About My Style
concerning my output in justice and its implications
I know from bitter experience that most people are loath to even try to accept my intellectual output concerning justice and its implications for individuals, the political process, and the economy. It seems they are put off by two things: first, the audaciousness of the claims, but even more my ‘lecturing’ (if not to say ‘hectoring’) style.
Both are a function of the strictly rational nature of my work. Since all of it is strictly rational, involving no beliefs, I simply state what is there. To construct arguments for the validity of any of it would be like arguing for the validity of ‘two atoms of hydrogen combined with one atom of oxygen yields one molecule of water’. Anybody who can read English can verify for oneself the validity of all of it.
People are used to claims about justice being based on beliefs (whether they are acknowledged as such or not). The people making the claims are compelled to make up arguments to explain, without saying so outright, why that belief is superior to any other relevant belief.
Also, I am addressing primarily Liberalism. That is the meta-ideology that has spawned the political ideologies of libertarianism, conservatism, liberalism, and democratic (non-Marxist) socialism. In Liberalism a belief in human equality and a belief in a Right to liberty are the ‘twin pillars of justice for a just society’. Yet, those two values have very different implications for the economy.
Almost everyone accepts that it is pointless to argue whether one belief is superior to another. Moreover, in Liberal societies equality and liberty are mostly compatible, if not complementary. Equality provides for ‘an equal liberty for all’. Equality governs the democratic political process, but it cannot exist without liberty and liberty cannot exist without democracy. When it comes to the economy, however, common ground seems to vanish.
So in Liberal societies most discussion of ‘justice’ is limited to arguing why equality or liberty should be the dominant value where the economy is concerned. Both sides claim that the value they prefer would provide superior economic outcomes for society. Actually, both sides claim the same economic goals, but insist that the one value or the other will serve to accomplish them better — absent interference from the other side. The implications of real justice for the economy yield outcomes that neither side could claim with so much as a shred of intellectual honesty.
While the outcomes for society that would follow from governing society using real justice (as I have come to call the approach to justice I have developed) are astonishing, the ethic itself does not depend on those outcomes for its acceptance. Rather, the ethic of real justice has its own validity within material existence (hence my moniker for it). Conversely, the economic paradigm that follows from real justice can stand alone as a proposal for the economy, without any reference to justice.
The ethic of real justice follows from the observation that human beings have no choice but to effect choices (i.e., choose among perceived alternatives and take action to bring that choice to fruition) [which I got from Warren J. Samuels, via Dr. Boadu at Atlanta University]. That is why it involves no belief. It is not that rationality is inherently superior to belief as a form of knowledge, it is that rationality offers a commonality that beliefs never have. Commonality is necessary for justice.
As a technical matter within philosophy that observation must be defended, but as a practical matter all people can verify from their own experience of life, as far as they can see, the validity of it. Its implications for individuals, the political process, and the economy follow from the ethic of real justice as certainly as day follows night.
If I do go from lecturing to hectoring, it is only because I know, as certainly as I know anything, that these ideas offer a way forward for civilization that is way far better than any other option out there — but we are fast running out of time. For any reader interested in learning more about it, there is “Beyond Liberalism” (in Medium).