Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

Defining justice is one of the oldest and thorniest problems in the history of political philosophy. One source of the difficulty is that acting justly depends entirely on circumstances. A brave person always shows courage, and a wise person is always knowledgeable, but a just person always has to strike a balance between competing goods, and so justice manifests itself on a case-by-case basis. King Solomon, the biblical figure most closely associated with justice, famously responds to two women claiming ownership over a baby by ordering the baby to be cut in half, but only because he knows which reaction to anticipate from the real mother. It is hardly a template for just behavior in other situations. Another challenge is that justice is distinct in its applications to an individual as opposed to a community. Unlike virtues such as courage or wisdom, which a community may boast so long as enough individuals exhibit its qualities, the community as a whole must exercise judgment on matters that, at least under a centralized legal system, it does not extend to the individual. A person may be fair or prudent in their treatment of their fellow human beings, but it is normally not their purview to punish crimes or resolve legal disputes. Finally, justice has different standards at different levels of association. Parents are generally not expected to treat all children as they treat their own children; nor is it expected for a nation to hold no difference between citizens and foreigners.

The most famous example of a theory of justice is in Plato’s (ca. 427 BCE-347 BCE) The Republic. In this seminal dialogue, Socrates joins a discussion of various definitions of justice, including speaking the truths and paying one’s debt, doing good to one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies, or nothing other than the advantage of the stronger over the weaker. Socrates gradually develops a theory of justice as harmony between the rational, spirited, and appetitive parts of the soul. Since human beings are naturally social creatures, the city itself must manifest this same balance. Since reason is the supreme human function, philosophers (presumably the most rational) must rule, followed by the spirited “guardians” who protect the community from foreign threats, and the producers who satisfy the city’s physical needs.

In the so-called modern era of political philosophy (understood as beginning with the Renaissance in the 16th century) the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) introduced a radically different concept of justice from the ancient Greeks. Rather than define a code of conduct for individuals or societies, Hobbes asserted that justice was nothing more than the rule of the “sovereign,” an authority charged with protecting a community from outsiders and from themselves. This has opened up Hobbes to the criticism that he is an apologist for tyranny, but Hobbes also holds life and property to be inherent individual rights, and so he considers any state that deprives its citizens of their life or livelihood without due process of law to be unworthy of its citizens’ obedience. Hobbes had an enormous influence on the field of legal positivism, which defines justice with respect to formal law rather than abstract principles. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) took a position practically opposite to that of Hobbes, arguing that justice must be based on an absolute and universal moral law known as the “categorical imperative.” This refers to a duty, binding upon all individuals, to treat other people as ends unto themselves rather than a means to someone else’s end.

Rawls’s theory integrates elements from all three philosophers. From Plato, he borrows the idea that justice can only come about in a social context. Just as Socrates and his students construct a “city in speech” through their dialogue, Rawls imagines a just community coming about through the “original position,” a hypothetical meeting of representatives. Hobbes provides the central importance of individual rights and liberties, as well as the idea that the coercive power of the state rests on the consent of the community. From Kant, Rawls takes a universal definition of justice, which supplies the main purpose of a society.