Justice Requires an Undeniable Truth
which is why that truth really cannot be an immaterial one
The most famous sentence in the Declaration of Independence penned by Thomas Jefferson and them begins with, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” (It is interesting that “truths” is not capitalized, especially given the quirky capitalization in that document.) It goes on to reference being “created equal” and having “certain unalienable Rights.”
Those truths are obviously of an immaterial kind. They are not observations within material existence.
Just as obviously, those truths are not self-evident, except for people who happen to accept them as truths. Plenty of people do not/never have.
We humans consist of two components, a material self and an immaterial aspect. Those two merge in the brain/mind amalgam. We can consciously think about matters of an immaterial kind. Matters of an immaterial kind can interpose themselves in our conscious thought.
There are immaterial truths. Immaterial truths are true for whoever believes them. Note that I do not write ‘chooses to believe them’. It is possible for people to choose to accept an immaterial truth as valid. I submit that it is possible to accept an immaterial truth unconsciously. People can simply become aware of an immaterial truth.
In any event, every immaterial truth is a unit of knowledge. Such knowledge can be sacral or secular.
Material truths refer to knowledge pertaining to material existence. Such knowledge can be of a specialized kind, requiring education/training and/or instruments/equipment that are outside the experience of people without them. There is material knowledge that is shared by all people, however, is common to the experience of material existence of all people.
In ancient times people did not think that justice required universality. It did not have to apply to all people. It only applied the people of the particular group. For anyone else to be included in the obligations or the protections of justice was a matter to be decided as such matters arose.
The greatest advance in justice in Modern times was the understanding that justice had to be universal to be valid. Any idea of justice that is not universal is a matter of some imposing their idea of justice on others, in itself an injustice. [Further, it was realized that justice had to address not only people’s direct interactions, but the societal processes common to human societies. At the time of the Declaration the political process was fully recognized as a societal process, but the economy (the process of producing/acquiring goods/services) was only starting to be viewed as a societal process in its own right.]
The time has come for a further advance in our understanding of justice. We can now understand that any truth that would serve as the starting point for justice must be undeniably true. That leaves out any immaterial truth, whether sacral or secular.
Any immaterial truth could be universal. There definitely is no limit on how many people might share an immaterial truth. Many a war has been fought in the name of the universality of some immaterial truth — sacral/theological or secular/ideological.
Yet, no immaterial truth can be undeniable. Any such truth, no matter how many people accept it, can be coherently denied by anyone.
Only a material truth, one pertaining to material reality, can be undeniably true. One such truth, one that leads directly to an ethic of justice, is this: human beings have no choice but to effect choices, i.e., choose among perceived alternatives and take action to bring that choice to fruition. That makes choosing integral to being human, which makes respecting the capacity of other people to choose whenever any choice is being effected by any person(s) the ethic of justice.
It is the case that there could be more than one material truth that could serve as a starting point for an approach to justice. Unlike the case with immaterial truths, if there were more than one approach to justice starting with a material truth people could rationally choose one for their nation.
For more about the approach to justice starting with the observation that people have no choice but to effect choices: “Can’t Get Any Simpler” (a “3 min read” here in Medium with links to several articles about this approach to justice — with nothing I publish here behind the paywall)