Justice as a Reckoning Principle of Ethics

In the book of Job, the story of a man who questions the justice of a God who would strip him of all his possessions and children, the Temanite named Eliphaz answered Job's protestations with the story of an apparition who raises the rhetorical question: "Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker?"¹ Among his many replies and continuing protests, Job demands, "But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God."² From the beginning, man has aspired to a sense of justice, divine or otherwise. Only the hindrances of religion in deference to a divine arbiter have limited the ambitions of human society to seek justice by retributing, correcting, and redistributing the fortunes and misfortunes that arise from human interaction. While much good has come of the quest for justice, much evil has also transpired under its name. Justice, it is fair to say, is in the eye of the dispenser.

Is justice a moral right or a moral good? Or is justice simply an assurance that a society lives up to its ethical ideals, whatever its rights and goods? Is justice an ideal to strive for?

These questions are not trivial or merely semantic. Societies of law and order are built on and governed by political theories and institutions grounded in moral philosophy. Ethical theories which hold justice as an ideal to be pursued must labor to define justice in terms that are pursuable. A failure in this respect leaves the interpretation open to seizure; a society of law and order degenerates into a society of men and chaos.

To gain some insight into these questions, an examination of two influential philosophers, Plato and John Rawls, has promise. While the ethical theory of Plato is not explicitly such and the ethical theory of Rawls is admittedly partial, both hold a special, preeminent role for justice in their schemes. Each has a theory of justice which is not quite part of a larger ethical theory but rather substitutes for one. Directing our attention to them will provide us with a firmer understanding for how justice plays a role in ethical theories, given the centrality which these theories in particular ascribe to it. Comparing their approaches, moreover, will illuminate how justice as an ethical principle may be misplaced.

In this essay I intend to show that the use of justice as a formative ethical principle is precarious and ultimately misguided, and that justice is more properly used as what might be called a reckoning principle in ethical theories. This will be done by considering the ethical theories of both Plato and Rawls and comparing the ways in which they attempt to elevate justice as the fundamental principle of their theories, and especially the ways in which they see justice as formative. The intent of this essay is not to examine the features or merits of the moral philosophies of Plato and Rawls, but to use them to determine if moral philosophies may find a place for justice that Plato and Rawls do not.

Most ethical theories can be analyzed from the perspective that there are two underlying questions that must be answered: "What is good?" and "What is right?" The answer to one provides a theory of value, the other a theory of conduct. It is important to understand how ethical theories answer these questions. But perhaps more important is the order or the primacy which is given to one question over the other. Is one more important than the other? Does the answer to one influence or preclude the answer to the other? In what sequence are these to be answered? Questions such as these can not easily be avoided by ethical theorists, even those who do not frame their theories in terms of "good" or "right," as many do not. From a comparative standpoint, looking at ethical theories in this way is simply using a common frame of reference. In this essay, copious use of this method will enable us to view the theories of Plato and Rawls in their largest and most abstract sense.

The next two sections examine the respective ethical philosophies of Plato and Rawls from the perspective of the essay's underlying question. This is followed by the main argument of the essay which offers an alternative place for justice. A final section concludes by arriving at a final summation of the essay's findings.

Before discussing Plato's theory of justice, it is important to understand the evolutionary context in which Plato's philosophy inserts itself. Prior to Plato, moral philosophy simply did not exist. While the Sophists of the Greek world entertained many questions "about the very idea of moral conduct, about what morality is and why it should exist,"³ and while some of these thinkers (and of course Socrates) may have preceded Plato chronologically, they only found their first written formulation in Plato's dialogues. Plato was the first to write extensively about the subject. Thus, it is understandable that Plato's dialogues lack a certain self-awareness of moral and ethical philosophy as a separate and nascent discipline. Plato's quest in The Republic for a conception of justice can just as easily be seen as an epistemological quest or a quest of political philosophy, as one of ethics. Due to his position as a pioneer, Plato does not see these to be differing channels of philosophical inquiry, but instead fluidly moves from one to the other or commands the attention of all in grand fashion.

Another critical blind spot⁴ is the absence of a distinct sense of right in Plato's moral philosophy. Plato is only concerned with the good; it can only be assumed that a sense of right is latently present in his conception of the good. This is not to put words in his mouth or to distort his true meaning. It simply asserts that Plato must have a sense of what is morally correct and proper, whatever terms his arguments use. To a large extent, the deficiency of distinct notions of right and good leads Plato (like utilitarians) to philosophize as if those things which are ultimately worthy are things that it is proper to pursue, i.e. that what is good is essentially right.

The overt purpose of the dialogues in The Republic is a quest for the meaning of justice. In order to arrive at a satisfactory conception of justice, Plato⁵ solicits responses to the question: 'What is justice?' This approach is deeply rooted in Plato's theory of knowledge and epistemology. Before we can assert anything else about a subject, we must be able to define it.⁶ Yet it is interesting that Plato does not choose "virtue" or "truth" as the object of definitional discussion. Why is justice the central focus of his concern? Is it because justice is the primary good or right of his social and ethical philosophy? Or is it because it is a useful tool to (credibly) evoke the responses and interest of his dialogue participants and to lead him and them to a satisfactory realization of moral principles? Or is the question of justice secondary to the epistemological question of how knowledge is acquired? Before we can answer these, we must explore Plato's meaning of justice.

Plato's theory of justice is developed by exploring the parallels between the individual and society. "Justice … is the attribute of an individual, but also of a whole city," he claims, adding that "[P]erhaps justice may exist in greater proportions in the greater space, and be easier to discover … [W]e shall begin our inquiry as to its nature in cities, and after that let us continue our inquiry in the individual also, looking for the likeness of the greater in the form of the less."⁷ While on the surface this appears to be merely another exhibition of Plato's love for analogies, the parallel approach is fundamentally a method of abstraction. Plato is imparting his understanding that justice is a concept that may be manifested by the individual and the collective, perhaps by subjects human and otherwise. In short, Plato is asserting that justice is a Form. For Plato, a Form is the essence of an object or concept, its necessary properties, its pure example. In the words of Socrates:

"[W]e set up also a real beauty and a real good, and so on with all the things we before set up as many, and we put each now under one Form, holding that there is but one Form of each, and we call that 'that which each is.' … The first we say are seen but are not thought, while the Forms are thought but are not seen."⁸

Moreover, we can not use an instance or "best example" of justice or even an idea of justice to sufficiently capture the Form of justice. This is because the Forms are objective, and our subjective understanding is cluttered by our limited, worldly perspective which is interpreted by our senses.⁹ Ultimately, justice as a concept is not wholly knowable.

The city-and-individual parallel approach also indicates that Plato gives more weight to justice being a characteristic of the agent rather than a characteristic of acts. Plato does not think along the lines of just or unjust acts but along the lines of just or unjust people and societies. When compared with definitions of justice offered by other dialogue participants in The Republic, one can see that this appears to be a conscious choice rather than mere happenstance: the Simonides definition, offered by Polemarchus, "that to render to every man what is owing is just"¹⁰; the Thrasymarchus definition, "that justice is nothing else than that which is advantageous to the stronger"¹¹; and the Glaucon definition, with some amendments by Adeimantus, that justice is the submission (to law) of our natural desire to do evil, so that we may avoid evil at the hands of another.¹² All of these alternative definitions are act-based rather than agent-based, leading one to the conclusion that Plato very intentionally took an agent-based approach.

Plato arrives at a tentative, admittedly imperfect definition of justice by the classification of justice as one of four prime virtues. These are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.¹³ These virtues he labors to find in the character of a city. Plato divides the city into three classes: guardians (i.e., rulers), auxiliaries (i.e., soldiers and advisors), and money-makers (i.e., merchants, craftsmen, farmers, etc.). Wisdom of the city as a whole is "in virtue of the smallest class and part of itself, and of the knowledge possessed by that, the presiding and ruling part."¹⁴ Courage in a city is "in virtue of a part of itself, in that it has in that part power to preserve throughout the belief as to the things to be feared, which they are and what their nature," so that "courage is a kind of safe-keeping."¹⁵ "Temperance" in a city is "an ordering and a control of certain pleasures and desires, as is declared by the common but mysterious expression that a man is master of himself."¹⁶ And finally, justice in a city is "the possession and practice of what belongs to us and is our own," so that, "when each class, money-makers, auxiliaries, and guardians, attends to what belongs to it, each doing its own work in the city-will be justice, and will make the city just."¹⁷ But this is an incomplete definition, for it only gives us a meaning of justice as it applies to a city. From here, Plato returns to his parallel and looks for the meaning of justice in the individual. Just as the city is divided into three classes, so is the soul of the individual: "The first, that with which the soul reasons, we shall call the rational part; the second, that with which it loves, and hungers, and thirsts, and flutters round the other desires, we shall call the irrational and desiring part, the companion of various indulgences and pleasures,"¹⁸ while the third "is spirit, or that by which we feel indignant"¹⁹ and "which is the natural auxiliary of the rational."²⁰ Thus, the rational part of the soul is analogous to the guardians of the city, the spirited part to the auxiliaries, and the desirous part to the money-makers. As justice in the city is when each of the various classes "attends to what belongs to it," justice in the individual is when the various parts of the soul are attendant to solely their own part:

"The just man does not allow the different principles within him to do other work than their own, nor the distinct classes of his soul to interfere with one another; but in the truest sense he sets his house in order, gaining the mastery over himself; and becoming on good terms with himself through discipline, he joins in harmony those different elements."²¹

By considering first how justice is exhibited in a city, Plato is able to define justice in the individual. The larger significance of this, however, is that Plato has offered a thoroughly abstract notion of justice, one that can be applied to virtually any object or idea. In doing so, he is true to Forms.

Plato's abstract definition of justice further supports the idea that his ethical theory (as surrogated by his theory of justice) is agent-based rather than act-based. A concern for inter-personal relations is conspicuously absent from his definition of justice in the individual. The following statement is striking in this regard: "justice … does not concern a man's management of his own external affairs, but his internal management of his soul, his truest self and his truest possessions."²² This is the most foreign aspect of his definition to the reader. How can one have a definition of the just individual without any evaluation of how that individual treats others? How can this be the foundation for an ethical theory of moral philosophy? After all, is not moral philosophy specifically concerned with how beings interact? How would Plato have us interact with one another?

Plato's moral philosophy may be understood as an internalization of moral principles such that morality is only concerned with virtues, whether in the individual or in society. This form of virtue ethics thinks of "the virtuous agent not as perceiving what is independently right or noble to do, but as having independently admirable motives or other inner states whose very expression in her actions serves to make those actions right or admirable."²³ Plato's preoccupation with the pursuit of education and the conscription of the wisest in society to be its rulers suggests that he believes that the embedding of virtues in people who are receptive to them and the dominance of such people as philosopher-kings are some of the most important ways to promote justice in a society. When Plato has Socrates speaking of raising and educating guardians of the city, he says this:

"Because if to this weighty study and severe discipline we bring men sound of limb and of sound mind, and train them therein, justice herself will find no fault with us, and we shall preserve the city and the constitution; but if we bring men of another stamp, the event will be in all respects the opposite, and we shall swamp philosophy in another flood of ridicule."²⁴

Justice and other virtues are not found by rationalizing what would be just or what would be virtuous, as claimed by deontologists like Kant; rather, they are found in the actions of people who are just and virtuous, however the actions themselves appear.

In order to attain a more complete understanding of Plato's moral philosophy and the role that justice plays in it, we must now turn to Plato's theory of the good. Like anything else, the good is to be understood by Plato as a Form. In The Republic, Plato develops the Form of the good quite thoroughly. We are introduced to the concept by the suggestion that "many think the good is pleasure, and the more enlightened think it is intelligence."²⁵ But the good is not intelligence exactly. For Plato, what we sense in the world is very far from the truth. What we see does not give us knowledge; rather, it gives us what we perceive and believe to be the truth. The good "is king of the intelligible class"²⁶ which encompasses knowledge and understanding; these are contrasted with the visible class which encompasses faith and conjecture.²⁷ Only through the good can we hope to attain knowledge, understanding, and truth. "This, then, which imparts truth to the things that are known and the power of knowing to the knower, you may affirm to be the Form of the good. It is the cause of knowledge and truth, and you may conceive it as being known."²⁸ An analogy completes the conception: "And as in the other world it is right to think light and sight sunlike, but not right to think them the sun, so here it is right to think both knowledge and truth like the good, but not right to think either of them the good. The state or nature of the good must be honoured still more highly."²⁹

At face value, Plato's Form of the good, notwithstanding its highly abstract stylization, seems disappointingly narrow, perhaps too overly preoccupied with truth. Certainly must not there be good (i.e., value) in actions, properties, and traits that are separable from the ideas of knowledge and truth? This definition seems limited to the epistemological good as opposed to the ethical good. Yet disentangling the epistemological from the ethical is absolutely inimical to Plato's philosophy. This division of labor has a cost, one which Plato avoids, of losing integration in philosophic reasoning. For Plato, there is no separate ethical good. That which imparts truth to things that are known and the power of knowing to the knower is all that is good. Plato's ethics is a morality of knowledge-the wicked and the unjust are such because they are ignorant of the virtues which guide the moral and the just. Importantly, this ignorance is not easily removed by instruction. The things of this world which are visible betray men from the understanding of things which are not: people will resist and treat with scorn the good of knowledge and truth if explained within the context of their worldly lives.³⁰ What Plato prescribes is that the guardians "compel the best natures to proceed to that study which we declared … to be the highest, to perceive the good."³¹ He suggests a long and rigorous training of those "best natures" who would be guardians of the city, including study of higher mathematics and dialectic thought. These men, impressed with a lifetime of learning, will necessarily be imbued with virtue, and will then set about teaching virtues to others and to rule society in a moral and just manner.³² In Plato's virtue ethics and agent-based morality, knowledge and truth appear to be the only sensible objects of value.

As already noted, Plato's world is not acquainted in any meaningful sense with a concept of right. In many respects the good and the right are aligned in his moral thinking. Given a standard of value, i.e. the Form of the Good, there appears to be no separate restrictions on actions in pursuit of this goal-there seems to be no distinct sense of what is right. Indeed, "some philosophers would hold that … so-called 'deontic' notions like obligation, right, and wrong [should be] understood as derivative from 'aretaic'³³ notions like goodness, badness, and admirability."³⁴ In this case, notions of right and wrong are illusions in exactly the sense implied by Plato's ethical theory: virtues are manifestations of the good, and no separate space in ethical theory is needed for right acts.

Another possibility is that justice, to which so much of Plato's attention is directed, is what we might consider a notion of right instead of a good. Consider this passage in Book VII of The Republic:

"… [W]hen those who are truly philosophers, either one or more of them, become rulers in a state and despise the present objects of men's ambitions, thinking them worthless and mean; when holding precious the right and the prizes which it gives, and giving the chiefest and most essential place to justice, they serve and foster it, and so set their own city to rights."³⁵

Here, in one of the rare places where Plato uses the language of "right," he ascribes justice to it and reserves to justice "the chiefest and most essential place." It certainly seems possible that in ethical schemes such as Plato's, where morality is agent-based, virtues replace the conventional notion of morally right thinking and right acts. Further, even though Plato diminishes justice to some extent by including it as one of four virtues (along with wisdom, courage, and temperament), it is entirely plausible-given the passage above-that it is the most critical, most fundamental, and most exalted of the four.

Whether justice and virtues in general are good or right in the ethical sense is only significant to the extent to which justice is a formative principle in Plato's moral philosophy. There seems to be little evidence that justice is used as driving force in Plato's ethics. The meaning that Plato offers to us of the Form of justice, to separate and harmonize competing interests, is not determinate of other virtues or even of the good. While justice may be for Plato the most important of the virtues, other virtues do not appear to be derived from it. Instead, justice is the proper arrangement of them.

John Rawls develops an entire social and political theory around the ideal of justice in his aptly titled work A Theory of Justice. Rawls is quite explicit that justice is the foundation principle: "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust."³⁶ Likening justice to truth necessarily places justice at the center of his ethical scheme, regardless of his protestations (examined later) that his is not a complete ethical theory. This quote is also notable in that Rawls does not share in the integrated philosophy of Plato where epistemology and ethics have common ideals.

Rawls claims that the "primacy of justice" is an "intuitive conviction".³⁷ The main contention in social circumstances is that "although a society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests."³⁸ This indicates that his ideal of justice is primarily an ideal of distributive or social justice. From the ideal of justice all other social and ethical principles are derived; the effect is that "[a] set of principles is required for choosing among the various social arrangements"³⁹ which are to divide the spoils of social cooperation.

In order to arrive at a satisfactory set of required principles consistent with justice, Rawls creates a unique form of social contract theory. Persons are to imagine themselves in a hypothetical "original position," whereby their natural assets, abilities, social position, class, and all other personal characteristics which contribute to social advantage are obscured by a "veil of ignorance." From this original position persons would decide on principles of justice which determine how social advantages including political power, wealth, and other "primary goods" are to be distributed in a just society.

Rawls offers two principles that he believes people in the original position would choose. The first is that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all; the second is that social and economic equalities are to be arranged so that they are attached to offices and positions open to all and that they result in compensating benefits for everyone, particularly the least advantaged.⁴⁰ Also, Rawls claims that the principles are "lexically ordered" such that the first principle takes priority over the second.⁴¹ In laying out the principles of justice that are to be chosen in the original position, Rawls makes it clear that he does not intend (or trust) that people are capable of actually imagining themselves in the original position and choosing the principles for themselves (say, by plebiscite or national convention); instead, he creates the concept of the original position to justify principles which he believes would be chosen if such a hypothetical situation would arise and if people were truly conditioned to discard their personal advantages, an impossible goal in practice. Rawls proposes how social institutions are to be established, given the two principles of justice he has surmised. He calls his theory of justice: "justice as fairness."⁴²

The contractarian idea of the original position and the principles of justice which flow from it are grounded in an ethical theory that Rawls largely defines in terms of the right and the good. The good is defined in terms of human rationality and life plans. The definition of the good has three stages: (1) given what a thing is used for, an instance of that thing is a good if and only if it has the properties that it is rational to want in such a thing; (2) given a person's circumstances, abilities, and life plan, an instance of a thing is a good for the person if and only if it has the properties which it is rational for that person to want in such a thing; and (3) that person's life plan or that part of it which is relevant to this instance of the thing, is a plan of life that is rational.⁴³ In short, things are good if they are desired for the advancement of rational life plans. This necessarily means that people will have different conceptions of the good depending on their individually structured life plans. As each person's life plan differs, so does the good for that person; "[t]he rational plan for a person determines his good."⁴⁴ Rawls calls his theory of the good "Goodness as Rationality".⁴⁵

In contrast to his definition of the good, Rawls defines his sense of right in terms of the ideal of justice and the principles which would be chosen by persons in the original position. Further, these principles should be instrumental in creating and supporting a constitution and ensuing legislation so that social institutions can be grounded in a sense of justice:

"Justice as fairness begins with the idea that where common principles are necessary and to everyone's advantage, they are to be worked out from the viewpoint of a suitably defined initial situation of equality in which each person is fairly represented. The principle of participation transfers this notion from the original position to the constitution as the highest-order system of social rules for making rules."⁴⁶

Rawls also provides a concept of right for individuals, based on the ideal of justice; however, the two principles of justice for society as a whole are chosen first and principles for individuals are necessarily dependent on these. "That principles for institutions are chosen first shows the social nature of the virtue of justice, its intimate connection with social practices so often noted by idealists."⁴⁷ Principles for individuals in any case follow the same contractarian model that the two principles of justice do. "[T]he concept of something's being right is the same as, or better, may be replaced by, the concept of its being in accordance with the principles that in the original position would be acknowledged to apply to things of its kind."⁴⁸ For individuals, this results in a concept of right with natural duties such as mutual aid and abstinence from injurious behavior and in obligations such as fairness and fidelity.⁴⁹ In all, Rawls' concept of right (for both individuals and societies) is derived from just principles chosen by persons in the hypothetical original position.

The ordering of the right and the good is a central feature of Rawls' theory of ethics. Consistent with his notion that justice is a first principle and that "chosen" principles of justice are the right and not the good, Rawls asserts that "in justice as fairness the concept of right is prior to that of the good."⁵⁰ However, what is chosen in the original position entails knowing at least in some sense what is good; this is exacerbated by the principles of justice which Rawls asserts would be chosen: since social and economic equalities are to be arranged to benefit the least advantaged, persons in the original position in choosing this principle must have an idea of the social and economic goods which they are attempting to equalize. Therefore, Rawls is forced to suppose a "thin theory" of the good, admitting that "its purpose is to secure the premises about primary goods required to arrive at the principles of justice."⁵¹ Goods which are assumed to be desired by all are those "primary goods" which the thin theory permits for consideration in the original position. Rawls claims that these include: liberty, opportunity, wealth, income, and self-respect.⁵² Persons in the original position are to consider these primary goods when arriving at principles of justice (i.e., principles of right), but may not consider goods beyond them such as those that they will desire in execution of their rational life plans. Only with the principles of justice in place is a full theory of the good, developed by each individual in pursuance of his life plan, acceptable. Thus, Rawls' theory of the right is somewhat based on a partial theory of the good, while his full theory of the good is developed only after his theory of the right.

In addition to the predetermination of the right before the good, there is some limitation on the individual's choice of good by Rawls' concept of right. Rawls states that, "given the priority of right, the choice of our [personal] conception of the good is framed within definite limits. The principles of justice and their realization in social forms define the bounds within which our [personal] deliberations take place."⁵³(clarification added) This seems to indicate that not only are our actions constrained by the principles of justice and their extensions, but our personal goals are similarly constrained. Some philosophers find this approach to be anathema. Richard Flathman observes the problem:

"For virtue liberals, ends that are shared or in common are superior to those that disaggregate or divide, and some ends … are-as in Kant and Rawls-categorically inadmissible. There is a realm that is properly 'private,' but the scope of the private domain is to be determined by public reason."⁵⁴

This makes Flathman lament that "Rawls is unwavering in his insistence that justice muse take precedence over all considerations that compete or conflict with it, and … both fair and stable cooperation depends on strict adherence to the principles of justice that ought to govern the basic structure."⁵⁵

The allowance for a thin theory of the good and the dominance of justice in his thinking agitate us toward the realization of a significant problem in Rawls' ethical theorizing. While Rawls claims that the right is prior to the good in his theory, the right (in this case, justice) has no definition without respect to some good. This is not to say that the right can not exist separate from (and prior to) the definition of the good: deontological ethical theories are invariably based on a conception of right that is removed from and often superior to the good. Yet Rawls has chosen a definition of right action that begs for a contribution from the good. Justice as a virtue requires an objective to guide it; marooned by itself, we return to Plato's question, 'What is justice?'

It is not as if Rawls does not offer a deontological principle of right which can be followed without reference to an objective. Such a principle can be inferred as this: that society and the individual should both act (or more precisely, define rules) in ways that a person in the original position would. The original position provides the basis for a deontological ethical theory. This is as much admitted by Rawls: "The original position may be viewed, then, as a procedural interpretation of Kant's conception of autonomy and the categorical imperative."⁵⁶ But to call this formulation 'justice' or derived from justice appears to be a serious misnomer, a confusion of cause and effect. To say that justice is manifest when society (or the individual) acts on such a formulation is a reasonable interpretation. To say that society must act on such a formulation in pursuit of justice is not: Rawls offers no higher code of right action from which the original position derives-at least none other than simply the word 'justice.'

The problem of a good-demanding definition of right does not arise from the original position; instead, it arises from the two principles of justice which Rawls has deemed would be chosen therein. It is the demand by these two principles for a regulation of "economic and social equalities" that necessitates the thin theory of the good. Consideration of the levels of economic and social equality is a consideration of the results of his ethical theory, not the rules of the theory itself. It is as if he asked the persons in the original position not, 'How should we act with respect to each other?' but, 'Whatever our actions to each other, what result would be fair?' Such an indulgence of the good and a departure from a sense of right acts may only be answered with a satisfactory standard of measure for the fair result. For this Rawls offers the yardstick of primary goods.

It is in this sense that justice is misplaced or misused in Rawls' theory of justice. By appealing to a sense of outcome, a sense of consequence, Rawls is appealing to teleology. It is not that justice is more of a good than a guide of right action. At this point we can recognize that justice can neither be a principle of right nor a principle of good. Justice is a sense of how well the goods that we desire or the methods we use to attain them are guided by our ethics. Justice as a principle does not inform us how to act; it only demands that our expectations be met.

It might be objected that, in the end, Rawls' theory of justice is not a complete theory of ethics. Indeed, as already indicated, Rawls himself denies that his theory is not comprehensive. "Justice as fairness is not a complete contract theory. For it is clear that the contractarian idea can be extended to the choice of more or less an entire ethical system, that is, to a system including principles for all the virtues and not only for justice."⁵⁷ Also, "[a] conception of justice is but one part of a moral view."⁵⁸ Yet, compared to other ethical theories, Rawls is more comprehensive than most. It includes a theory of the good and the right, principles of moral psychology, an assertion of stability and viability, and a developed sense of how to apply his ethical principles to social institutions and individuals. In short, there is very little that is left out and Rawls can actually pinpoint these areas with precision. Rawls asserts that "[t]he scope of our inquiry is limited in two ways": "I shall not consider the justice of institutions and social practices generally, nor except in passing the justice of the law of nations and of relations between states"; and "I examine the principles of justice that would regulate a well-ordered society … Thus I consider primarily what I call strict compliance as opposed to partial compliance theory."⁵⁹ In other sections, he also admits that he has no place in his partial ethical theory for the treatment of animals.⁶⁰ In fact, A Theory of Justice does examine the justice of institutions and some elements of partial compliance theory.⁶¹ To contend that a complete ethical system would include principles for all other virtues besides justice is to pretend that justice is not central to his ethics. If we are to construct all of our social institutions and individual obligations around a sense of justice, as Rawls proposes, what is left? If justice is the first virtue of social institutions, would a complete ethical theory look any different from 'justice as fairness'?

In A Theory of Justice, it is clear that Rawls is attempting to provide an alternative social system to utilitarianism.⁶² As an ethical theory, classical utilitarianism has a sense of right that is simply the maximization of the good. In order to differ from this, Rawls intends to provide a deontological ethical theory that attempts to be Kantian in holding that the right is superior to the good. Yet while the contractarian perspective of the original position is clearly a deontic device, the two principles he formulates in the original position are not deontological but teleological; Rawls for all his troubles appears to be unable to escape the grasp of utilitarian tendencies.

Both Plato and Rawls see justice as a virtue of paramount importance. Upon further inspection, though, we find that only in Rawls' case is justice a formative principle that leads to and produces further ethical principles. As has been argued, this places his ethical system on a precarious foundation. So if justice can not be formative or constructive, where does it stand in relation to our ethics?

As in most inquiries of philosophical terms, a return to definitions is unavoidable. More useful than a trite dictionary account is the following encyclopedic summation of the term 'justice':

"Justice is a concept involving the fair, moral, and impartial treatment of all persons -often seen as the continued effort to do what is right. Justice is a particularly foundational concept within most systems of "law," and draws highly upon established and well-regarded social traditions and values. From the perspective of pragmatism, it is the name for a fair result."⁶³

This seems to accord well with the notion that justice is extraneous to an ethical theory. The "continued effort to do what is right" notably leaves aside the task to define what is right. The "fair, moral, and impartial treatment of all persons" would necessarily follow a determination of what is fair and moral. It is the idea of "fair result" that most illustrates our considered judgment on the subject. This is the cherished part of the definition that leads Rawls to try to infuse justice into ethics, into our notion of what is right. It has been already argued that this noble effort of his is misguided: we must ask ourselves what is right and what is wrong before we can claim that the result is fair.

In common parlance, justice is the working of law towards a reasonable conclusion. A justice system is a body of institutions which do their best to ensure that the recognized values of society, as embodied in rationalized (i.e., codified) and unrationalized (i.e., common) law, ultimately determine the nature of society. But justice is also more than this. To the extent that the values of society are not recognized by its institutions, yet nevertheless exist in the hearts of its people, justice systems fail to be just. If a court frees a criminal on a technicality, or a company is sued for no-fault damages, or no law protects the innocent, we scorn the event as unjust. Law and the justice system are often imperfect assurances of justice; while this is partially due to poor execution, it is just as often due to an incongruence or poor connection with our moral foundations.

Ultimately, justice is a standard to which we hold society responsible to its ethics. Like a sense of fairness in a game, justice does not determine the rules, but rather demands that the rules are followed. In relation to our ethics, justice is an outsider, an arbiter.

While the philosopher may declare that this or that ethical system is just or unjust, such judgments and discriminations can only be relative to the subject's own ideals of what is good and what is right and wrong. This does not argue for moral relativism; it simply says that at some level our regard for ethical systems is subjective. To regard an ethical system itself as just or unjust holds it to account in relation to one's own ethics. This is possible, acceptable, and indeed common in a world of righteousness. Yet in another sense, every ethical theory deserves the respect and dignity of its own individuality. In the end, justice for an ethical theory is how well in practice it has lived up to ideals of its own.

In the pursuits of everyday human life, we often find ourselves at the terminal event of something of value: the closing of an account; the sale of a home; the fulfillment of a will. These we understand to be a reckoning, a settling of the record according to a prescribed standard. So it is with justice: the apprehension, prosecution, and evaluation of our record of action in accordance with our rules, our laws, and ultimately our moral and ethical standards. As a society our morals are constantly shifting to adjust for new ideas, new goals, and new threats. As a reckoning principle, justice demands that we continually examine our society and our selves and ask the question: 'How can we be more just: How can we be more pure to our ideals?'

Having reviewed the moral philosophies of Plato and John Rawls, and having added our own notion of the correct place of justice, let us return to the questions that initiated our undertaking.

Is justice a moral right or a moral good? Plato sees justice as a virtue, a state of harmony whereby the separate elements of the soul and of society are prohibited from dominating it entirely. Virtues are for Plato both right and good. Therefore, Plato has a place for the virtue of justice in his ethics. It is not clear, however, that it drives or gives cause to other virtues or other goods. Rawls, on the other hand, sees justice as the first virtue, the ethical ideal to which all social principles and institutions should aspire. Although he argues extensively in terms of the right and the good, it does not appear relevant to place 'justice' in these terms; the right certainly precedes the good and a sense of justice pervades the right in the formulation of the original position. What is relevant is that the principles of justice that are thereby chosen and which dictate his ethical theory mistakenly look to end results due to their derivation from his conception of justice. In this way Rawls' theory strikes one as flawed.

The two theories of ethics based on justice which are examined here therefore do not lead us away from our central idea. It appears to be correct to say that justice is simply an assurance that a society lives up to its ethical ideals, whatever the notions of right and good which constitute these.

Finally, is justice an ideal to strive for? This essay has argued that a sense of justice does not properly fit within ethical theories, but rather serves as a principle of reckoning for them. In this way it is not a good to be achieved or a guide to right action; it is separate from these. This does not imply that it can not serve as an ideal of moral philosophy. Certainly justice has its place and is necessary to fill its proper role in holding our social systems to account. The morals and ethics that our philosophers write about and that our citizens embrace represent the deepest convictions of what it means to be human. They deserve man's struggle to ensure their fulfillment and an ideal worthy of that cause.