Correcting an Inaccuracy
in the account of justice that I have developed
Forty years ago I asked myself whether democracy is a just political process. Answering that question requires knowing what justice is.
Along the way I learned that justice has to be universal. Any idea or belief as to what justice is that is not universal cannot really be just, because in the end it must be imposed on people who can validly reject it. So either one must accept that a sufficient universality is possible, or one must abandon all hope of achieving actual justice. There can be no such thing as an approach to justice that is itself just that is not universal.
There is a position that people have taken that smaller groups can share what is for them a universal ethic. That does, however, make accepting that ethic a prerequisite for being a member of the group, a citizen of the community. That would mean expelling from the group any who rejected its ethic — without concern for the outcomes for those who were banished.
Along the way, I happened upon the observation that we human beings have no choice but to effect choices (which I got from Warren J. Samuels). That makes choosing integral to being human. That means that to fail to respect the capacity of other people to choose for themselves, beginning with choosing whether/how/to what extent to be involved whenever any choice is being effected, is to deny their status as fellow human beings. Such behavior cannot be justified without claiming some ‘knowledge’ that is outside of material existence, i.e., a matter of personal belief — which is always perfectly valid for oneself, but never necessarily valid for anyone else. To act on the basis of such knowledge is to privilege personal, radically subjective knowledge over the commonly available knowledge that choosing for ourselves is integral to being human. Such conduct can therefore be called ‘unjust’. (Inevitable cases in which one person can legitimately override another person’s capacity to choose, such as parent/child, boss/subordinate, teacher/student, etc., are easily taken into account.)
So far, so good.
The inaccuracy, I have discovered, is in the terminology I have been using to convey a summation of those findings. I have been relating that ‘justice is therefore mutual respect (for the capacity of one another to choose) in effecting choices’. Even that is O.K.
I have, however, routinely referred to ‘mutual respect in effecting choices’ as ‘the ethic of justice’. That is where the inaccuracy has lain. More accurately, the ethic of justice is ‘respect the capacity of other people to choose for themselves’ (beginning with . . .). That makes ‘mutual respect in effecting choices’ the predicate of justice.
I have routinely related that ‘justice is present when people are respecting the capacity of one another to choose for themselves’. That is another way of saying that mutual respect in effecting choices is the predicate of justice. Explicitly recognizing that mutual respect in effecting choices is the predicate of justice, not the ethic of justice, brings more accuracy to this account of justice.
So, in ‘real justice’, as I have come to call this account of justice, the domain of justice, i.e., the realm within which the ethic of justice applies, is actions involving any other person(s) that are undertaken to effect any choice; the ethic of justice is respecting the capacity of all other people involved in any way when effecting any choice to choose for themselves; and the predicate of justice is mutual respect in effecting choices. That might appear to be a paralyzingly onerous ethical burden, but at a minimum it merely requires refraining from killing, harming, coercing, stealing, or manipulating (which includes lying, cheating, etc.) in our relations with other people in getting what we want. Anyone not doing any of those things in effecting any choice (i.e., choosing among perceived alternatives and taking action to bring that choice to fruition) is being just enough.