Justice and the Way We (Humans) Are
Both sides of our natural dichotomy must be fully acknowledged.
We humans are separate and independent yet social beings: we live together in groups. We have applied different monikers to such groups: (in the language we call English) societies, communities, sociopolitical units. The choice of terminology is irrelevant to present purposes. It is supremely relevant that the horns of that dichotomy have impaled all Modern attempts at defining justice — from libertarianism to socialism.
It is important to keep in mind that groups of hunter/gatherers, which all humans were for at least 98% of human history (as attested by scientists), are still such a group. As a species, we humans have always been and presumably always will be separate and independent beings who live together in groups. A the same time, that we are separate and independent beings who live together in groups is not contradicted by any part of the Abrahamic religious tradition — or any other one of which I am aware.
Living separate lives together in groups imposes upon us a need for governance. Determining how we should approach governance, of ourselves as individuals and society as a whole, is the issue of justice in its broadest sense.
In the Modern era, resolving our fundamental human dilemma in an approach to justice goes back to Thomas Hobbes (England, 1588 –1679). The ancient Greeks and others who have sought to figure out formally what justice must be have taken the group to be the prime given. (A “group” in that sense could also be a ‘nation’ as in a group of people sharing a specific culture but not a singular political unit, such as the very ancient Hebrews.) Philosophers(/prophets) back in the day did ruminate about the ideal form of governance, but the point is that the Modern approach to justice interjected into the discussion of that concept the coequal status of the separate, independent individual.
To get at a proper approach to governance Hobbes invoked what he called a “State of Nature” (Leviathan: 1651). In it people do not live in groups of any kind, but as isolated individuals. He famously characterized the life of such beings as being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
For Hobbes, any time such individuals encountered one another the result would be animal-like behavior in which the first order of business would be establishing dominance — even if it took a fight to the death to decide the issue. Once that was settled, the stronger would take whatever he wanted from the weaker. Life would be, famously, “a war of all against all.”
For Hobbes, that is why people got together in groups. In the group everyone would be subject to the absolute power that governed it (which would not necessarily be an individual, but could be a council or such). The point is that a single entity with ultimate power over all individuals would put an end to the war of all against all.
For Hobbes the group was still the paramount entity. Still, the status of people as inherently separate, independent beings was present.
Next came John Locke (England, 1632–1704). He had a different version of a “Sate of Nature” (Two Treatises of Government: 1689). People still lived as isolated individuals, but things were not as bleak as Hobbes saw them. People were as inclined to engage in trade as to engage in violence against one another. Even so, there was nothing to prevent violence, meaning people had to be always ready to defend their persons and property against any comers.
So, again, people entered into groups. For Locke, though, proper governance required that people retain as much as possible the liberty people would enjoy as isolated individuals. In his account of justice the status of people as separate, independent beings was actually superior to the status of the group, in that it informed the just governance of the group. The onus was on the group to maximize individuals’ status as separate and independent beings to the greatest extent possible.
Any fool, including the author of this essay, can see how the ideologies that have developed in modernity relate to that dichotomy — perhaps combined with a sense of ‘human nature’ as the basic motivator of individuals’ conduct. However, any reference to a universal “human nature” that purports to assert that people are intrinsically driven to one basic kind of behavior or another is really just a matter of belief: perfectly valid for whoever believes it, but irrelevant for anyone who does not. For any such assertion there are just too many examples of contrary behavior for it to be any more than a belief, no matter how many people might share it. Therefore, any reference to “human nature” in that sense to inform the governance of society is actually contrary to achieving justice; it is a matter of some people imposing a belief on others in determining how it will be governed.
On the other hand, the observation that we exist as separate and independent yet social beings is a fact of material existence. Upholding it is necessary for actually achieving justice.
Those Modern ideologies include a continuum that runs from socialism to individualism as well as one that runs from maximizing self-government to totalitarianism. Those are two different continuums that can be combined in different formulations. [While it is difficult to picture a totalitarian form of individualism, the need to constrain the liberty that it implies provides a pathway for some people to use the power of government to impose their idea of how people should live their lives on all members of a group while yet claiming to pursue the greatest possible liberty for all — such as constraints following from a religious perspective that might make any departure from a ‘morally proper’ life, such as engaging in homosexual acts, gambling, drinking, or even dancing, illegal.]
The fact is that no ideology gives equal credence to both sides of our inherent human dichotomy. On the face of it, any approach to governance that does not give equal credence to both sides of that dichotomy is intrinsically inferior as an idea of justice to one that does accomplish that conceptual feat.
It so happens that ‘real justice’ (as I have come to call the account of justice that I have developed) does precisely that.
That account of justice recognizes our sociality, our propensity to live together in groups, as being as much a part of our nature as our existence as separate and independent beings is — as much, but not more. It is ludicrous to seek to determine how society should be governed by starting with humans living as isolated, non-social individuals. Justice cannot, however, consist of denying our existence as separate and independent beings, as though we were nothing but members of a group, like bees or ants. Every individual human being must be respected as such by all other members of the group and the group as a whole. It is obvious that being a member of a group limits our freedom to act at all times purely on the basis of our own wants. At the same time, though, it is equally obvious that it is only by being a member of a group that we have anything at all: most of us could not even survive physically for more than a few days as an isolated human being, and the life of those who could was aptly described by Hobbes. Mere physical survival is not what human life is; rather, it is life enriched by sharing it with other human beings in organized groups. The more just the governance of the group is, the happier its members are.