What is Justice?
What is justice? What does it demand of individuals and societies?
Different people have different ideas about this. Over the course of the semester, we’ll be reading fiction and non-fiction that deals with ideas about justice. You’ll also be writing in response to quotes about justice from a variety of writers.
The following are some ideas about justice, taken from an article on Wikipedia.
Justice as harmony: Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring parts of the person or city. This was Plato’s idea. He believed that reason should rule.
Justice as divine command: Justice is the authoritative command of a god or gods. Things that are wrong are wrong only because god or gods say they are wrong. Some believe that goodness is the nature of God, so that God’s commands are just an expression of that goodness.
Justice as natural law: Justice is part of natural law, and there are consequences that flow naturally out of any action or choice. In this system, justice is universal and absolute, and laws and religions are just trying to put into words something that already exists, and in their efforts often contradict what they are trying to guarantee.
Justice as human creation: Justice is a human creation, rather than a discovered harmony.
Justice as authoritative command: Justice is created by public, enforceable, authoritative rules, and injustice is whatever those rules forbid. Justice is created by an absolute sovereign power. This is similar to divine command, with the state taking the place of the divine.
Justice as economics. Justice is not separable from economics. Justice as a concept has no meaning for those who do not have clean water, education, housing, food, etc.
Other justice ideas:
distributive justice: has to do with the proper distribution of goods and resources
retributive justice: has to do with punishment for wrongdoing
restorative justice: assumes a state of ‘wholeness’ to which a community must be restored when there is an offense against it.