecting all persons, individually and collectively, as free rational agents. The analogy between the state and the soul is far too fragile to support the claim that they must agree in each having three “parts.” The process-of-elimination approach to determining the nature of justice only works if those four virtues exhaust the list of what is essential here. But do they? What, for example, of the Christian virtue of love or the secular virtue of benevolence? Finally, the argument from analogy, showing that justice must be intrinsically, and not merely instrumentally, valuable (because it is like the combination good of health) proves, on critical consideration, to fail. Plato’s theory is far more impressive than the impressionistic view of the Sophists; and it would prove extremely influential in advocating justice as an objective, disinterested value. Nevertheless, one cannot help hoping that a more cogent theory might yet be developed. 2b. Aristotle After working with Plato at his Academy for a couple of decades, Aristotle was understandably most influenced by his teacher, also adopting, for example, a virtue theory of ethics. Yet part of Aristotle’s greatness stems from his capacity for critical appropriation, and he became arguably Plato’s most able critic as well as his most famous follower in wanting to develop a credible alternative to Sophism. Book V of his great Nicomachean Ethics deals in considerable depth with the moral and political virtue of justice. It begins vacuously enough with the circular claim that it is the condition that renders us just agents inclined to desire and practice justice. But his analysis soon becomes more illuminating when he specifies it in terms of what is lawful and fair. What is in accordance with the law of a state is thought to be conducive to the common good and/or to that of its rulers. In general, citizens should obey such law in order to be just. The problem is that civil law can itself be unjust in the sense of being unfair to some, so that we need to consider special justice as a function of fairness. He analyzes this into two sorts: distributive justice involves dividing benefits and burdens fairly among members of a community, while corrective justice requires us, in some circumstances, to try to restore a fair balance in interpersonal relations where it has been lost. If a member of a community has been unfairly benefited or burdened with more or less than is deserved in the way of social distributions, then corrective justice can be required, as, for example, by a court of law. Notice that Aristotle is no more an egalitarian than Plato was—while a sort of social reciprocity may be needed, it must be of a proportional sort rather than equal. Like all moral virtues, for Aristotle, justice is a rational mean between bad extremes. Proportional equality or equity involves the “intermediate” position between someone’s unfairly getting “less” than is deserved and unfairly getting “more” at another’s expense. The “mean” of justice lies between the vices of getting too much and getting too little, relative to what one deserves, these being two opposite types of injustice, one of “disproportionate excess,” the other of disproportionate “deficiency” (Nicomachean, pp. 67-74, 76; 1129a-1132b, 1134a). Political justice, of both the lawful and the fair sort, is held to apply only to those who are citizens of a political community (a polis) by virtue of being “free and either proportionately or numerically equal,” those whose interpersonal relations are governed by the rule of law, for law is a prerequisite of political justice and injustice. But, since individuals tend to be selfishly biased, the law should be a product of reason rather than of particular rulers. Aristotle is prepared to distinguish between what is naturally just and unjust, on the one hand, such as whom one may legitimately kill, and what is merely conventionally just or unjust, on the other, such as a particular system of taxation for some particular society. But the Sophists are wrong to suggest that all political justice is the artificial result of legal convention and to discount all universal natural justice (ibid., pp. 77-78; 1134a-1135a; cf. Rhetoric, pp. 105-106; 1374a-b). What is allegedly at stake here is our developing a moral virtue that is essential to the well-being of society, as well as to the flourishing of any human being. Another valuable dimension of Aristotle’s discussion here is his treatment of the relationship between justice and decency, for sometimes following the letter of the law would violate fairness or reasonable equity. A decent person might selfishly benefit from being a stickler regarding following the law exactly but decide to take less or give more for the sake of the common good. In this way, decency can correct the limitations of the law and represents a higher form of justice (Nicomachean, pp. 83-84; 1137a1138a). In his Politics, Aristotle further considers political justice and its relation to equality. We can admit that the former involves the latter but must carefully specify by maintaining that justice involves equality “not for everyone, only for equals.” He agrees with Plato that political democracy is intrinsically unjust because, by its very nature, it tries to treat unequals as if they were equals. Justice rather requires inequality for people who are unequal. But, then, oligarchy is also intrinsically unjust insofar as it involves treating equals as unequal because of some contingent disparity, of birth, wealth, etc. Rather, those in a just political society who contribute the most to the common good will receive a larger share, because they thus exhibit more political virtue, than those who are inferior in that respect; it would be simply wrong, from the perspective of political justice, for them to receive equal shares. Thus political justice must be viewed as a function of the common good of a community. It is the attempt to specify the equality or inequality among people, he admits, that constitutes a key “problem” of “political philosophy.” He thinks we can all readily agree that political justice requires “proportional” rather than numerical equality. But inferiors have a vested interest in thinking that those who are equal in some respect should be equal in all respects, while superiors are biased, in the opposite direction, to imagine that those who are unequal in some way should be unequal in all ways. Thus, for instance, those who are equally citizens are not necessarily equal in political virtue, and those who are financially richer are not necessarily morally or mentally superior. What is relevant here is “equality according to merit,” though Aristotle cannot precisely specify what, exactly, counts as merit, for how much it must count, who is to measure it, and by what standard. All he can suggest, for example in some of his comments on the desirable aristocratic government, is that it must involve moral and intellectual virtue (Politics, pp. 79, 81, 86, 134, 136, 151, 153; 1280a, 1281a, 1282b, 1301a-1302a, 1307a, 1308a). Let us now consider how Aristotle applies his own theory of justice to the social problem of alleged superiors and inferiors, before attempting a brief critique of that theory. While Plato accepted slavery as a legitimate social institution but argued for equal opportunity for women, in his Politics, Aristotle accepts sexual inequality while actively defending slavery. Anyone who is inferior intellectually and morally is properly socio-politically inferior in a well-ordered polis. A human being can be naturally autonomous or not, “a natural slave” being defective in rationality and morality, and thus naturally fit to belong to a superior; such a human can rightly be regarded as “a piece of property,” or another person’s “tool for action.” Given natural human inequality, it is allegedly inappropriate that all should rule or share in ruling. Aristotle holds that some are marked as superior and fit to rule from birth, while others are inferior and marked from birth to be ruled by others. This supposedly applies not only to ethnic groups, but also to the genders, and he unequivocally asserts that males are “naturally superior” and females “naturally inferior,” the former being fit to rule and the latter to be ruled. The claim is that it is naturally better for women themselves that they be ruled by men, as it is better for “natural slaves” that they should be ruled by those who are “naturally free.” Now Aristotle does argue only for natural slavery. It was the custom (notice the distinction, used here, between custom and nature) in antiquity to make slaves of conquered enemies who become prisoners of war. But Aristotle (like Plato) believes that Greeks are born for free and rational self-rule, unlike non-Greeks (“barbarians”), who are naturally inferior and incapable of it. So the fact that a human being is defeated or captured is no assurance that he is fit for slavery, as an unjust war may have been imposed on a nobler society by a more primitive one. While granting that Greeks and non-Greeks, as well as men and women, are all truly human, Aristotle justifies the alleged inequality among them based on what he calls the “deliberative” capacity of their rational souls. The natural slave’s rational soul supposedly lacks this, a woman has it but it lacks the authority for her to be autonomous, a (free male) child has it in some developmental stage, and a naturally superior free male has it developed and available for governance (ibid., pp. 7-11, 23; 1254a-1255a, 1260a). This application creates a helpful path to a critique of Aristotle’s theory of justice. If we feel that it is unjust to discriminate against people merely on account of their gender and/or ethnic origin, as philosophers, we try to identify the rational root of the problem. If our moral intuitions are correct against Aristotle (and some would even call his views here sexist and racist), he may be mistaken about a matter of fact or about a value judgment or both. Surely he is wrong about all women and non-Greeks, as such, being essentially inferior to Greek males in relevant ways, for cultural history has demonstrated that, when given opportunities, women and non-Greeks have shown themselves to be significantly equal. But it appears that Aristotle may also have been wrong in leaping from the factual claim of inequality to the value judgment that it is therefore right that inferiors ought to be socially, legally, politically, and economically subordinate—like Plato and others of his culture (for which he is an apologist here), Aristotle seems to have no conception of human rights as such. Like Plato, he is arguing for an objective theory of personal and social justice as a preferable alternative to the relativistic one of the Sophists. Even though there is something attractive about Aristotle’s empirical (as opposed to Plato’s idealistic) approach to justice, it condemns him to the dubious position of needing to derive claims about how things ought to be from factual claims about the way things actually are. It also leaves Aristotle with little viable means of establishing a universal perspective that will respect the equal dignity of all humans, as such. Thus his theory, like Plato’s, fails adequately to respect all persons as free, rational agents. They were so focused on the ways in which people are unequal, that they could not appreciate any fundamental moral equality that might provide a platform for natural human rights. 2a. Hobbes Whereas Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas all offer accounts of justice that represent alternatives to Sophism, Thomas Hobbes, the English radical empiricist, can be seen as resurrecting the Sophist view that we can have no objective knowledge of it as a moral or political absolute value. His radical empiricism does not allow him to claim to know anything not grounded in concrete sense experience. This leads him in Leviathan, his masterpiece, to conclude that anything real must be material or corporeal in nature, that body is the one and only sort of reality; this is the philosophical position of materialistic monism, which rules out the possibility of any spiritual substance. On this view, “a man is a living body,” only different in kind from other animals, but with no purely spiritual soul separating him from the beasts. Like other animals, man is driven by instinct and appetite, his reason being a capacity of his brain for calculating means to desirable ends. Another controversial claim here is that all actions, including all human actions, are causally determined to occur as they do by the complex of their antecedent conditions; this is causal determinism. What we consider voluntary actions are simply those we perform in which the will plays a significant causal role, human freedom amounting to nothing more exalted than the absence of external restraints. Like other animals, we are always fundamentally motivated by a survival instinct and ultimately driven by selfinterest in all of our voluntary actions; this is psychological egoism. It is controversial whether he also holds that self-interest should always be our fundamental motivation, which is ethical egoism. In his most famous Chapter XIII, Hobbes paints a dramatic and disturbing portrait of what human life would be like in a state of nature—that is, beyond the conventional order of civil society. We would be rationally distrustful of one another, inclined to be anti-social, viewing others as threats to our own satisfaction and well-being. Interpersonal antagonism would be natural; and, since there would exist no moral distinctions between right and wrong, just and unjust, violent force and fraudulent deception would be desirable virtues rather than objectionable vices. In short, this would be a state of “war of every man against every man,” a condition in which we could not reasonably expect to survive for long or to enjoy any quality of life for as long as we did. We are smart enough to realize that this would be a condition in which, as Hobbes famously writes, “the life of man” would inevitably be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Fortunately, our natural passions of fear, desire, and hope motivate us to use reason to calculate how we might escape this hellish state. Reason discovers a couple of basic laws of nature, indicating how we should prudently behave if we are to have any reasonable opportunity to survive, let alone to thrive. The first of these is double-sided: the positive side holds that we should try to establish peace with others, for our own selfish good, if we can; the negative side holds that, if we cannot do that, then we should do whatever it takes to destroy whoever might be a threat to our interests. The second law of nature maintains that, in order to achieve peace with others, we must be willing to give up our right to harm them, so long as they agree to reciprocate by renouncing their right to harm us. This “mutual transferring of right,” established by reciprocal agreement, is the so-called social contract that constitutes the basis of civil society; and the agreement can be made either explicitly or implicitly (Leviathan, pp. 261-262, 459-460, 79, 136, 82, 95, 74-78, 80-82; for comparable material, see Elements, pp. 78-84, 103-114, as well as Citizen, pp. 109-119, 123-124). What is conspicuously missing here is any sense of natural justice or injustice. In the state of nature, all moral values are strictly relative to our desires: whatever seems likely to satisfy our desires appears “good” to us, and whatever seems likely to frustrate our desires we regard as “evil.” It’s all relative to what we imaginatively associate with our own appetites and aversions. But as we move from this state of nature to the state of civil society by means of the social contract, we create the rules of justice by means of the agreements we strike with one another. Prior to the conventions of the contract, we were morally free to try to do whatever we wished. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust; and the definition of injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant. What is not unjust, is just in civil society. This turns out to be the third law of nature, that, in the name of justice, we must try to keep our agreements. In civil society, we may justly do anything we have not, at least implicitly, committed ourselves not to do. A just person typically does just actions, though committing one or a few unjust actions does not automatically render that person unjust, especially if the unjust behavior stems from an error or sudden passion; on the other hand, a person who is typically inclined to commit unjust actions is a guilty person. Still, if we are as selfishly motivated by our own desires as Hobbes maintains, why should we not break our word and voluntarily commit injustice, if doing so is likely to pay off for us and we imagine we might get away with it (remember the problem posed by Glaucon with the story of the ring of Gyges)? Clearly one more element is needed to prevent the quick disintegration of the rules of justice so artificially constructed by interpersonal agreement. This is the power of sovereign authority. We need laws codifying the rules of justice; and they must be so vigilantly and relentlessly enforced by absolute political power that nobody in his right mind would dare to try to violate them. People simply cannot be trusted to honor their social commitments without being forced to do so, since “covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.” In other words, we must sacrifice a great deal of our natural liberty to achieve the sort of security without which life is hardly worth living. In civil society, our freedom is relative to the lack of specified obligations, what Hobbes calls “the silence of the law.” If we worry that this invests too much power in the government, which may abuse that power and excessively trample on our freedom, the (cynical) response is that this is preferable to the chaos of the state of nature or to the horrors of civil war (Leviathan, pp. 28-29, 89, 93, 106, 109, 143, 117; for comparable material, see Elements, pp. 88-89, Citizen, pp. 136-140, and Common, p. 34). One of the most crucial problems of political philosophy is where to strike the balance between personal liberty and public order; Hobbes is, perhaps, more willing than most of us to give up a great deal of the former in order to secure the latter. As we have with earlier thinkers, let us see how Hobbes applies this theory of justice, as a prelude to evaluating it critically. He compares the laws of civil society to “artificial chains” binding us to obey the sovereign authority of the state in the name of justice. The third law of nature, the law of justice, obliges us to obey the “positive” laws of the state. Any deliberate violation of civil law is a “crime.” Now the social problem to be considered is that of criminal punishment. This deliberately inflicts some sort of “evil” on an alleged criminal for violating civil law. Its rationale is to enforce obedience to the law itself and, thus, to promote security and public order. Hobbes lays down various conditions that must be met in order for such an infliction of evil to qualify as legitimate “punishment,” including that no retroactive punishment is justifiable. He also analyzes five sorts of criminal punishment—“corporal, or pecuniary, or ignominy, or imprisonment, or exile,” allowing for a combination of them; he also specifies that the corporal sort can be capital punishment. It would be wrong for the state deliberately to punish a member of civil society believed to be innocent; indeed, strictly speaking, it would not even qualify as “punishment,” as it fails to meet an essential part of the definition. The severity of punishment should be relative to the severity of the crime involved, since its rationale is to deter future violations of civil law (Leviathan, pp. 138, 173, 175, 185, 190, 203-208, 230; see, also, Elements, pp. 177-182, and Citizen, pp. 271-279; near the end of his verse autobiography—Elements, p. 264—Hobbes writes, “Justice I Teach, and Justice Reverence”). While this is a decent consequentialist theory of crime and punishment, the more general view of justice from which it is derived is far more problematic. It does stand in sharp contrast to the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It does revive something like the Sophist theory to which they were all advocating alternatives. And it does reflect the naturalistic approach represented by the new science. However, all the foundational elements supporting it are quite dubious: the radical empiricism, the materialism, the determinism, the egoism, the moral relativism, and the narrow conception of human reason. Without these props, this theory of justice as artificially constructed by us and purely a function of our interpersonal agreements seems entirely arbitrary. But in addition to its being insufficiently justified, this theory of justice would justify too much. For example, what would prevent its involving a justification of slavery, if the alternative for the slaves were death as enemies in a state of nature? Even apart from the issue of slavery, in the absence of any substantive human rights, minorities in civil society might be denied any set of civil liberties, such as the right to adopt religious practices to which they feel called in conscience. Hobbes’s conception of justice is reductionistic, reducing it to conventional agreements that seem skewed to sacrifice too much liberty on the altar of law and order. On Mural Art Urist, Sarah. “Why Murals.” The Art Assignment, April 14, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS1oPqP2qyY Edwards, Phil. “Why Philadelphia Has Thousands of Murals.” Vox, Apr 24, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu7cen0VOAA McCabe, Bret. “Beautiful Walls for Baltimore" City Paper, January 13, 2016 https://www.google.com/amp/www.citypaper.com/arts/visualart/bcp-011316-ae-beautiful-walls20160113-story,amp.html Published in 2014 Section 1 Section 2
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