Human Development
Justice
Description:
Thomas Aquinas defined justice as the order of reason with regard to actions affecting others and present in the will. It involves commitment to putting right what is seen not to be right in relationships when openness and trust have been denied and enmity intensified.Justice demands that the will should habitually be set towards impartiality. It requires the other three virtues to be realized effectively: discernment of the right means for the good to which justice disposes to arise (prudence); ordering of the passions so that the good may be pursued single-mindedly (temperance); and steadfastness to pursue the good even when the self is threatened (fortitude). As with all the virtues, justice should be shaped and directed by charity.
Justice is, however, sometimes contrasted with charity or love. Love is said to apply for relations between an individual and his neighbour, in sacrificial regard for his wellbeing (personal bonds), while justice applies in relations with third parties (impersonal bonds), although these are not exclusive and judgement takes a secondary role in the first case as love does in the second. Justice is called into play in finite, sinful conditions where self-interested motives and perspectives dominate, love where conflict and inordinate self-assertion are absent. Using God's love as a paradigm, justice as it simply considers merit is in opposition to love for one's neighbour regardless of merit, unconditional and gracious. Love may demand more but never demands less than justice.
Another concept of justice (John Rawls) is of the rights and duties, and of benefits of social cooperation, of each individual as a free and equal participant in political society and following a life plan in accordance with a particular conception of the good (egalitarianism). It must apply in circumstances where there may be a shortage of resources and disagreement as to what kind of life constitutes human fulfilment. Principles of justice have then to be agreed with respect to political and economic institutions by persons who agree together as free and equal, having abstracted from their particular life plans. This procedure allows an egalitarian conception of justice to emerge, guaranteeing equality of liberty and opportunity and allowing social and economic inequalities to work for the benefit of the least advantaged.
In contrast to this is the utilitarian concept of justice, where maximum average desire-satisfaction or happiness is sought in society as opposed to respect for each individual's separate life plan. Other approaches include libertarianism, where priority is given to protecting freely consented (and thus uncoerced) arrangements; and socialism, where social and material equality are emphasized. Different systems are criticized as: interference with private freedom of choice (socialism); undermining of freedom by lack of attention to human needs (libertarianism); dominating the individual through accumulated political and economic power in private hands (libertarianism). These criticisms have also been in some sense levelled at egalitarianism.
Problems that arise in any system are the compromises necessary in balancing the individual's life prospects against maximizing happiness overall; in determining how much governmental intrusion is warranted into private engagements to ensure state powers in providing its citizens with basic human requirements, and how much human needs have a special priority so as to permit public intervention when private initiatives fail; and in deciding the balance between human needs and human preferences.
Problems also arise for the individual when social and political justice are contrasted with justice as a virtue; when individual behaviour is seen in the light of God's justice and of God's love; when theological and non-theological concepts of social justice are compared.
Context:
One of the four cardinal or principal virtues recognized by Plato in the Republic and featuring prominently in mediaeval Christianity.< Broader:
Virtue