What is Justice?

[TacoLord9000]

What is justice? We see the concept of justice appear everyday in our lives. However there seems to not be a clear consensus on what justice actually is in reality. Here are some examples:

Justice is the will of the stronger.

Justice is about being fair and minding one's own business.

Justice is upholding your values.

Justice is the inherent goodness in the universe or something put forth by God that we must follow in order to be just.

As you can see there are many problems with these definitions.

If justice is the will of the stronger then that implies the idea of justice is always changing. This means that something that before could have been considered unjust is now all of sudden just, because the person or people in power have now declared that it is just.

If justice is about being fair and minding one's own business then this creates the problem of defining what being fair and minding one's own business actually mean more specifically.

If justice is upholding your values then that means that there is no wrong form of justice since your values define what justice means.

If justice is the inherent goodness in the universe or something put forth by God then that implies that justice is objective. If justice is objective then how come we have not found it.

 

[M15t3R E]

Justice is in line with human morality. Justice is delivering change that will benefit society as a whole or set an example that society needs to follow for many years to come. This means that justice and morality are an evolving, subjective human construct. It is intended to hold people accountable for making choices that don't impede everyone around you while allowing you to pursue happiness.

 

[TacoLord9000]

Justice is in line with human morality. Justice is delivering change that will benefit society as a whole or set an example that society needs to follow for many years to come. This means that justice and morality are an evolving, subjective human construct. It is intended to hold people accountable for making choices that don't impede everyone around you while allowing you to pursue happiness.

But there are many different societies that have different views on justice. So you would argue that each society separately evolves while having influences perhaps on other societies due to historical events between such societies?

This implies also that the view of justice is determined by the majority. Since in the U.S. gay marriage is now a constitutional right you could argue that this is the result of the opinion of the majority shifting in favor of gay rights.

So then by that logic gay marriage was morally wrong in the past since the majority decided that it was?

However your last comment seems to suggest that justice is objective since you say that "it is intended to hold people accountable for making choices that don't impede everyone around you while allowing you to pursue happiness."

Then you arguing that justice is about being fair and minding one's own business which is far more objective since it would be more inclusive to a variety of people and views justice as something that is far more obtainable.

However Hitler when he was in power in Germany argued that Jews were ruining Germany. This kind of logic and propaganda ultimately led to the Holocaust. It is irrelevant whether the arguments that Hitler presents are true or not if justice is ultimately decided by the majority or the people in power.
Therefore it can be argued that Hitler was morally right at that point of time since he believed that this would "benefit society as a whole or set an example that society needs to follow for many years to come." He believed that getting rid of the Jews was beneficial to Germany.
This mean that justice is subjective.

Correct me if I misinterpreted your statement because it seems to me you are arguing two separate ideas.

 

[M15t3R E]

Morality is a convoluted issue. It is decided by majority view but does not equal majority view in all cases. I should have clarified; I hold to the view that morality is conspicuously subjective on some social issues like gay marriage and abortion and easier to discern on other issues. On issues such as murder and **** it is so widely agreed upon that murder and **** are detrimental to society to permit such actions that it is seemingly inherently objectively wrong and never contested. Hitler's actions were immoral because he was harming multiple entire demographics instead of allowing them to live their lives. He never had any evidence that exterminating Jews and homosexuals would benefit Germany for the greater good, but even if he had been correct, there are remedial forms of justice that allow the punishment to fit the crime. The death penalty has long been a contentious issue and is applied on a case by case basis for a reason. If applied as a wide-sweeping punishment then many will likely die who could have been salvaged. The sense in which morality is subjective lies in assessing the situation and using a fair amount of critical thinking. It is intended to allow people to live happy lives as long as they don't ruin the lives of others. That is objective. But the path to achieve that is riddled with subjective analyses.

 

[FlusteredBat]

Justice is an honest and rational evaluation of a person's actions as they impact others.

This concept not only becomes meaningless, but dangerous without any logical or empirical way to discern truth from falsehood because it enables the violence of those who are driven by their own malleable emotional impulses. If you can victimize yourself according to any circumstance then there is no limit to the atrocities which may be committed in the name of "justice".

Most fail to understand what it means to be rational, especially with the reprehensible rise of "no such thing as truth" post-modernism.

 

[TacoLord9000]

So justice is intended to make people happy. However this comes with the price of being able to justify anything which could mean that great evil is allowed in the name of justice.

If we proceed withe the logic that justice is trying to make the most people happy or the least people unhappy then this would mean that it would be an utilitarian approach.

Ultimate happiness is just an ideal that humanity can never achieve, which makes it very difficult to have justice in any true sense.

I don't think happiness necessarily equals justice though. For example people do lots of things that might make them happy but yet at the same time isn't necessarily good for themselves even if it doesn't harm others.

Regardless if we were to view humanity in a religious or atheistic sense, I would argue that would we need a more definitive view of justice in order to truly become more united as one people.

The major problem with these points is that humans are rather selfish. I think most people would be unwilling to sacrifice their own happiness to achieve justice. I think we need a Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. type figure in order to truly lead people into this kind of ideal.
This would be the best approach to discerning "truth" from "falsehood" in any honest way.

 

[FlusteredBat]

TacoLord9000 One cannot derive universal principles from the pursuit of happiness or self-sacrifice, they have relation to truth. It would be more accurate to say we discern falsehood by testing the logical and empirical validity of proposed principles. If a principle cannot be universalized--for all people at all times--then it is invalid toward any application of justice and virtue.

Why is the pursuit of happiness problematic?
There is no objective framework under total hedonism. That is to say "whatever makes me happy is the good", it could mean very different things for many different people. We might as well accept that there are no rules.

Why is altruism problematic?
Self-sacrifice as a universal virtue automatically condemns those who necessarily benefits without also sacrificing everything they have gained in a ridiculous hot-potato fashion.

Altruism actually implodes as a principle because it requires everybody to value the well-being of others over their own. Why would an altruistic individual want to take advantage of somebody else's suffering?