Chapter 5: Of the Connection between Justice and Utility (Part 1)

Summary

Mill says that throughout history, one of the biggest barriers to the acceptance of utility has been that it does not allow for a

theory of justice. In this chapter, then, Mill will determine whether the justice or injustice of an action is something intrinsic and

distinct from questions of utility. In examining this it is necessary to determine whether a sense of justice exists in itself, or is

derivative and formed by a combination of other feelings; is this sense explicable by our emotional make-up, or is it a "special

provision of nature"? To answer this, we must ascertain what the distinguishing quality of justice is, if there is such a quality.

Mill begins by trying to pin down the meaning of justice, by coming up with a list of those things that are commonly classified

as just or unjust. First, it is considered unjust to deprive someone of his legal rights. However, this concept has exceptions. For

example, a person may have legal rights he should not have--his rights may be the provision of a bad law. While people vary

on whether bad laws can be justly disobeyed, all people agree that laws can be unjust. Therefore, law cannot be the ultimate

standard of justice. A second form of injustice comes from depriving someone of something he has a moral right to possess.

Third, it is considered just that a person receive what he "deserves," and unjust that he obtain something he doesn't deserve;

people are thought to deserve good things if they have done right, and evil things if they have done wrong. A fourth form of

injustice is to violate an agreement with someone or disappoint expectations that one knowingly nurtured. Fifth, it is

considered unjust to show favoritism and preference in inappropriate circumstances. However, it is not generally necessary

to be impartial; for example, one doesn't have to be impartial in the selection of friends. The claim is rather that a person

should only be influenced by those considerations that should apply in a given circumstance. Finally, the idea of equality is

seen by many to be a component of justice; some people may make an exception for the sake of expediency, however.

Given so many different applications of the concept of justice, it is hard to find what links them all together, and on what

concept the sentiment of justice is based. Nevertheless, people do see justice as a unified concept, and do feel a sentiment

of justice regardless of whether they understand its foundation. Mill says that some help may come from looking at the history

of the word. In most languages, the word's origin came from either positive law or authoritative custom. Thus, the most primitive

element of justice is the idea of conformity to law. The Greeks and Romans realized that there could be bad laws, and thus

justice came to be associated only to those laws that ought to exist, including those that should exist but do not. Mill also

recognizes, however, that the idea of justice is often applied to areas about which we would not want legislation: for example,

we always think it right that unjust acts be punished, even if we recognize that it would be inexpedient for courts to acts as

punishers in particular cases. The limitation on the scope of the state's right to punish in particular cases has to do with practical

concerns about extending the state's power, not with a sense that the person should not be punished.

At this point, Mill observes that while this discussion has given a true account of the origin and development of justice, it does

not show a distinction from other forms of morality. The idea of a penal sanction enters into any kind of wrong; in fact,
something is considered wrong only when it is thought that the person should be punished either by law, opinion, or one's

own conscience. Thus, moral obligation in general comes from the idea of duty, the idea that a person may rightly be

compelled to do something. He argues that this concept of deserving or not deserving punishment is the essence of moral

thinking in general. Mill argues that justice can be distinguished from other forms of morality by looking at the difference

between perfect and imperfect obligations. Imperfect obligations are those that no one person has the right to require of

another. Perfect obligations are those that a person may demand of another. Justice corresponds with the idea of perfect

obligation: it involves the idea of a personal right. In cases of justice, the person who has been wronged has had his or her

moral right impinged upon; it is thus his or her moral right to seek restitution.

Commentary

Here Mill responds to the claim that utilitarianism is opposed to justice. This section is mostly descriptive, as Mill writes about the

definition of justice and its historical origins. It is significant that Mill does not present his own theory about what justice requires.

From Mill's perspective, justice is not an abstract concept so much as it is a sentiment about morality that many people share.

Thus, in defining justice Mill looks to what other people mean by the term. It exists because people believe it exists, and it

means what they believe it to mean. Starting from the popular conception of justice, Mill theorizes about what links a diverse

set of ideas about justice. Ultimately, he argues that they are united by the concept of rights, a notion he introduces in his

claims about perfect and imperfect obligations.

This section is the first time that Mill spends any time writing about rights. In the next section, he will go into the idea in greater

detail. For Mill, a right means that a person has a valid claim that society to protect him against any violation. Many utilitarians

dismiss the idea of rights as nonsense, and many debates about utilitarianism center around whether rights exist. Mill has a

different perspective on this issue, however. In the next section Mill will defend rights, and do so under a utilitarian framework.

Chapter 5: Of the Connection between Justice and Utility (Part 2)

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Summary

Having just defined justice, Mill now turns to the question of whether the sentiment of justice comes from a special, unique

tendency of nature, or whether it can be linked to the concerns of utility. Mill argues for the latter.

Mill contends that there are two components to justice. The first is the desire to punish a person who has done harm. This desire

comes from the impulse of self-defense, and the feeling of sympathy. All animals have instincts of self- defense. However,

unlike animals, humans are capable of sympathizing not only with their offspring, but with all human beings. Furthermore,

humans are more intelligent, and thus have a wider range of sentiments and are able to feel that they are a part of a broader
community of interests. Justice then, reflects the natural feeling of retaliation, expanded by sympathy and intellect to apply

to things that harm society at large. In themselves, these feelings are not moral sentiments. Justice's moral component can

be seen rather in the quality of the outrage people feel at an injustice: people can be upset by an injustice not only if it affects

them individually, but if it goes against the interests of society at large; this demonstrates a moral concern.

The other component of justice is that there is an identifiable victim who suffers if justice is infringed upon. Mill argues that the

idea of a right is not a concept separate from justice, but is rather a manifestation of the other aspects of justice, namely the

desire for punishment and the fact that there is an assignable person who has been harmed. A right means that a person has

a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession of that right. However, if one wants to know why society should

defend this right, Mill argues that the only reason is one of general utility. The sentiment of justice derives its intensity from its

link to the animalistic need for retaliation. It gets its moral force from the "impressive" kind of utility that is involved in rights

violations--namely the interest of security. People cannot do without security, and require before they can enjoy anything

else. Security is so fundamental that its difference of degree as a form of utility becomes a difference in kind. It is so important

that it takes on a feeling of absoluteness, of moral necessity.

Mill then observes that if justice exists independent of utility, if it is a standard in its own right that can be understood through

introspection, then it is difficult to understand why questions of justice are often so debatable. In fact, there is as fierce a

discussion about what is just as there is about what is useful to society, and it is guided by many conflicting ideas. For example,

there is a conflict over which acts should be punished, and over the proper apportionment of punishments. In a different

arena, there is disagreement over whether people should be paid more for having natural talents, and whether taxes should

be graduated, or issued at a flat rate. In fact, the only way to navigate among conflicting claims of justice is to look to the

source of its authority, namely, social utility.

This does not mean, however, that there is no difference between the just and the expedient, or that policy is more important

than justice. Rather, justice grounded on utility is the chief part, and the most important part, of all morality; it concerns many

of the most basic essentials for human well-being. Mill argues that the moral rules that forbid people to harm each other are

more important than any rules of policy, rules about how societal affairs should be managed. Furthermore, the preservation

of justice preserves peace among human beings. Thus, there is a very strong utility interest in preserving and enforcing justice's

dictates.

Mill argues that most of the applications of justice we observe today are simply ways of maintaining the notion of moral rights

just discussed. Impartiality is one rule that is partly based in these, but also comes from the very meaning of utility. The greatest

happiness principle doesn't have meaning unless each person's happiness, supposed equal in degree, is valued exactly as

much as somebody else's. People are seen to have an equal claim to happiness, and an equal claim to the means to

happiness. Social inequalities that are not required by expediency are thus seen to be unjust.
Chapter 5: Of the Connection between Justice and Utility (Part 2)

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Mill closes by observing that justice is a name for some moral requirements, which are higher on the scale of utility, and thus

more important, than any others. However, there can be cases in which some other social duty is so important that it overrules

one of the general rules of justice. Thus, it could be acceptable to steal in order to save a life. Mill argues that the previous

discussion has resolved what had been the only real problem with utilitarian theory. It has always been clear that cases of

justice are also cases of expediency; the difference is that very different sentiments attach themselves to issues of justice and

expeediency. Mill argues that he has accounted for what this feeling is; it is simply the natural feeling of resentment, moralized

by being connected to social good. Justice is the name for certain social utilities that are more important than any other kind,

and thus should be preserved by a feeling that is different in kind from others.

Commentary

In this final section, Mill attempts to show that justice is actually grounded on utility. He argues that the sentiment of justice

itself is rooted in the human desire of retribution. However, the reason why we feel that this sentiment of retribution is

a moral one, is that it occurs when not only an individual is wronged, but when society in general is wronged. In cases involving

justice, the challenge to social good is particularly pernicious, and therefore the feelings about it are uniquely strong. However,

justice is still grounded in utility concerns. It does not have separate origins, but can rather be measured on the same scale of

utility.

Perhaps Mill's most interesting comments are those on the question of rights. Unlike many utilitarians, Mill accepts the existence

of rights. However, he does not ground these rights in nature, or in God, or in metaphysics. Rather, they are grounded in utility.

Rights represent the most basic social utilities necessary for human well-being; human culture cannot flourish if society does

not protect individual rights. Thus, rights are fundamental to the greatest happiness principle (utility), since they must be

protected for people to be able to enjoy anything else.

However, it is important to consider the implications of grounding rights in utility. As Mill admits, grounding rights in utility implies

that if there were a more pressing utility concern, rights could be violated. Mill would argue that there are very few cases in

which this would occur; rights are among the most important criteria for happiness. However, since utilitarianism is concerned

with total happiness, it does seem possible that there is room for violation of the rights of an individual in the interest of

aggregate good. One must thus ask whether utility provides sufficient protection for the individual. Mill would argue that the

protection the theory does provide, small as it may be, is the only protection that can be justified.
Western Theories of Justice

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 Western
philosophical conceptions of justice. These will be the greatest theories of ancient Greece (those of Plato and Aristotle) and
of medieval Christianity (Augustineand Aquinas), two early modern ones (Hobbes and Hume), two from more recent modern
times (Kant and Mill), and some contemporary ones (Rawls and several successors). 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.
For Plato, justice is a virtue establishing rational order, with each part performing its appropriate role and not interfering with
the proper functioning of other parts. Aristotle says justice consists in what is lawful and fair, with fairness involving equitable
distributions and the correction of what is inequitable. For Augustine, the cardinal virtue of justice requires that we try to give
all people their due; for Aquinas, justice is that rational mean between opposite sorts of injustice, involving proportional
distributions and reciprocal transactions. Hobbes believed justice is an artificial virtue, necessary for civil society, a function
of the voluntary agreements of the social contract; for Hume, justice essentially serves public utility by protecting property
(broadly understood). For Kant, it is a virtue whereby we respect others’ freedom, autonomy, and dignity by not interfering
with their voluntary actions, so long as those do not violate others’ rights; Mill said justice is a collective name for the most
important social utilities, which are conducive to fostering and protecting human liberty. Rawls analyzed justice in terms of
maximum equal liberty regarding basic rights and duties for all members of society, with socio-economic inequalities requiring
moral justification in terms of equal opportunity and beneficial results for all; and various post-Rawlsian philosophers develop
alternative conceptions.
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. Ancient Greece

For all their originality, even Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies did not emerge in a vacuum. As far back in ancient Greek
literature as Homer, the concept of dikaion, used to describe a just person, was important. From this emerged the general
concept of dikaiosune, or justice, as a virtue that might be applied to a political society. The issue of what does and does
not qualify as just could logically lead to controversy regarding the origin of justice, as well as that concerning its
essence. Perhaps an effective aid to appreciating the power of their thought is to view it in the context of the teachings of
the Sophists, those itinerant teachers of fifth-century ancient Greece who tried to pass themselves off as “wise” men. In his
trial, Socrates was at pains to dissociate himself from them, after his conviction refusing to save himself, as a typical Sophist
would, by employing an act of civil disobedience to escape (Dialogues, pp. 24-26, 52-56; 18b-19d, 50a-54b); Plato is more
responsible than anyone else for giving them the bad name that sticks with them to this present time; and Aristotle follows him
in having little use for them as instructors of rhetoric, philosophy, values, and the keys to success. So what did these three
great philosophers (literally “lovers of wisdom”) find so ideologically objectionable about the Sophists? The brief answer is,
their relativism and their skepticism. The first important one, Protagoras, captures the former with his famous saying, “Man is
the measure of all things—of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not”; and he
speaks to the latter with a declaration of agnosticism regarding the existence of divinities. Gorgias (Plato named dialogues
after both of them) is remembered for a striking three-part statement of skepticism, holding that nothing really exists, that,
even if something did exist, we could not grasp it, and that, even if we could grasp something real, we could never express it
to anyone else. If all values are subjective and/or unknowable, then what counts as just gets reduced to a matter of shifting
opinion. We can easily anticipate how readily Sophists would apply such relativism and skepticism to justice. For example,
Thrasymachus (who figures into the first book of Plato’s Republic) is supposed to have said that there must not be any gods
who care about us humans because, while justice is our greatest good, men commonly get away with injustice. But the most
significant Sophist statement regarding justice arguably comes from Antiphon, who employs the characteristic distinction
between custom (nomos) and nature (physis) with devastating effect. He claims that the laws of justice, matters of
convention, should be obeyed when other people are observing us and may hold us accountable; but, otherwise, we should
follow the demands of nature. The laws of justice, extrinsically derived, presumably involve serving the good of others, the
demands of nature, which are internal, serving self-interest. He even suggests that obeying the laws of justice often renders
us helpless victims of those who do not (First, pp. 211, 232, 274, 264-266). If there is any such objective value as natural justice,
then it is reasonable for us to attempt a rational understanding of it. On the other hand, if justice is merely a construction of
customary agreement, then such a quest is doomed to frustration and failure. With this as a backdrop, we should be able to
see what motivated Plato and Aristotle to seek a strong alternative.
a. Plato
Plato’s masterful Republic (to which we have already referred) 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, 349c-354c). 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, self-indulgence, 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.
b. 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; 1137a-1138a).

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.

2. Medieval Christianity
When Christian thinkers sought to develop their own philosophies in the middle ages (“medieval” meaning the middle ages
and “middle” in the sense of being between antiquity and modernity), they found precious basic building-blocks in ancient
thought. This included such important post-Aristotelians as the enormously influential Roman eclectic Cicero, such prominent
Stoics as Marcus Aurelius (a Roman emperor) and Epictetus (a Greek slave of the Romans), and neo-Platonists like Plotinus. But
the two dominant paths that medieval philosophy would follow for its roughly thousand year history had been blazed by Plato
and Aristotle. More specifically, Augustine uses Platonic (and neo-Platonic) philosophy to the extent that he can reconcile it
with Christian thought; Aquinas, many centuries later, develops a great synthesis of Christian thought (including that of
Augustine) and Aristotelian philosophy. A great difference, however, between their philosophies and those of Hellenic
thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle stems from the commitment of these Christians to the authority of the Hebrew and Christian
scriptures. Aquinas would later agree with Augustine (who is accepting the mandate of Isaiah 7:9) that the quest for
philosophical understanding should begin with belief in religious traditions (Choice, pp. 3, 32). Both the Old Testament and
the New Testament call for just behavior on the part of righteous people, with injustice being a sin against God’s law, the
references being too numerous to cite (but see Job 9:2, Proverbs 4:18, Proverbs 10:6-7, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Matthew 5:45,
Philippians 4:8, and Hebrews 12:23). The claim that God’s justice will prevail in the form of divine judgment is both a promise
for the just and a threat for the unjust. Righteousness is identified with mercy as well as with justice (e.g., Micah 6:8 and
Matthew 5:7) and involves our relationship with God as well as with fellow humans. The ten commandments of the Old
Testament (Exodus 20:1-17) are prescriptions regarding how the righteous are to relate to God as well as to one another. In
the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth interprets how the righteous are to live (Matthew 22:36-40) in terms of love of both God
and their neighbors; the concept of one’s neighbor is meant to extend even to strangers, as is illustrated in the parable of the
Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37). In the Beatitudes beginning the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expands on this gospel of love
by advocating that his followers go beyond the duties of justice to behave with compassion in certain supererogatory ways
(Matthew 5:3-12). All of this scriptural tradition essentially influenced medieval thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas in a
way that distinguishes them from ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

a. Augustine
Aurelius Augustine was born and raised in the Roman province of North Africa; during his life, he experienced the injustices,
the corruption, and the erosion of the Roman Empire. This personal experience, in dialectical tension with the ideals of
Christianity, provided him with a dramatic backdrop for his religious axiology. Philosophically, he was greatly influenced by
such neo-Platonists as Plotinus. His Christian Platonism is evident in his philosophical dialogue On Free Choice of the Will, in
which he embraces Plato’s view of four central moral virtues (which came to be called “cardinal,” from the Latin word for
hinges, these being metaphorically imaginable as the four hinges on which the door of morality pivots). These are prudence
(substituted for wisdom), fortitude or courage, temperance, and justice. His conception of justice is the familiar one of “the
virtue by which all people are given their due.” But this is connected to something new and distinctly Christian—the distinction
between the temporal law, such as the law of the state, and the eternal, divine law of God. The eternal law establishes the
order of God’s divine providence. And, since all temporal or human law must be consistent with God’s eternal law, Augustine
can draw the striking conclusion that, strictly speaking, “an unjust law is no law at all,” an oxymoron (Choice, pp. 20, 11, 8;
cf. Religion, p. 89, for an analysis of justice that relates it to love). Thus a civil law of the state that violates God’s eternal law
is not morally binding and can be legitimately disobeyed in good conscience. This was to have a profound and ongoing
influence on Christian ethics.

In his masterpiece, The City of God, Augustine draws the dramatic conclusion from this position that the Roman Empire was
never a truly just political society. He expresses his disgust over its long history of “revolting injustice.” Rome was always a
pagan, earthly city, and “true justice” can allegedly only be found in a Christian “city of God.” The just, rather than the
powerful, should rule for the common good, rather than serving their own self-interest. He strikingly compares unjust societies,
based on might rather than on right, to “gangs of criminals on a large scale,” for, without justice, a kingdom or empire is
merely ruled by the arbitrary fiat of some leader(s). A genuinely just society must be based on Christian love, its peaceful
order established by the following of two basic rules—that people harm nobody and that they should try to help everyone to
the extent that they can do so (City, pp. 75, 67, 75, 138-139, 873).

Despite his Christian commitment to love and peace, Augustine is not a pacifist and can support “just wars” as morally
permissible and even as morally obligatory. Every war aims at the order of some sort of established peace; while an unjust
war aims to establish an unjust peace of domination, a just war aims to establish a “just peace.” He agrees with Cicero that
a just war must be defensive rather than aggressive (ibid., pp. 861-862, 866, 868-869, 1031). In a letter (# 138) to Marcellinus,
Augustine uses scripture to deny that Christian doctrine is committed to pacifism, though wars should be waged, when
necessary, with a benevolent love for the enemy. In a letter (# 189) to Boniface, he maintains that godly, righteous people
can serve in the military, again citing scripture to support his position. He repeats the view that a just war should aim at
establishing a lasting and just peace and holds that one must keep faith with both one’s allies and one’s enemies, even in
the awful heat of warfare. Augustine’s most important treatment of the just war theory is contained in his writing Against
Faustus the Manichean, where he analyzes the evils of war in terms of the desire to harm others, the lust for revenge and
cruelty, and the wish to dominate other people. In addition to the condition that a just war must aim at establishing a just
and lasting peace, a second condition is that it must be declared by a leader or body of leaders, with the “authority” to do
so, after deliberating that it is justified. Again Augustine makes it clear that he is no pacifist (Political, pp. 209, 219-223).

While this is a very valuable application of his theory of justice, this doctrine of the just war standing the test of time to this very
day, the general theory on which it is based is more problematic. The unoriginal (and uninspired) conception of justice as
giving others their due had already become familiar to the point of being trite. It remains vulnerable to the serious problems
of vagueness already considered: what is the relevant criterion whereby it should be determined who deserves what, and
who is fit to make such a judgment? But, also, Augustine should have an advantage over the ancient Greeks in arriving at a
theory of justice based on universal equality on account of the Christian doctrine (not to mention because of the influences
of Cicero, the Stoics, and Plotinus) that all humans are equally children of God. Unfortunately, his zealous Christian evangelism
leads him to identify justice itself, in a divisive, intolerant, polemical way, with the Christian church’s idea of what God requires,
so that only a Christian society can possibly qualify as just, as if a just political society would need to be a theocracy. Thus,
while he has some sense of some moral or spiritual equality among humans, it does not issue in equal respect for all persons
as free, rational agents, allowing him, for example, to accept the institution of slavery as a just punishment for sin, despite the
belief that God originally created humans as naturally free, because of the idea that we have all been corrupted by original
sin (City, pp. 874-875).

b. Aquinas
As Augustine is arguably the greatest Christian Platonist, so Thomas Aquinas, from what is now Italy, is the greatest Christian
Aristotelian. Nevertheless, as we shall see, his theory of justice is also quite compatible with Augustine’s. Aquinas discusses
the same four cardinal moral virtues, including that of justice, in his masterpiece, the multi-volume Summa Theologica. No
more a socio-political egalitarian than Plato, Aristotle, or Augustine, he analyzes it as calling for proportional equality, or equity,
rather than any sort of strict numerical equality, and as a function of natural right rather than of positive law. Natural right
ultimately stems from the eternal, immutable will of God, who created the world and governs it with divine
providence. Natural justice must always take precedence over the contingent agreements of our human
conventions. Human law must never contravene natural law, which is reason’s way of understanding God’s eternal law. He
offers us an Aristotelian definition, maintaining that “justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a
constant and perpetual will.” As a follower of Aristotle, he defines concepts in terms of genus and species. In this case, the
general category to which justice belongs is that it is a moral habit of a virtuous character. What specifically distinguishes it
from other moral virtues is that by justice, a person is consistently committed to respecting the rights of others over time. Strictly
speaking, the virtue of justice always concerns interpersonal relations, so that it is only metaphorically that we can speak of a
person being just to himself. In addition to legal justice, whereby a person is committed to serving the “common good” of
the entire community, there is “particular justice,” which requires that we treat individuals in certain ways. Justice is a rational
mean between the vicious extremes of deficiency and excess, having to do with our external actions regarding others. Like
many of his predecessors, Aquinas considers justice to be preeminent among the moral virtues. He agrees with Aristotle in
analyzing particular justice into two types, which he calls “distributive” and “commutative”; the former governs the
proportional distribution of common goods, while the latter concerns the reciprocal dealings between individuals in their
voluntary transactions (Law, pp. 137, 139, 145, 147, 155, 160, 163, 165).

Aquinas applies this theory of justice to many social problems. He maintains that natural law gives us the right to own private
property. Given this natural right, theft (surreptitiously stealing another’s property) and robbery (taking it openly by force or
the threat of violence) must be unjust, although an exception can arise if the thief and his family are starving in an environment
of plenty, in which case, stealing is justified and, strictly speaking, not theft or robbery at all. Secondly, Aquinas refines the
Augustinian just war theory by articulating three conditions that must jointly be met in order for the waging of war to be
just: (a) it must be declared by a leader with socio-political authority; (b) it must be declared for a “just cause,” in that the
people attacked must be at fault and thus deserve it; and (c) those going to war must intend good and the avoidance of
evil. It is not justifiable deliberately to slay innocent noncombatants. It is legitimate to kill another in self-defense, though one’s
intention should be that of saving oneself, the taking of the other’s life merely being the necessary means to that good end
(this, by the way, is the source of what later evolves into the moral principle of “double effect”). Even acting in self-defense
must be done in reasonable proportion to the situation, so that it is wrong to employ more force than is necessary to stop
aggression. Even killing another unintentionally can be unjust if done in the course of committing another crime or through
criminal negligence. Thirdly, while Aquinas thinks we should tolerate the religious beliefs of those who have never been
Christians, so that it would be unjust to persecute them, he thinks it just to use force against heretics who adhered to but then
rejected orthodox Christianity, even to the point of hurting them, as in the Inquisition, for the good of their own souls. In an
extreme case of recalcitrant heretics who will not be persuaded to return to the truth of Christianity, it is allegedly just that
they should be “exterminated” by execution rather than being allowed to corrupt other Christians by espousing their
heterodox religious views. Fourth, like Augustine, Aquinas accepts slavery, so long as no Christian is the slave of a non-Christian
(ibid., pp. 178-183, 186, 221, 224, 226, 228, 250, 256, 253), and considers it just that women should be politically and
economically “subject” to men. Although he considers women to be fully human, he agrees with Aristotle that they are
“defective and misbegotten,” the consequence allegedly being inferior rational discretion (Summa, pp. 466-467).

From a critical perspective, his general theory of justice is, by now, quite familiar, a sort of blend of Aristotle’s and Augustine’s,
and marked by the same flaws as theirs. His applications of the theory can be regarded as indicative of its problematic
character: (a) given the assumption of a right to own private property, his discussion of the injustices of theft and robbery
seems quite reasonable; (b) assuming that we have a right to self-defense, his analysis of the legitimacy of killing in a just war
does also; (c) his attempted defense of the persecution of religious heretics, even unto death, invites suspicions of dogmatic,
intolerant fanaticism on his part; and (d) his acceptance of slavery and the political and economic subjection of women as
just is indicative of an empirical orientation that is too uncritically accepting of the status quo. Here again the Christian belief
that all humans are personal creatures of a loving God is vitiated by an insufficient commitment to the implications of that,
regarding socio-political equality, so that only some humans are fully respected as free, rational agents. The rationalistic
theories of Plato and Augustine and the classical empirical theories of Aristotle and Aquinas all leave us hoping that preferable
alternatives might be forthcoming.

3. Early Modernity
Although only half as much time elapses between Aquinas and Hobbes as did between Augustine and Aquinas, from the
perspective of intellectual history, the period of modernism represents a staggering sea-change. We have neither the time
nor the space to consider the complex causal nexus that explains this fact; but, for our purposes, suffice it to say that the
Protestant Reformation, the revolution of the new science, and the progressive willingness publicly to challenge authority
(both political and religious) converge to generate a strikingly different philosophical mentality in the seventeenth century. In
the previous century, the Protestant Reformation shattered the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church, so that thinkers
need not feel so constrained to adhere to established orthodoxy. The naturalistic worldview of the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries that eventuated in an empirical and experimental (non-dogmatic) methodology in both natural and
political science set an example for philosophers. Thinkers of the modern era became increasingly comfortable breaking
from the mainstream to pursue their own independent reasoning. Although the influence of great ancient philosophers like
Plato and Aristotle and of great medieval thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas would persist, there was no returning to
their bygone perspectives. This vitally affects moral and political theory, in general, and views on justice, in particular. As we
shall see in this section, views of justice as relative to human needs and interests became prominent as they had not been for
a couple of millennia. This will locate Hobbes and Hume closer to the Sophists than had been fashionable since pre-Socratic
times in philosophy, regarding justice as a social construct.

a. 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 self-
interest 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.

b. Hume
As a transition between Hobbes and Hume, brief mention can be made of John Locke, the most important political
philosopher between them. (The reason he is not being considered at length here is that he does not offer a distinctive
general theory of justice.) In his masterful Second Treatise of Government, Locke describes a state of nature governed by
God’s law but insecure in that there is no mechanism for enforcing it, when the natural rights of property—comprising one’s
life, liberty, and estates—are violated. In order to protect such property rights, people agree to a social contract that moves
them from that state of nature to a state of political society, with government established to enforce the law. Another great
social contract theorist between Hobbes and Hume who is worth mentioning here (again he gives us no distinctive theory of
justice) is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In The Social Contract, he maintains that, in a well-ordered society, the general will (rather
than the will of any individual or group of individuals) must prevail. True freedom in society requires following the general will,
and those who do not choose to do so can legitimately be forced to do so. A human being is allegedly so transformed by
the move from the state of nature to that of civil society as to become capable of such genuine freedom as will allow each
citizen to consent to all the laws out of deference to the common good. David Hume, an eighteenth-century Scottish thinker,
who is very influenced by Locke’s focus on property while rejecting the social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke, and
Rousseau, is an interesting philosopher to consider in relation to Hobbes. Like Hobbes, Hume is a radical empiricist and a
determinist who is skeptical of justice as an objective, absolute virtue. But Hume does not explicitly embrace materialism, is
not a psychological or ethical egoist, and famously attacks the social contract theory’s account of moral and political
obligation on both historical grounds (there is no evidence for it, and history shows that force rather than consent has been
the basis of government) and philosophical grounds (even if our ancestors had given their consent, that would not be binding
on us, and utility is a more plausible explanation of submission than genuine agreement) alike (Essays, pp. 186-201). In the
third section of his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume argues that “public utility is the sole origin of justice.” To
place that claim in context, we can note that, like Hobbes, Hume sees all values, including that of justice, as derived from our
passions rather than (as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas thought) from reason. Any virtue, he maintains, is desirable
in that it provides us with the pleasant feeling of approval; and any vice, including that of injustice, is undesirable in that it
provides us with the painful sense of disapproval. In order to qualify as a virtue, a quality must be “useful or agreeable to
the person himself or to others.” It is possible for some virtues to be rich enough to fit appropriately in more than one of these
four categories (for example, benevolence seems to be useful and agreeable to both the benevolent person and to others);
but justice is purportedly a virtue only because it is useful to others, as members of society. Hume offers us a unique and
fascinating argument to prove his point. He imagines four hypothetical scenarios, in which either human nature would be
radically different (utterly altruistic or brutally selfish) or our environment would be so (with everything we desire constantly
and abundantly available or so destitute that hardly anyone could survive), allegedly showing that, in each of them, justice
would not be a virtue at all. His conclusion is that justice is only a virtue because, relative to reality, which is intermediate
among these extremes, it is beneficial to us as members of society. He also refuses to identify justice with “perfect equality,”
maintaining that the ideal of egalitarianism is both “impracticable” and “extremely pernicious to human society.” For Hume,
the rules of justice essentially involve protecting private property, although property rights are not absolute and may be
abridged in extreme cases where “public safety” and the common good require it. Even international relations normally
require that “rules of justice” be observed for mutual advantage, although public utility can also require that they should be
suspended (Enquiry, pp. 20, 85, 72, 21-25, 28-35; see also Essays, pp. 20, 202). Though different from Hobbes’s theory, this one
also leans towards the Sophist view of justice as conventional and relative.

In his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume makes the striking claim, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of
the passions,” which rules out all forms of ethical rationalism. He also makes a remarkable distinction between descriptive
language regarding what “is, and is not,” on the one hand, and prescriptive language concerning what “ought, or ought
not” to be, on the other, challenging the possibility of ever justifying value claims by means of any factual ones, of logically
inferring what should be from what is. The second part of Book 3 of Hume’s Treatise deals extensively with justice. Here he
calls it an “artificial” but “not arbitrary” virtue, in that we construct it as a virtue for our own purposes, relative to our needs
and circumstances, as we experience them. It is valuable as a means to the end of social cooperation, which is mutually
“advantageous.” An especially beneficial, if unnatural, convention is respecting others’ property, which is what the rules of
justice essentially require of us. The psychological grounds of our sense of justice are a combination of “self-interest” and
“sympathy” for others. He holds a very conservative view of property rights, in that, normally, people should be allowed to
keep what they already have acquired. Indeed, justice normally comprises three principles—“of the stability of possession,
of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises.” He rejects the traditional definition of justice as giving
others their due, because it rashly and wrongly assumes that “right and property” have prior objective reality independent of
conventions of justice. Internationally, the rules of justice assume the status of “the law of nations,” obliging civilized
governments to respect the ambassadors of other countries, to declare war prior to engaging them in battle, to refrain from
using poisonous weapons against them, and so forth. The rationale for such principles of international justice is that they
reduce the horrors of war and facilitate the advantages of peace. By respecting other societies’ possessions, leaders minimize
the likelihood of war; by respecting the transference of possessions by mutual consent, they enhance the possibilities of
international trade; and by keeping their promises, they create a climate for peaceful alliances. A bit later, Hume adopts a
position which, in the twentieth century, has been called a “rule utilitarian” view of justice, writing that, though individual acts
of justice might be contrary to public utility, they ought to be performed if they are conducive to “a general scheme or
system” of conduct that benefits society as a whole (Treatise, pp. 266, 302, 311, 307, 312, 315, 320-321, 323, 337-338, 362-363,
370-371). Yet the rules of justice that are normally conducive to public utility are never absolute and can be legitimately
contravened where following them would seem to do more harm than good to our society. He applies this view to the issue
of civil disobedience, which is normally unjust because it threatens “public utility” but can be justified as a last resort “in
extraordinary circumstances” when that same public utility is in jeopardy (Essays, pp. 202-204). Whether that is or is not the
case in specific circumstances becomes a judgment call.

Hume is important here because of a convergence of several factors. First, like the Sophists and Hobbes, he makes justice a
social construct that is relative to human needs and interests. Second, like Hobbes, he associates it fundamentally with human
passions rather than with reason. Third, the virtue of justice and the rules of justice are essentially connected to the protection
of private property. And, fourth, he considers public utility to be the sole basis of justice. This theory would prove extremely
influential, in that Kant will take issue with it, while utilitarians like Mill will build on its flexibility. This sort of flexibility is both a
strength and a weakness of Hume’s theory of justice. While it may be attractive to allow for exceptions to the rules, this also
creates a kind of instability. Is justice merely an instrumental good, having no intrinsic value? If that were the case, then it
would make sense to say that the role of reason is simply to calculate the most effective means to our most desirable ends. But
then, assuming that our ends were sufficiently desirable, any means necessary to achieve them would presumably be
justifiable—so that, morally and politically, anything goes, in principle, regardless how revolting. Finally, notice that Hume
himself, because of the empirical nature of his practical philosophy, fails to avoid the “is-ought” trap against which he so
deftly warned us: because some end is sufficiently desired, whatever means are necessary, or even most effective, to
achieve it ought to be pursued. Is this the best we can do in our pursuit of an adequate theory of justice?

4. Recent Modernity
Moving from one of the greatest philosophers of the Enlightenment to the other, we shall see that Kant will take more seriously
the “is-ought” challenge than Hume himself did. As justice is both a moral and a political virtue, helping to prescribe both a
good character and right conduct, the question of how such obligations arise is crucial. For Hume, we ought to pursue virtue
(including justice) because it (allegedly) is agreeable and/or useful to do so. But, then, what is the logical link here? Why
should we, morally speaking, act for the sake of agreeableness and utility? For Kant, the reason we should choose to do
what is right has nothing to do with good consequences. It is merely because it is the right thing to do. Conceding that
prescriptive “ought” claims can never be logically deduced from any set of factually descriptive “is” claims, Kant will forsake
the empirical approach to justice (of Hobbes and Hume) in favor of the sort of rationalistic one that will revert to seeing it as
an absolute value, not to be compromised, regardless of circumstances and likely consequences. Then we shall consider
the utilitarian response to this, as developed by the philosopher who is, arguably, the greatest consequentialist of modern
times, John Stuart Mill, who, as an empiricist, like Hobbes and Hume, will make what is right a function of what is good.

a. Kant
Immanuel Kant, an eighteenth-century German professor from East Prussia, found his rationalistic philosophical convictions
profoundly challenged by Hume’s formidable skepticism (as well as being fascinated by the ideas of Rousseau). Even though
he was not convinced by it, Kant was sufficiently disturbed by it that he committed decades to trying to answer it, creating a
revolutionary new philosophical system in order to do so. This system includes, but is far from limited to, a vast, extensive
practical philosophy, comprising many books and essays, including a theory of justice. It is well known that this practical
philosophy—including both his ethical theory and socio-political philosophy—is the most renowned example of deontology
(from the Greek, meaning the study or science of duty). Whereas teleological or consequentialist theories (such as those of
Hobbes and Hume) see what is right as a function of and relative to good ends, a deontological theory such as Kant’s sees
what is right as independent of what we conceive to be good and, thus, as potentially absolute. Justice categorically requires
a respect for the right, regardless of inconvenient or uncomfortable circumstances and regardless of desirable and
undesirable consequences. Because of the “is-ought” problem, the best way to proceed is to avoid the empirical approach
that is necessarily committed to trying to derive obligations from alleged facts.
This is precisely Kant’s approach in the foundational book of his system of practical philosophy, his Grounding for the
Metaphysics of Morals. He argues, in its Preface, that, since the moral law “must carry with it absolute necessity” and since
empiricism only yields “contingent and uncertain” results, we must proceed by way of “pure practical reason, “ which would
be, to the extent possible, “purified of everything empirical,” such as physiological, psychological, and environmental
contingencies. On this view, matters of right will be equally applicable to all persons as potentially autonomous rational
agents, regardless of any contingent differences, of gender, racial or ethnic identity, socio-economic class status, and so
forth. If Kant can pull this off, it will take him further in the direction of equality of rights than any previous philosopher
considered here. In order to establish a concept of right that is independent of empirical needs, desires, and interests, Kant
argues for a single fundamental principle of all duty, which he calls the “categorical imperative,” because it tells us what, as
persons, we ought to do, unconditionally. It is a test we can use to help us rationally to distinguish between right and wrong;
and he offers three different formulations of it which he considers three different ways of saying the same thing: (a) the first is
a formula of universalizability, that we should try to do only what we could reasonably will should become a universal law; (b)
the second is a formula of respect for all persons, that we should try always to act in such a way as to respect all persons,
ourselves and all others, as intrinsically valuable “ends in themselves” and never treat any persons merely as instrumental
means to other ends; and (c) the third is a “principle of autonomy,” that we, as morally autonomous rational agents, should
try to act in such a way that we could be reasonably legislating for a (hypothetical) moral republic of all persons. For the
dignity of all persons, rendering them intrinsically valuable and worthy of respect, is a function of their capacity for moral
autonomy. In his Metaphysics of Morals, Kant develops his ethical system, beyond this foundation, into a doctrine of right and
a doctrine of virtue. The former comprises strict duties of justice, while the latter comprises broader duties of merit. Obviously,
it is the former category, duties we owe all other persons, regardless of circumstances and consequences, that concerns us
here, justice being a matter of strict right rather than one of meritorious virtue. At the very end of his Metaphysics of Morals,
Kant briefly discusses “divine justice,” whereby God legitimately punishes people for violating their duties (Ethical, pp. 2-3, 30-
44, 36, 48, 158-161).

In his Metaphysical Elements of Justice, which constitutes the first part of his Metaphysics of Morals, Kant develops his theory
of justice. (His concept of Rechtslehre—literally, “doctrine of right”—has also been translated as “doctrine of justice” and
“doctrine of law.”) For Kant, justice is inextricably bound up with obligations with which we can rightly be required to comply.
To say that we have duties of justice to other persons is to indicate that they have rights, against us, that we should perform
those duties—so that duties of justice and rights are correlative. Three conditions must be met in order that the concept of
justice should apply: (a) we must be dealing with external interpersonal behaviors; (b) it must relate to willed action and not
merely to wishes, desires, and needs; and (c) the consequences intended are not morally relevant. A person is not committing
an injustice by considering stealing another’s property or in wanting to do so, but only by voluntarily taking action to
appropriate it without permission; and the act is not justified no matter what good consequences may be
intended. According to Kant, there is only one innate human right possessed by all persons; that is the right freely to do what
one wills, so long as that is “compatible with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law.” Thus one
person’s right freely to act cannot extend to infringing on the freedom of others or the violation of their rights. This leads to
Kant’s ultimate universal principle of justice, which is itself a categorical imperative: “Every action is just [right] that in itself or
in its maxim is such that the freedom of the will of each can coexist together with the freedom of everyone in accordance
with a universal law.” Although the use of coercive force against other persons involves an attempt to restrict their freedom,
this is not necessarily unjust, if it is used to counteract their unjust abuse of freedom—for example, in self-defense or punishment
or even war. Kant approvingly invokes three ancient rules of justice: (1) we should be honest in our dealings with others; (2)
we should avoid being unjust towards others even if that requires our trying to avoid them altogether; and (3) if we cannot
avoid associating with others, we should at least try to respect their rights (Justice, pp. 29, 38, 30-31, 37; see also Lectures, pp.
211-212).

Kant distinguishes between natural or private justice, on the one hand, and civil or public justice, on the other. He has an
intricate theory of property rights, which we can only touch upon here. We can claim, in the name of justice, to have rights
to (a) physical property, such as your car, (b) the performance of a particular deed by another person, such as the auto shop
keeping its agreement to try to fix your car, and (c) certain characteristics of interpersonal relationships with those under our
authority, such as obedient children and respectful servants. Someone who steals your car or the auto mechanic who has
agreed to fix it and then fails to try to do so is doing you an injustice. Children, as developing but dependent persons, have
a right to support and care from their parents; but, in turn, they owe their parents obedience while under their
authority. Children are not the property of their parents and must never be treated like things or objects; and, when they
have become independent of their parents, they owe them nothing more than gratitude. Similarly, a master must respect a
servant as a person. The servant may be under contract to serve the master, but that contract cannot be permanent or
legitimately involve the giving up of the servant’s personhood (in other words, one cannot justifiably enter into slavery). While
the master has authority over the servant, that must never be viewed as ownership or involve abuse. This all concerns private
or natural justice, having to do with the securing of property rights. Next let us next consider how Kant applies his theory of
justice to the problem of crime and punishment, in the area of public or civil justice, involving protective, commutative, and
distributive justice, the requirements of which can be legitimately enforced by civil society. When a person commits a crime,
that involves misusing freedom to infringe the freedom of others or to violate their rights. Thus the criminal forfeits the right to
freedom and can become a legitimate prisoner of the state. Kant considers the rule that criminals should be punished for
their crimes to be “a categorical imperative,” a matter of just “retribution” not to be denied or even mitigated for utilitarian
reasons. This extends to the ultimate punishment, the death penalty: justice requires that murderers, the most heinous
criminals, should suffer capital punishment, as no lesser penalty would be just. A third application to consider here is that of
war. This is in the international part of public justice that Kant calls “the Law of Nations.” He adopts a non-empirical version
of the social contract theory, interpreting it not as a historical fact mysteriously generating obligations but rather as a
hypothetical idea of what free and equal moral agents could reasonably agree to in the way of rules of justice. Unlike
Hobbes, he does not see this as a basis for all moral duty. It does account for the obligation we have to the state and other
citizens. But states have duties to other states, so that there is an international law of nations. Even though different states, in
the absence of international law, are in a natural condition of a state of war, as Hobbes thought, he was wrong to think that,
in that state, anything rightly goes and that there is no justice. War is bad, and we should try to minimize the need for it,
although Kant is not a pacifist and can justify it for purposes of self-defense. Kant proposes an international “league of
nations” to help provide for mutual “protection against external aggression” and, thus, to discourage it and reduce the need
to go to war. Still, when war cannot be avoided, it should be declared rather than launched by means of a sneak attack;
secondly, there are legitimate limits that prohibit, for example, trying to exterminate or subjugate all members of the enemy
society; third, when a war is over, the winning party cannot destroy the civil freedom of the losing parties, as by enslaving
them; and, fourth, certain “rights of peace” must be assured and honored for all involved. Thus the ultimate goal of
international relations and of the league of nations should be the ideal of “perpetual peace” among different states that
share our planet (Justice, pp. 41, 43, 91-95, 113, 136-141, 146, 151-158; for more on Kant’s version of the social contract theory,
see Writings, pp. 73-85, and for more on his views on war and “perpetual peace,” see Writings, pp. 93-130). Thus we see Kant
applying his own theory of justice in three areas: in the area of private law having to do with the securing of property rights,
in the area of public law having to do with retributive punishment for crimes committed, and in the area of international
justice concerned with war and peace.

What shall we critically say about this theory? First, it argues for a sense of justice in terms of objective, non-arbitrary right—
against, say, Hobbes and Hume. Second, this sense of justice is of a piece with Kant’s categorical imperative, in that the rules
of justice (e.g., regarding property rights, punishment, and war) are universalizable, designed to respect persons as intrinsically
valuable, and conforming to the principle of autonomy. Third, if Hume is correct in suggesting that we can never logically
infer what ought to be from what actually is, then Kant’s is the only theory we have considered thus far that can pass the
test. To focus the issue, ask the question, why should we be just? For Plato, this is the way to achieve the fulfillment of a well-
ordered soul. For Aristotle, the achievement and exercising of moral virtue is a necessary condition of human flourishing. For
Augustine and Aquinas, God’s eternal law requires that we, as God’s personal creatures, should be just, with our salvation at
stake. For Hobbes, practicing justice is required by enlightened self-interest. For Hume, even though our being just may not
benefit us directly all the time, it is conducive to public utility or the good of the society of which we are members. But for
each of these claims, we can ask, so what? If any combination of these claims were to turn out to be correct, we could still
legitimately ask why we should therefore be just. Are we to assume that we ought to do whatever it takes to achieve a well-
ordered soul or to flourish or to comply with God’s will or to serve our own self-interest or public utility? Why? Consider Kant’s
answer: we should try to be just because it’s the right thing to do and because it is our duty, as rational, moral agents, to try
to do what is right. Kant’s analysis of justice works well; and, given that, his applications to property rights, crime and
punishment, and war and peace are also impressive. Yet his theory is commonly rejected as too idealistic to be realistically
applicable in the so-called “real world,” because it maintains that some things can be absolutely unjust and are, thus,
categorically impermissible, regardless of likely consequences. His theory as we have considered it here is a paradigmatic
example of the view of justice being advocated in this article, as essentially requiring respect for persons as free, rational
agents. Yet Kant’s inflexibility in other points of application, such as in his absolute prohibition against lying to a would-be
murderer in order to save innocent human life (Ethical, pp. 162-166), his idea that women and servants are merely “passive
citizens” unfit to vote, and his categorical denial of any right to resistance or revolution against oppression (Justice, pp. 120,
124-128), is problematic here, inviting an alternative such as is represented by Mill’s utilitarianism.

b. Mill
Let us consider a bit of Karl Marx (and his collaborator Friedrich Engels) as a quick transition between Kant and Mill. Kant
represents the very sort of bourgeois conception of justice against which Marx and Engels protest in their call, in The
Communist Manifesto, for a socialistic revolution. Marx explains the ideal of socio-economic equality he advocates with the
famous slogan that all should be required to contribute to society to the extent of their abilities and all should be allowed to
receive from society in accordance with their needs. John Stuart Mill, a nineteenth-century English philosopher, was aware
of the call for a Communist revolution and advocated progressive liberal reform as an alternative path to political
evolution. Whereas Kant was the first great deontologist, Mill subscribed to the already established tradition of
utilitarianism. Although earlier British thinkers (including Hobbes and Hume) were proto-utilitarians, incorporating elements of
the theory into their own worldviews, the movement, as such, is usually thought to stem from the publication of Jeremy
Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1789. He there proposes the “principle of utility,” which
he also later calls the “greatest happiness” principle, as the desirable basis for individual and collective decision-making: “By
the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the
tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.” That
single sentence establishes the ultimate criterion for utilitarian reasoning and the root of a great movement. A famous lawyer
named John Austin, under whom Mill studied, wrote a book of jurisprudence based on Bentham’s “principle of general
utility.” Mill’s father, James Mill, was a friend and disciple of Bentham and educated his only son also to be a utilitarian. Near
the end of his life, Mill observed that it was the closest thing to a religion in which his father raised him. And, if he was not the
founder of this secular religion, he clearly became its most effective evangelist. In Utilitarianism, his own great essay in ethical
theory, Mill gives his own statement of the principle of utility (again employing a curiously religious word): “The creed which
accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as
they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” He immediately proceeds to
interpret human happiness and unhappiness (as Bentham had done) in hedonistic terms of pleasure and pain (Utilitarianism,
pp. 33-34, 329, 257). This presents the deceptive appearance of a remarkably simple rubric for practical judgment: if an
action generates an excess of pleasure over pain, that contributes to human happiness, which is our greatest good, making
the action right; on the other hand, if an action generates an excess of pain over pleasure, that contributes to human
unhappiness, which is our greatest evil, making the action wrong. But what is deceptive about this is the notion that we can
sufficiently anticipate future consequences to be able to predict where our actions will lead us. (Notice, also, that unlike
Kantian deontology, which makes what is right independent of good consequences, utilitarianism makes the former a
function of the latter.)

Mill acknowledges that concern about a possible conflict between utility and justice has always been “one of the strongest
obstacles” to the acceptance of utilitarianism. If permanently enslaving a minority could produce overwhelming happiness
for a majority (he was personally opposed to slavery as an unconscionable violation of human liberty), then, given that utility
is the value that trumps all others, why shouldn’t the injustice of slavery be accepted as a (regrettably) necessary means to
a socially desirable end, the former, however unfortunate, being thus justified? Mill thinks that the key to solving this alleged
problem is that of conceptual analysis, that if we properly understand what “utility” and “justice” are all about, we shall be
able to see that no genuine conflict between them is possible. We have already discerned what the former concept means
and now need to elucidate the latter. Mill lays out five dimensions of justice as we use the term: (1) respecting others’ “legal
rights” is considered just, while violating them is unjust; (2) respecting the “moral right” someone has to something is just, while
violating it is unjust; (3) it is considered just to give a person what “he deserves” and unjust to deny it; (4) it is thought unjust to
“break faith” with another, while keeping faith with others is just; and (5) in some circumstances, it is deemed unjust “to
be partial” in one’s judgments and just to be impartial. People commonly associate all of these with justice, and they do
seem to represent legitimate aspects of the virtue. (Interestingly, Mill rejects the idea “of equality” as essential to our
understanding of justice, a stand which would be problematic for Marxists.) As he seeks his own common denominator for
these various dimensions of justice, he observes that justice always goes beyond generic right and wrong to involve what
“some individual person can claim from us as his moral right.” This entails the legitimate sense that anyone who has committed
an injustice deserves to be punished somehow (which connects with Kant). Mill thinks all this boils down to the idea that
justice is a term “for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility,” being
more obligatory “than any others.” But this means that justice, properly understood, is a name for the most important of
“social utilities” (ibid., pp. 296-301, 305, 309, 320-321). Therefore there purportedly cannot be any genuine conflict between
utility and justice. If there ever were circumstances in which slavery were truly useful to humanity, then presumably it would
be just; the reason it is (typically) unjust is that it violates utility. The main goal here is to reduce justice to social utility, in such
a way as to rule out, by definition, any ultimate conflict between the two. Thus, the social role played by our sense of justice
is allegedly that it serves the common good.

Mill’s other great work is On Liberty, which provides us with a connecting link between this utilitarian theory and applications
of it to particular social issues. The problem Mill sets for himself here is where to draw a reasonable line between areas in
which society can rightly proscribe behavior and those in which people should be allowed the freedom to do as they
will. When is it just to interfere with a person’s acting on personal choice? To solve this problem, which is as relevant today as
it was a century and a half ago, he proposes his “one very simple principle” of liberty, which he states in two slightly different
ways: (1) the “self-protection” version holds that people can only legitimately interfere with the freedom of action of others
to protect themselves from them; (2) the “harm” version maintains that force can only be justifiably used against other
members of community to prevent their harming others. It is not acceptable to use power against others to stop them from
hurting only themselves. Mill candidly admits that this principle is reasonably feasible only with regard to mature, responsible
members of civilized societies—not to children or to the insane or even necessarily to primitive peoples who cannot make
informed judgments about their own true good. He decisively renounces any appeal to abstract rights as a basis for this
principle, basing it simply on “utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive
being.” Notice that this presupposes that we can distinguish between other-regarding behavior, which may be justifiably
regulated, and purely self-regarding behavior, which may not be. If that turns out to be a false distinction, then Mill’s theory
may collapse. At any rate, he articulates at least three areas of social life in which people’s liberty should be “absolute and
unqualified”: (a) that of freedom of thought and expression; (b) that of freedom of personal lifestyle; and (c) the freedom to
associate with others of one’s choice, so long as it is for peaceful purposes. He seems confident that utility will always require
that freedom be protected in these areas (ibid., pp. 135-138). In other words, on this liberal utilitarian view, it would always
be unjust for an individual or a social group, in a civilized society, deliberately to interfere with a responsible, rational person’s
actions in any combination of these areas.

Let us now see how Mill applies his utilitarian theory to three problems of justice that are still timely today. First of all, the issue
of punishment is one he considers in Utilitarianism, though his discussion is aimed at considering alternative accounts rather
than conclusively saying what he himself thinks (we might also observe that, in this short passage, he attacks the social
contract theory as a useless fiction) (ibid., pp. 311-313). As a utilitarian, he favors the judicious use of punishment in order to
deter criminal activity. He believes in the utility/justice of self-defense and sees the right to punish as anchored in that. In
1868, as an elected member of Parliament, he made a famous speech in the House of Commons supporting capital
punishment on utilitarian grounds. Although it is clear that he would like to be able to support a bill for its abolition, the lawful
order of society, a necessary condition of societal well-being, requires this means of deterring the most heinous crimes, such
as aggravated murder. He even thinks it a quicker, more humane punishment than incarcerating someone behind bars for
the rest of his life. Mill does worry about the possibility of executing an innocent person, but he thinks a carefully managed
legal system can render this danger “extremely rare” (“Punishment,” pp. 266-272). Thus his utilitarian theory provides him with
a basis for supporting capital punishment as morally justifiable. A second famous application of his utilitarian theory of justice
Mill makes is to the issue of equal opportunity for women. In the very first paragraph of The Subjection of Women, Mill maintains
that “the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to
the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced
by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.” So he does
not call for the preferential treatment of “affirmative action” but only for equal opportunity. Unlike contemporary feminists,
he does not appeal to women’s human rights as his rationale, but only to the maximization of “human happiness” and the
liberty “that makes life valuable” (Subjection, pp. 1, 26, 101). Here, again, we have an issue of social justice to which his
utilitarian theory is applied, generating liberal conclusions. Our third issue of application is that of international non-
intervention. Mill’s general principle here is that using force against others is prima facie unjust. Although defensive wars can
be justifiable, aggressive ones are not. It can be justifiable to go to war without being attacked or directly threatened with
an attack, for example, to help civilize a barbarian society, which, as such, allegedly has no rights. It can be justifiable to
save a subjected population from the oppression of a despotic government (“Non-Intervention,” pp. 376-383). All of this is
presumably a function of utilitarian welfare. Once more, a still timely moral issue has been addressed using the utilitarian
theory of justice.

These applications all plausibly utilize the values and reasoning of utilitarianism, which, by its very nature, must be
consequentialist. From that perspective, the deterrence approach to punishment, including capital punishment, seems
appropriate, as do Mill’s call for equal opportunity for women and his measured position on international
interventionism. Surely, the premium he places on human happiness is admirable, as is his universal perspective, which views
all humans as counting. The problem is in his assumptions that all values are relative to consequences, that human happiness
is the ultimate good, and that this reduces to the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain. The upshot of this
position is that, in principle, nothing can be categorically forbidden, that, given sufficiently desirable ends, any means
necessary to achieve them can be justified. If we really believe that there can be no genuine conflict between justice and
utility because the former is merely the most important part of the latter, then the rules of justice are reducible to calculations
regarding what is generally conducive to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people—mere inductive
generalizations which must permit of exceptions; at least Mill’s ambiguity leaves him open to this interpretation. There would
seem to be a tension in Mill’s thought: on the one hand, he wants to respect the liberty of all (civilized) responsible persons
as rational agents; but, on the other hand, his commitment to utilitarianism would seem to subordinate that respect to the
greatest good for the greatest number of people, allowing for the possibility of sacrificing the interests of the few to those of
the many.

5. Contemporary Philosophers
From its founding, American political thought had an enduring focus on justice. The Preamble to the American Constitution
says that one of its primary goals is to “establish justice.” Founding father James Madison, in 1788, wrote in The Federalist
Papers that justice should be the goal of all government and of all civil society, that people are willing to risk even liberty in its
pursuit. American schoolchildren are made to memorize and recite a Pledge of Allegiance that ends with the words “with
liberty and justice for all.” So justice is an abiding American ideal. We shall now consider how one of America’s greatest
philosophers, John Rawls, addresses this ideal. We should notice how he places a greater emphasis on equality than do most
of his European predecessors—perhaps reflecting the conviction of the American Declaration of Independence that “all men
are created equal.” (This greater emphasis may reflect the influence of Marx, whom he occasionally mentions.) After
considering the formidable contributions of Rawls to justice theory and some of its applications, we shall conclude this survey
with a brief treatment of several post-Rawlsian alternatives. A key focus that will distinguish this section from previous ones is
the effort to achieve a conception of justice that strikes a reasonable balance between liberty and equality.

a. Rawls
Rawls burst into prominence in 1958 with the publication of his game-changing paper, “Justice as Fairness.” Though it was
not his first important publication, it revived the social contract theory that had been languishing in the wake of Hume’s
critique and its denigration by utilitarians and pragmatists, though it was a Kantian version of it that Rawls advocated. This
led to a greatly developed book version, A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, arguably the most important book of
American philosophy published in the second half of the last century. Rawls makes it clear that his theory, which he calls
“justice as fairness,” assumes a Kantian view of persons as “free and equal,” morally autonomous, rational agents, who are
not necessarily egoists. He also makes it clear early on that he means to present his theory as a preferable alternative to that
of utilitarians. He asks us to imagine persons in a hypothetical “initial situation” which he calls “the original position”
(corresponding to the “state of nature” or “natural condition” of Hobbes, but clearly not presented as any sort of historical or
pre-historical fact). This is strikingly characterized by what Rawls calls “the veil of ignorance,” a device designed to minimize
the influence of selfish bias in attempting to determine what would be just. If you must decide on what sort of society you
could commit yourself to accepting as a permanent member and were not allowed to factor in specific knowledge about
yourself—such as your gender, race, ethnic identity, level of intelligence, physical strength, quickness and stamina, and so
forth—then you would presumably exercise the rational choice to make the society as fair for everyone as possible, lest you
find yourself at the bottom of that society for the rest of your life. In such a “purely hypothetical” situation, Rawls believes that
we would rationally adopt two basic principles of justice for our society: “the first requires equality in the assignment of basic
rights and duties, while the second holds that social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and
authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged
members of society.” Here we see Rawls conceiving of justice, the primary social virtue, as requiring equal basic liberties for
all citizens and a presumption of equality even regarding socio-economic goods. He emphasizes the point that these
principles rule out as unjust the utilitarian justification of disadvantages for some on account of greater advantages for others,
since that would be rationally unacceptable to one operating under the veil of ignorance. Like Kant, Rawls is opposed to
the teleological or consequentialist gambit of defining the right (including the just) in terms of “maximizing the good”; he
rather, like Kant, the deontologist, is committed to a “priority of the right over the good.” Justice is not reducible to utility or
pragmatic desirability. We should notice that the first principle of justice, which requires maximum equality of rights and duties
for all members of society, is prior in “serial or lexical order” to the second, which specifies how socio-economic inequalities
can be justified (Theory, pp. 12-26, 31, 42-43). Again, this is anti-utilitarian, in that no increase in socio-economic benefits for
anyone can ever justify anything less than maximum equality of rights and duties for all. Thus, for example, if enslaving a few
members of society generated vastly more benefits for the majority than liabilities for them, such a bargain would be
categorically ruled out as unjust.

Rawls proceeds to develop his articulation of these two principles of justice more carefully. He reformulates the first one in
terms of maximum equal liberty, writing that “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty
compatible with a similar liberty for others.” The basic liberties intended concern such civil rights as are protected in our
Constitution—free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, the right to private property, the rights to vote and
hold public office, freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure, etc. The lexical priority of this first principle requires that it be
categorical in that the only justification for limiting any basic liberties would be to enhance other basic liberties; for example,
it might be just to limit free access of the press to a sensational legal proceeding in order to protect the right of the accused
to a fair trial. Rawls restates his second principle to maintain that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so
that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open
to all.” Thus socio-economic inequalities can be justified, but only if both conditions are met. The first condition (a) is “the
difference principle” and takes seriously the idea that every socio-economic difference separating one member of society
from others must be beneficial to all, including the person ranked lowest. The second condition is one of “fair equality of
opportunity,” in that socio-economic advantages must be connected to positions to which all members of society could
have access. For example, the office of the presidency has attached to it greater social prestige and income than is
available to most of us. Is that just? It can be, assuming that all of us, as citizens, could achieve that office with its
compensations and that even those of us at or near the bottom of the socio-economic scale benefit from intelligent, talented
people accepting the awesome responsibilities of that office. Just as the first principle must be lexically prior to the second,
Rawls also maintains that “fair opportunity is prior to the difference principle.” Thus, if we have to choose between equal
opportunity for all and socio-economically benefiting “the least advantaged” members of society, the former has priority
over the latter. Most of us today might be readily sympathetic to the first principle and the equal opportunity condition, while
finding the difference principle to be objectionably egalitarian, to the point of threatening incentives to contribute more than
is required. Rawls does consider a “mixed conception” of justice that most of us would regard as more attractive “arising
when the principle of average utility constrained by a certain social minimum is substituted for the difference principle,
everything else remaining unchanged.” But there would be a problem of fairly agreeing on that acceptable social minimum,
and it would change with shifting contingent circumstances. It is curious that his own theory of “justice as fairness” gets
attacked by socialists such as Nielsen (whom we shall consider) for sacrificing equality for the sake of liberty and by libertarians
such as Nozick (whom we shall also consider) for giving up too much liberty for the sake of equality. Rawls briefly suggests
that his theory of justice as fairness might be applied to international relations, in general, and to just war theory, in particular
(ibid., pp. 60-65, 75, 83, 302-303, 316, 378).

Rawls applies his theory of justice to the domestic issue of civil disobedience. No society is perfectly just. A generally or “nearly
just society” can have unjust laws, in which case its citizens may or may not have a duty to comply with them, depending on
how severely unjust they are. If the severity of the injustice is not great, then respect for democratic majority rule might morally
dictate compliance. Otherwise, citizens can feel a moral obligation to engage in civil disobedience, which Rawls defines as
“a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in
the law or policies of the government.” Certain conditions must be met in order that an act of civil disobedience be
justified: (1) it should normally address violations of equal civil liberties (the first principle of justice) and/or of “fair equality of
opportunity” (the second part of the second principle), with violations of the difference principle (the first part of the second
principle) being murkier and, thus, harder to justify; (2) the act of civil disobedience should come only after appeals to the
political majority have been reasonably tried and failed; (3) it must seem likely to accomplish more good than harm for the
social order. Yet, even if all three of these conditions seem to be met and the disobedient action seems right, there remains
the practical question of whether it would be “wise or prudent,” under the circumstances, to engage in the act of civil
disobedience. Ultimately, every individual must decide for himself or herself whether such action is morally and prudentially
justifiable or not as reasonably and responsibly as possible. The acts of civil disobedience of Martin Luther King (to whom
Rawls refers in a footnote) seem to have met all the conditions, to have been done in the name of justice, and to have been
morally justified (ibid., pp. 350-357, 363-367, 372-376, 389-390, 364n).

Rawls’s second book was Political Liberalism. Here he works out how a just political conception might develop a workable
“overlapping consensus” despite the challenges to social union posed by a pluralism of “reasonable comprehensive
doctrines.” This, of course, calls for some explanation. A just society must protect basic liberties equally for all of its members,
including freedom of thought and its necessary condition, freedom of expression. But, in a free society that protects these
basic liberties, a pluralism of views and values is likely to develop, such that people can seriously disagree about matters they
hold dear. They will develop their own “comprehensive doctrines,” or systems of beliefs that may govern all significant aspects
of their lives. These may be religious (like Christianity) or philosophical (like Kantianism) or moral (like utilitarian). Yet a variety
of potentially conflicting comprehensive doctrines may be such that all are reasonable. In such a case, social unity requires
respect for and tolerance of other sets of beliefs. It would be unjust deliberately to suppress reasonable comprehensive
doctrines merely because they are different from our own. The problem of political liberalism nowadays is how we can
establish “a stable and just society whose free and equal citizens are deeply divided by conflicting and even
incommensurable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines.” What is needed is a shared “political conception of justice”
that is neutral regarding competing comprehensive doctrines. This could allow for “an overlapping consensus of reasonable
comprehensive doctrines,” such that tolerance and mutual respect are operative even among those committed to
incompatible views and values, so long as they are reasonable (Liberalism, pp. 291-292, 340-342, 145, xviii, 13, 152n., 59-60,
133, 154-155, 144, 134). Thus, for example, a Christian Kantian and an atheistic utilitarian, while sincerely disagreeing on many
ethical principles, philosophical ideas, and religious beliefs, can unite in mutually accepting, for instance, the American
Constitution as properly binding on all of us equally. This agreement will enable them mutually to participate in social
cooperation, the terms of which are fair and reciprocal and which can contribute to the reasonable good of the entire
society.

Near the end of his life, Rawls published The Law of Peoples, in which he tried to apply his theory of justice to international
relations. Given that not all societies act justly and that societies have a right to defend themselves against aggressive violent
force, there can be a right to go to war (jus ad bellum). Yet even then, not all is fair in war, and rules of just warfare (jus in
bello) should be observed: (1) the goal must be a “just and lasting peace”; (2) it must be waged in defense of freedom and
security from aggression; (3) reasonable attempts must be made not to attack innocent non-combatants; (4) the human
rights of enemies (for example, against being tortured) must be respected; (5) attempts should be made to establish peaceful
relations; and (6) practical tactics must always remain within the parameters of moral principles. After hostilities have ceased,
just conquerors must treat their conquered former enemies with respect—not, for example, enslaving them or denying them
civil liberties. Rawls adds a very controversial “supreme emergency exemption” in relation to the third rule—when a relatively
just society’s very survival is in desperate peril, its attacking enemy civilian populations, as by bombing cities, can be
justifiable. More generally, Rawls applies his theory of justice to international relations, generating eight rules regarding how
the people of other societies must be treated. While we do not have time to explore them all here, the last one is sufficiently
provocative to be worth our considering: “Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions
that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.” This, of course, goes beyond not exploiting, cheating,
manipulating, deceiving, and interfering with others to a positive duty of trying to help them, at the cost of time, money, and
other resources. Justice demands that we try to assist what Rawls calls “burdened societies,” so that doing so is not morally
supererogatory. What is most interesting here is what Rawls refuses to say. While different peoples, internationally speaking,
might be imagined in an original position under the veil of ignorance, and Rawls would favor encouraging equal liberties and
opportunities for all, he refuses to apply the difference principle globally in such a way as to indicate that justice requires a
massive redistribution of wealth from richer to poorer societies (Peoples, pp. 94-96, 98-99, 37, 106, 114-117).

From a critical perspective, Rawls’s theory of civil disobedience is excellent, as are his theory of political liberalism and his
version of the just war theory, except for that “supreme emergency exemption,” which uncharacteristically tries to make right
a function of teleological good. His views on international aid seem so well worked out that, ironically, they call into question
part of his general theory of justice itself. It does not seem plausible that the difference principle should apply intrasocietally
but not internationally. The problem may be with the difference principle itself. It is not at all clear that rational agents in a
hypothetical original position would adopt such an egalitarian principle. The veil of ignorance leading to this controversial
principle can itself be questioned as artificial and unrealistic; one might object that, far from being methodologically neutral,
it sets up a bias (towards, for example, being risk-aversive) that renders Rawls’s own favored principles of justice almost a
foregone conclusion. Indeed, the “mixed conception” that Rawls himself considers and rejects seems more plausible and
more universally applicable—keeping the first principle and the second part of the second but replacing the difference
principle with one of average utility, constrained by some social minimum, adjustable with changing circumstances. Thus we
could satisfactorily specify the requirements of an essentially Kantian conception of justice, as requiring respect for the dignity
of all persons as free and equal, rational moral agents. While less egalitarian than what Rawls offers, it might prove an
attractive alternative. To what extent should liberty be constrained by equality in a just society? This is a central issue that
divides him from many post-Rawlsians, to a few of whom we now briefly turn.
b. Post-Rawls
Rawls’s monumental work on justice theory revitalized political philosophy in the United States and other English-speaking
countries. In this final subsection, we shall briefly survey some of the most important recent attempts to provide preferable
alternatives to Rawls’s conception of justice. They will represent six different approaches. We shall consider, in succession,
(1) the libertarian approach of Robert Nozick, (2) the socialistic one of Kai Nielsen, (3) the communitarian one of Michael
Sandel, (4) the globalist one of Thomas Pogge, (5) the feminist one of Martha Nussbaum, and (6) the rights-based one of
Michael Boylan. As this is merely a quick survey, we shall not delve much into the details of their theories (limiting ourselves to
a single work by each) or explore their applications or do much in the way of a critique of them. But the point will be to get
a sense of several recent approaches to developing