## 1. History


### 1.1 Ancient



Philosophical discussion of justice begins with Plato, who treats the
topic in a variety of dialogues, most substantially in
*Republic*. There Plato offers the first sustained discussion
of the nature of justice (*dikaiosune*) and its relation to
happiness, as a departure from three alternatives receiving varying
degrees of attention. First, there is a traditionalist conception of
justice (speaking the truth and paying your debts). Second, Plato has
Socrates rebut the Sophist conception of justice which built on a
distinction between nature (*phusis*) and convention
(*nomos*) As Plato has this conception articulated by
Thrasymachus in Book I, justice is simply the "advantage of the
stronger," not tracking anything like the sort of value
attributed to it by traditionalists. Finally, Plato has Socrates
confront a conventionalist conception of justice that anticipates
modern contractarian views, in which justice -- forbearing
preying on others in exchange for not being preyed on by them --
is a "second-best alternative," not as good as being able
to prey at will upon others, but better than being the prey of others.
These last two challenges give rise to the central question of the
book: to whose advantage is justice? Would we really be better off
being unjust if we could get away with it? Plato's negative
answer to that question is the project of the balance of the work.



Plato's method involves the provocative idea that justice in the
city (*polis*) is the same thing as justice in the individual,
just "writ large." There are good reasons to worry about
that assumption (Williams 1973; Keyt 2006). But in Plato's
sociology of the city, there are three classes engaged in a kind of
division of labor. There is a guardian class which rules, a class of
"auxiliaries" that provide the force behind the ruling,
and the class of merchants that produce to satisfy the needs and
desires of the city. Similarly, the psyche of the individual has three
parts: a reasoning part to rule, a "spirited" part to
support the rule of reason, and an appetitive part. Plato finds
justice in the city to consist in each part "having and doing
its own," and since the smaller is just like the larger, justice
in the individual consists in each part of the psyche doing its own
work. (This grounds the idea, later enshrined by Justinian, that
justice is "giving every man his due;" Justinian I.i).
Further, Plato argues, justice is a master virtue in a sense, because
in both the city and the psyche, if each part is doing its own job,
both city and psyche will also have wisdom, courage, and moderation or
self-discipline. This conception of justice sustains the contrast with
the conventionalist view advocated by the Sophists. On the other hand,
at least initially it leaves it an open question whether the just
individual refrains from such socially proscribed actions as lying,
killing, and stealing. Plato eventually seeks to show that someone
with a healthy, harmonious soul wouldn't lie, kill, or steal,
but it is not clear that argument succeeds, nor, if it does, that that
is the right understanding of why we ought not to lie, kill, or steal
(Sachs 1963; LeBar 2013, ch. XII).



Plato gives a somewhat different treatment of justice in
*Crito*, in which Socrates' eponymous friend attempts to
persuade Socrates to accept his (Crito's) offer to bribe a way
out of the death sentence Socrates is waiting to have executed. Here
Plato's arguments first associate the just life with the good
life, thus the life Socrates has most reason to live. And justice, he
then argues, requires not only not inflicting wrong or injury on
others, even in response to wrongs from them, but fulfilling
one's agreements, and -- in particular -- abiding by
one's (tacit or explicit) agreement to abide by the laws of the
city unless one can persuade it to change them. Of course, justice
cannot require one to abide by laws that require one to act unjustly,
as Socrates' own case (as characterized in *Apology*)
shows (Kraut 1984).



It is worth noting (as Johnston 2011 observes) that even if Plato's
is the first *philosophical* discussion of justice, a concern
with what an individual is due as a matter of justice is a driving
issue in Homer's *Iliad*, though there is no counterpart
concern there with justice as a property of a society or tribe. So
even Plato's philosophical concerns are building on well-established
questions about what justice requires of us in our treatment of one
another.



Aristotle does not see the virtue of justice in quite the
comprehensive sense Plato does; he treats it as a virtue of character
(in the entirety of one of the ten books of the *Nicomachean
Ethics*, also common to the *Eudemian Ethics*), and as a
virtue of constitutions and political arrangements (in
*Politics*). The question naturally arises as to the relation
between these forms of justice. Aristotle seems to think they are
closely related, without being synonymous applications of the same
concept. As the latter is a conception of political justice, we will
focus here on the former. Justice as a personal virtue follows
Aristotle's model for virtues of character, in which the virtue
lies as an intermediate or mean between vices of excess and defect
(*Nicomachean Ethics* V). While he grants that there is a
"general" sense of justice in which justice is coincident
with complete virtue, there is a "particular" sense in
which it is concerned with not overreaching (*pleonexia*). It
is not clear, however, exactly how Aristotle understands this
arrangement, or the nature of the vices of excess and defect which
this "particular" justice is to counteract. One very
plausible reading has it that justice is opposed to a desire for
maldistribution of "goods of fortune" such as money, fame,
or honor (Williams 1980; Curzer 1995). On another it is opposed to an
insufficient attention to others' rights (Foot 1988, p. 9). On
still another it focuses on the goods of others, or common goods
(O'Connor 1988; Miller 1995).



These issues remain open in part because Aristotle seems most
interested in establishing a conception of the formal
*structure* of "particular" justice, which seems to
reflect a conception of desert. He distinguishes between justice in
distribution and justice in rectification. The former, he claims,
adheres to a kind of proportionality, in which what each deserves is
proportional to the relationship between the contributions. If A
contributes twice as much as B (of whatever the metric of merit is
relevant in some particular case), then A's return ought also to
be twice B's. This conception of distributive justice obviously
lends itself to "goods of fortune" -- and to some
goods, like wealth, more obviously than others -- but it need not
in principle be confined to such goods, although the examples
Aristotle provides suggest such applications. Similarly, justice in
rectification involves a sort of "arithmetical
proportion." If C defrauds D by amount X, then justice requires
depriving C of X and restoring X to D, as a matter of reestablishing a
kind of equality between them. These structural devices are elegant
and attractive, but they leave open a number of questions (LeBar,
forthcoming). First, as indicated, to what are we to suppose they
apply? Second, in what way do they figure into the nature of the
person who is just in the particular sense? (That is, how are they
related to justice as a virtue?) Does a model of particular justice as
a virtue fit the general model of virtue as a mean, and if so, what
sort of mean is it? Aristotle seems torn between a conception of
justice as a virtue in his distinctive understanding of what a virtue
is -- with a requirement that one have all the virtues to have
any (*Nicomachean Ethics*VI.13), and rooted in the doctrine of
the mean -- and justice as having the form of a formal normative
structure, to which the virtue threatens to become subsidiary. All
this is to leave aside questions of the relation between this
"particular" sense of justice and political justice, and
the role of the virtue of justice in the individual as it contributes
to justice in the polis.



Epicurus' conception of the role of justice was more central to
his eudaimonism perhaps than its counterpart in Plato and Aristotle,
but that reflects in part his distinctive understanding of
*eudaimonia*, or happiness. For Epicurus this consisted in
*ataraxia* -- tranquility, or freedom from disturbance.
Given that the good life is the life without disturbance, justice
plays a key instrumental role. One might, Epicurus thinks, withdraw
entirely from human society to avoid disturbance, but the alternative
is to live socially under terms which secure the avoidance of
disturbance. This is the structure of the ideal Epicurean community,
in which each forbears aggression (Armstrong 1997, Thrasher 2013).
Justice is a matter of keeping agreements generally, and in particular
the agreement not to harm or transgress social norms.



In this way Epicurus offers a conception of the virtue of justice that
harmonizes both its personal and its political dimensions. The
personal virtue consists in the motivation to abide by a contract not
to aggress or harm others. The political virtue inheres in a polity in
which such norms regulate the conduct of its citizens, and these two
dimensions of justice as a virtue reinforce each other.



The other great ethical tradition of antiquity (Stoicism) had
remarkably little to say about justice (Annas 1993, p. 311), so we
pass on to the medieval and modern periods.


### 1.2 Medieval and Modern



The legacy of the ancients -- Aristotle in particular --
continued into the medieval period, notably in the work of Thomas
Aquinas, who appropriated much of Aristotle's philosophy while
setting it into a Christian theological framework. As in Aristotle,
virtue and virtues are prominent parts of his ethical theory. And,
like Aristotle justice is an important virtue, though for Aquinas it
less important than the virtue of charity, a Christian virtue that did
not appear among the virtues recognized by Aristotle. There are other
elements of his account that situate it in an interesting way in the
transition from ancient eudaimonist accounts of virtue, to virtue as
it appears in the modern era, before it recedes from prominence in
ethical theory.



But to the extent Christian writers allied themselves with Plato and
Aristotle, they were downplaying another central element in Christian
thought and morality, the emphasis on agapic love. Such love seems to
be a matter of motivationally active feeling rather than of being
rational, and some writers on morality (eventually) allowed this side
of Christianity to have a major influence on what they had to say
about virtue.



Significant elements of the Aristotelian account of justice reappear
in Aquinas'. First, justice is first and foremost a virtue of
character rather than institutions, although Aquinas draws a
distinction among such virtues not found in Aristotle. For Aquinas,
justice as a virtue is a matter of perfection of the will, rather than
the passions (ST II-II 58.4). Aquinas offers no account of justice as
a virtue of societies or institutions, though he interprets the
"general" sense of justice he borrows from Aristotle as being a
matter of individual willing and action for the common good.
"Particular" justice, which as in Aristotle's account is most of
his focus, has to do with relationships -- in particular but not
limited to exchange -- between individuals as individuals (ST II-II
58.8). 



Second, Aquinas grounds the norms for these exchanges in the ancient
formula of Justinian, which hearkens back to Plato: justice is giving
each his own. But his interpretation of this formula situates him
astride a deep but subtle divide between ancient and modern thought.
To some extent this effect is an upshot of his inheriting not only the
Greek eudaimonist tradition, but also a Roman jurisprudential
tradition in which notions like standing and right as claim (rather
than, say, fairness) had begun to emerge (Porter 2016, p. 143). As a
result, Aquinas' synergistic account has some novel
complications.



One major complication, relative to the ancient accounts, is that what
is ours by right is a recognition of a kind of status, as an effect of
the order among people ordained by God (*ST* I-II 100.8). As
Jean Porter points out, this establishes a normative standard for
justice that does not grow out of the agent's own perfection or
eudaimonia (Porter 2016, p. 157). There are two significant follow-on
implications.



First, the fabric of the eudaimonist approach to practical reasoning
and life -- inherited from the Greeks -- begins to fray. For
better or worse, on the Greek eudaimonist views (including here Plato,
Aristotle, the Stoics, and Epicurus) our reasons for action arise from
our interest in a happy life. If the reason-giving nature of others
arises from a different source, as this reading of Aquinas suggests,
then practical reason seems to have a duality of ultimate sources,
with the complications that kind of duality brings.



Second, this is the first step in the diminution of the theoretical
significance of the virtues -- a process that will not begin to
be reversed until the middle of the 20th century. On Aristotle's
view, for example, the virtuous person sees reasons for acting that
the non-virtuous do not (and that arguably are not there to be seen
absent the effects of virtue -- LeBar 2013; Berryman 2019).
Virtue is no longer the normative epicenter of the theory, as it was
for the Greeks. To the extent that this aspect of Aquinas's view has
virtue responsive to value or reasons that is accounted for in some
way other than the work of virtue, it is the leading edge of process
that will result in a much-reduced role for virtue in later ethical
accounts



Hume is an excellent exemplar of this point, in both the
*Treatise* and the *Enquiries*. Virtue, Hume maintains,
is a matter of "some quality or character," produced in one by
"durable principles of the mind" (*T* III.iii.I, p. 575).
We deem such qualities virtues not, as on the ancient Greek view,
because they conduce to the happiness of the person who has them, but
because they have a "tendency to the good of mankind" or society.
(*T* III.iii.I). This service renders them pleasing to our
"moral tastes:" our approbation, Hume tells us, has its source in
"view of a character, which is naturally fitted to be useful to
others, or to the person himself, or which is agreeable to others, or
to the person himself" (*T* III.iii.I, 591). We can think of
that as the criterion some quality of character must have to be deemed
a virtue. In consequence, what counts as virtuous is an upshot of, and
not the source of, the normative foundations of this view.



By Hume's time the *content* of justice as a virtue has
shifted as well. In Hume's treatment, the focus of justice is
property -- relations of "mine and thine." It is a
"cautious, jealous" virtue in the sense that it is focused on the
sorts of exclusionary powers that are characteristic of property rules
and relations. We may always be aspiring for more but justice aims at
the preservation and security of what one has already (*E*
III.1, p. 184). So the virtue of justice, as Hume thinks of it, will
in the main consist of a quality in one which disposes one to observe
and uphold these rules. 



What Hume wants to show is, first, that we can have such a disposition
or quality (that is, that it is possible for us to have a quality or
character to observe the rules of justice), and, second, that such a
quality would count as a virtue, given his criteria. His approach to
these questions in the *Treatise* is framed by a problem he has
set up himself. To appreciate that problem, we have to step back to
Hume's broader view about moral motivation. Hume had argued that
moral principles "are not conclusions of our reason" (*T*
III.i.I); instead, they are "more properly felt than judg'd of"
(*T* III.i.II). Morality, and virtue, is a matter of sentiments
or passions. Why? Hume marshals a number of arguments to this effect
which are not relevant to our purposes. The basic reason is that the
functional roles of reason and the passions are markedly different, in
Hume's view. The task of reason is to discover truth or falsehood,
in "relations of ideas" or "matters of facts" (*T*
III.i.I); as such, it utterly lacks the capacity to move us to action.
Only the passions can do that (*T* II.iii.III). The passions,
on the other hand, have no representational content whatsoever; they
are "original existences" (*T* II.iii.III; III.i.I). Virtue
is paradigmatically a practical matter: it is a property of what we
do, and to act we must be motivated. That means any successful account
of virtue must find it in our passions, not in any aspect of our
reason (*T* III.i.I). So far so good.



However, when we come to justice, we look in vain for a passion that
can supply motive power for us to act justly. If anything, our natural
motives move us away from justice (*T* III.ii.II). Self-love
requires "correcting and restraining" (*T* III.ii.I). And
only a passion can do that. But which? Hume himself dismisses the
possibilities of public or private beneficence or universal love. In
the end he concludes that there is no natural passion to explain it.
Instead, it is in a certain crucial sense artificial (*T*
III.ii.VI). Under certain conditions, given that we are sensible of
the advantages of living in human society, our self-love or
self-interest may be given an "alteration of its direction," and
induce us to respect the rules of justice. These Hume thinks of
primarily as involving honesty and "particular" property
rules (*T* III.ii.II). That "alteration" needs
explanation.



Two facts about the conditions in which we act -- one about us,
one about our environment -- set this alteration in motion.
First, Hume maintains, we are limited in our generosity or
benevolence. And second, we live in conditions of scarcity (*T*
III.ii.II). We have to work to make a go of it, and we cannot count on
others to do so for us. We need control of our world to meet our
needs, but we are vulnerable to the selfishness and predation of
others.



The solution, Hume argues, is that we naturally fall into a
"convention" by which we observe that rules of property --
the observance of which is key to the virtue of justice -- is
good for all of us. This convention is no formal agreement; Hume
argues that it cannot be something like the product of promise or
compact (*T* III.ii.II). Instead, "it arises gradually, and
acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience
of the inconveniences of transgressing it" (*T* III.ii.II, p.
490). Much as two men pulling the oars in a boat together need no
explicit agreement to find they prosper by such an arrangement, so do
we generally. (Wilson 2018 explores support for Hume's
hypothesis through work in experimental economics.) So in the end it
is self-interest that drives us to comply with the requirements of
justice, though Hume adds that sympathy with the public interest
induces our endorsement of it once justice has become established.
This endorsement, however, is reserved for a scheme of property rules
taken generally; as Hume observes, individual instances of compliance
may frequently be "contrary to public interest," though such
compliance is still required of us. Hume believes the benefit of the
system overall, both to society and to individual, requires that rules
not admit of exceptions (*T* III.ii.II, *E* Appendix
III, SS256). Self-interest accounts for the possibility of our being
motivated to act as the virtue of justice requires, and both the
utility and the agreeableness, both to ourselves and others, of a
resulting social order with respected property rules, leads to our
approbation of that motivation as a virtue. 



In fact, this point -- that "public utility is the sole origin
of justice" -- is the point of Hume's discussion of justice
in the *Enquiries* (III.I, P145). Scarcity imposes a need for
us to distinguish mine from thine, and we have not sufficient
generosity in our natures to do without property rules (as we might,
say, in our families). And once again Hume argues that our recognition
of the utility and necessity of justice provides "entire command
over our sentiments" (*E* III.II, P163).As David Johnston
observes (Johnston 2011, p. 138), Hume's understanding of the
value of justice as instrumental in the promotion of utility marks a
sharp shift from earlier understandings which invoked various forms of
reciprocity in understanding that value.



Such a sentimentalist account of justice is also found in Adam Smith;
in fact, a focus on the sentiments almost completely swamps concern
for virtue. Our judgments of virtue and vice, he says, are compounded
by consideration of two different "relations" in a sentiment:
"the cause or object which excites or causes it, and ... the end
which it proposes" (TMS II.i.introduction). His focus on those two
"relations" obviates any independent discussion of virtue per se.
He does however explicitly countenance a virtue of justice, developed
in contrast with the virtue of beneficence. In Smith, even more
clearly than in Hume, one can see that this virtue consists in
conformity to "rules" or "laws" of justice that appear to
exist antecedently to the realization of the virtue itself, unlike
ancient accounts. Smith indicates that justice merits resentment when
absent, that it may be "extorted by force," and that in the main
it requires forbearing from harming others.. Smith calls justice a
"negative virtue" in this respect: often all it requires is that
we sit still and do nothing (Smith 1759, II.ii.I.5, 9). It is
essential to the subsistence of society, Smith tells us (Smith 1759,
II.ii.3.3-4), but -- in contrast to Hume -- is not reducible
in its motivational basis to regard for society. Instead, our just
concern for "multitudes" is compounded of our concern for
individuals, which arises from "fellow-feeling," which is yet
short of "love, esteem, and affection" (Smith 1759, II.ii.3.7).




In Kant, finally, along with a movement away from sentimentalism we
see the completion of the distinction between justice as a virtue and
justice as a norm to which a virtue may or may not correspond. While
Kant has a theory (or "doctrine") of virtue, he distinguishes that
theory precisely against a counterpoised theory of justice. The two
are complementary elements in the "metaphysics of morals."
Moreover, the doctrine of justice itself has two parts, roughly
corresponding to the distinction present since Plato's work, between
the role of justice in the individual and the role of justice in the
state. Kant calls these "private right" and "public right,"
respectively. But right in either case is not how Kant at least
conceives of virtue; instead, right is a "condition" that can
obtain between the moral agents comprising a moral or legal community,
in virtue of their principles of choice in acting (Kant 1797). Little
remains here of the notion of justice as a virtue of individuals as it
began with the ancient Greeks.


## 2. Social Psychology and Justice



20th-century developmental psychology drew deeply on the Kantian
legacy. Piaget (1932/1948) treated moral development as principally
involving increasing cognitive sophistication. More particularly,
Piaget saw that sophistication as a matter of taking more and more
general or universal views of moral issues, and endorsed the Kantian
and rationalist idea that morality rests on and can be justified in
terms of considerations of justice. Piaget saw a "law of
evolution" in moral development, from an understanding of rules
(including moral rules) as being "heteronomous"
impositions of authority, to which one is objectively responsible, to
a grounding in mutual respect, accompanied by subjective
responsibility to others (Piaget 1932/1948, p. 225). This transition
is fostered through social interaction, and attention to norms of
equality and reciprocity replace those of mere obedience.



Educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg was inspired by Piaget to
propose a conception of moral development that postulated six stages
of human moral development. In his earliest work, Kohlberg identified
the highest stage of such development with a concern for justice and
human rights based on universal principles. Concern for relationships
and for individual human well-being was embedded in a framework of
conformity to social norms, at lower stages of the process. Moreover,
he saw the ordering of the different stages in Piagetian fashion as
basically reflecting differences in rational understanding: those
whose moral thinking involved the invoking of universal principles of
justice and rights were thought to show a more advanced cognitive
development than those whose moral thought appeals primarily to the
importance of relationships and of human well-being or suffering. The
paradigm of moral development involves judgments that are
"reversible," in the sense that each party to the issue
can accept the correct judgment by reversing his or her perspective
and taking up the viewpoint of the other (Kohlberg 1981). The
sophisticated moral reasoner will engage in a process of "moral
musical chairs," taking up the positions of the parties to the
conflict successively. It is, on this version of Kohlberg's
thought, that formal feature of the deliberative process that is
characteristic of greatest moral development. As his research and
thought progressed, however, Kohlberg increasingly acknowledged that
these formal features were less characteristic of overall moral
development and thought than of the deployment of specifically
justice-based concepts. In fact, Kohlberg was impressed by the work of
Rawls, and thought that the nature of Rawls' "original
position of equality" exemplified the kind of reversibility that
is paradigmatic of the highest form of moral thought (Kohlberg 1981,
p. 204). However, his approach treats utilitarianism as less
cognitively advanced (more primitive) than rationalist views like
Kant's, and utilitarians (like R.M. Hare) naturally called into
question the objectivity and intellectual fairness of Kohlberg's
account. 



More significantly, perhaps, the evidence for Kohlberg's stage
sequence was drawn from studies of boys, and when one applies the
sequence to the study of young girls, it turns out that girls on
average end up at a less advanced stage of moral development than boys
do. In her 1982 book *In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory
and Women's Development*, Carol Gilligan responded to
Kohlberg's views by questioning whether a theory of moral
development based solely on a sample of males could reasonably be used
to draw conclusions about the inferior moral development of women.
Gilligan argued that her own studies of women's development
indicated that the moral development of girls and women proceeds and
ends in a different fashion from that of boys and men, but that that
proves nothing about inferiority or superiority: it is merely a fact
of difference. In particular, Gilligan claimed that women tend to
think morally in terms of connection to others (relationships) and in
terms of caring about (responsibility for) those with whom they are
connected; men, by contrast and in line with Kohlberg's studies,
tend to think more in terms of general principles of justice and of
individual rights against (or individual autonomy from) other people.
But Jean Hampton, among others, responded that Gilligan's
critique was itself a distortion, and that concerns for justice and
individual rights are as significant for and in the moral lives of
women as for men (Hampton 1993).



In recent years, a variety of social sciences have intensified
investigation into aspects of our natures that are plausibly important
for a virtue of justice. For example, Widlok 2018 surveys
cross-cultural anthropological work examining the development of
"ethical skill" in rightful and just sharing practices.


## 3. Justice as a Virtue of Societies



For a variety of reasons, many ethical thinkers have thought that
justice cannot be based in sentiment but requires a more
intellectually constructive rational(ist) basis, and in recent times
this view of the matter seems to have been held, most influentially,
by John Rawls in *A Theory of Justice*. Rawls makes clear his
belief in the inadequacy of benevolence or sympathetic human sentiment
in formulating an adequate conception of social justice. He says in
particular that sentiment leaves unanswered or indeterminate various
important issues of justice that a good theory of justice ought to be
able to resolve.



Rawls's positive view of justice is concerned primarily with the
justice of institutions or (what he calls) the "basic
structure" of society: justice as an individual virtue is
derivative from justice as a social virtue defined via certain
principles of justice. The principles, famously, are derived from an
"original position" in which (very roughly) rational
contractors under a "veil of ignorance" decide how they
wish to commit themselves to being governed in their actual lives.
Rawls deliberately invokes Kantian rationalism (or
anti-sentimentalism) in explaining the intellectual or theoretical
motivation behind his construction, and the two principles of justice
that he argues would be agreed upon under the contractual conditions
he specifies represent a kind of egalitarian political liberalism.
Roughly, those principles stress (equality of) basic liberties and
opportunities for self-advancement over considerations of social
welfare, and the distribution of opportunities and goods in society is
then supposed to work to the advantage of all (especially the
worst-off members of society). He also says that the idea of what
people distributively deserve or merit is derivative from social
justice rather than (as with Aristotle and/or much common-sense
thinking) providing the basis for thinking about social justice.



According to Rawls, individual justice is theoretically derivative
from social justice because the just individual is to be understood as
someone with an effective or "regulative" desire to comply
with the principles of justice. However, it is not merely social
justice that Rawls understands in (predominantly) rationalist fashion.
When he explains how individuals (within a just society) develop a
sense and/or the virtue of justice, he invokes the work of Piaget.
Rawls lays more stress than Piaget does on the role our affective
nature (sympathy and the desire for self-mastery) plays in the
acquisition of moral virtue. But, like Piaget, he stresses the need
for a *sufficiently general appreciation and rational
understanding* of social relations as the grounding basis of a
sense of duty or of justice and he explicitly classifies his account
of moral development as falling within the "rationalist
tradition." 


## 4. Justice and Other Virtues



Few would doubt that justice is a virtue of character. But there are
other moral virtues. How is justice related to them? Is it more
important? Even in *Republic*, in which Plato makes justice a
"master virtue" of sorts, there are other virtues (wisdom,
courage, and self-discipline), and elsewhere (notably
*Gorgias*) Plato makes self-discipline (*sophrosune*)
the "master virtue," so it is not clear that justice has any sort
of priority over these other virtues. Likewise, though the texts we
have show Aristotle devoting more space to justice, it is not clear
that the particular form of the virtue of justice has any sort of
pre-eminence. On the other hand, Cicero claims that justice is the
"crowning glory" of the virtues (*De Officiis* I.7). If we
take virtue of character to have the moral centrality the ancients
(perhaps in contrast to the moderns), how much importance should we
accord to justice among the virtues?



Aquinas cites Cicero as a target in developing a sophisticated view of
the relationships among the virtues (*ST* II-II 58.12). On
Aquinas' view, Cicero is half right, for Aquinas distinguishes
between virtues as responsive to appetites of our animal nature (moral
virtues) and as responsive to appetites of our intellect (virtues of
the will). He takes it that justice is preeminent over the moral
virtues because it inheres in the rational part of the soul, and
because its object is more noble (the good of others, or the common
good, rather than the individual good). On that point he can agree
with Cicero. However, these virtues themselves are not as excellent as
the theological virtues, of which the greatest is love (or charity --
caritas; *ST* II-II 23.6). There are several arguments for this
claim but it is grounded in Paul's admonition to the Corinthians,
that love is the greatest among the virtues of faith and hope (1
Corinthians 13:13).



In recent decades there have been secular challenges to the primacy of
justice among virtues. Recall that Carol Gilligan had argued for a
"different voice" for women in coming to grips with moral
problems. Instead of a rights-based understanding of morality that
gave special consideration to the individual, women saw relationships
between people as primary (Gilligan 1983, pp. 19, 29). Kohlberg had
offered a thought experiment about a man ("Heinz") tempted to
steal a life-saving drug to save his sick wife (Kohlberg 1981, p. 12).
Whereas boys are more likely to think of Heinz' dilemma in terms of
what is the right thing to do, girls, Gilligan argues, see the world
as "a world of relationships and psychological truths where an
awareness of the connection between people gives rise to a recognition
of responsibility for one another" (Gillian 1983, p. 30). Gilligan
carefully frames this contrast as one between voices, not a matter of
ranking of dispositions or virtues, but her work can and did provide a
basis for making that sort of assessment between virtues, one on which
(as in Aquinas' case) love and care for others turns out to be more
important than considerations of justice.



In some ways, Nel Nodding's pioneering work in laying out an
"ethic of care" takes such a step. Following Gilligan, she sees
much ethical theory as missing a feminine voice, one which grounds
moral concern for the concrete other in caring for them and their
needs, and thus as relational rather than individualistic (Noddings
1983, 1999). Yet some caution is required before seeing her as taking
up something like a Thomistic stance on the priority of love over
justice. For one thing, to a significant degree she wants to emphasize
the importance of the concrete and particular as opposed to the
abstract and general (or the reliance on universal principles) in
thinking and acting morally. But that is an emphasis which animates
some particularistic forms of virtue ethics, and does not distinguish
justice from love or other virtues. Moreover, where she explicitly
argues that care "'picks up' where justice leaves off"
(Noddings 1999, p. 12), she is thinking of justice as a property of
institutions (e.g. Rawls' theory of justice as fairness), and
institutional implementations of those theories, not a virtue of
character. She is clearly concerned about the limits of
"rights-talk," but that at least historically has not been a
prominent part in thinking about justice as a virtue of character.
Thus she does not clearly take a side in this matter.



Like Noddings, Virginia Held frames much of the point of the ethics of
care against a historical theoretical backdrop of attention to justice
(Held 1995, 2004, 2006). To some extent, like Noddings, for Held the
relevant notion of justice is not a virtue of character but a concern
with fairness, equality, and individual rights, or perhaps more
generally impartial universal principles (Held 2004, p. 144; 2006, p.
14). In fact, Held more clearly poses an ethics of care as an
alternative to virtue ethics (Held 2004, 143; 2006, 14). This is for
two reasons. First, virtue ethical theories focus on dispositions and
traits of individuals, whereas an ethics of care focuses on relations
between individuals. Second, an ethics of care sees people as
partially constituted by their relations with others, as opposed to
the individualism characteristic of virtue ethics. Held does not think
an ethics of care can do without a concern for justice as a value,
however (Held 1995, 129). More generally, she believes, caring
provides a "wider network" within which concerns for justice and
virtue (as well as utility) should be fitted (2004, 147; 2006, 72).
Margaret McLaren (2001), on the other hand, responds on the basis of
commonalities between care ethics and virtue ethics that care ethics
actually is most attractive when situated as an ethics of virtue.
Marilyn Friedman (1987) similarly seems accepting of the general
framework of virtue ethics, and of crucial places for virtues of both
caring and justice within such a framework, responsive to different
degrees and in different ways to gender differences she believes
actually do hold, though not falling along a caring/justice fault
line.



Michael Slote also accepts care ethics as well-situated as a virtue
ethical theory, but argues for the necessity of conceiving such a
theory as "agent-based" -- holding that motivation or motives are
"the ultimate bases for evaluation of action, institutions, laws,
and societies" (Slote 1998, p. 173). As he has developed his view,
empathic motivation has come to take an increasing role (Slote 2010,
p. 124). As with Noddings and Held, for Slote the relevant questions
about justice are about forms of social organization, the allocation
of rights, and so on. If there is a vestige of the Platonic/Justinian
model of justice as a virtue, it would appear to figure in only as a
rationale for the shape of some social policies reflecting e.g. social
(or perhaps global) distributive justice. But empathy is the focal
normative concern throughout. The justice of a society constitutively
depends on the motives of the individuals who make it up (Slote 1998,
p. 187; 2010, p. 128). If the relevant motives are caring or empathic
ones, then Slote's analysis would seem to collapse the distinction
between caring and justice as virtues of individual character (or
motivation). That is, individuals would count as just exactly to the
degree that their motivations are empathic, and they thus contribute
to the laws, policies, institutions, and so on in ways that are
reflective of similar motivations across society. But that is just to
say that they are caring motivations as well.



A somewhat different feminist critique of a focus on a virtue of
justice comes from Robin Dillon. Like Slote, her concern is more with
social institutions, structures, and hierarchies than with traits of
character, and in fact these priorities lead her to be critical of
virtue ethical theories which, she believes, cannot ask the right
questions about virtues and vices (Dillon 2012, p. 86). However, she
does accept the point that character traits matter, though she
believes attending to the vices that allow and support social
structures that allow for oppression and domination is more pertinent
to feminist moral philosophy.



Lisa Tessman, on the other hand, accepts the basic framework of
Aristotelian thinking about virtues of character, and with it the
virtue of justice (Tessman 2005). However, she argues that oppressive
social conditions can interfere in ways Aristotle did not anticipate
with the formation of virtues of character and consequently (given
Aristotle's framework) with prospects for happiness (eudaimonia).
One point of amendment, then, to Aristotelian thought is to recognize
that oppressive social conditions may make other traits -- traits
that are important for liberatory struggle -- into virtues.
Another, congruent with other lines of feminist critique, is that
Aristotle is insufficiently appreciative of the need for sensitivity
to and response to suffering, so that something like the kind of
supplementation recommended by care ethics is appropriate. A different
model of response to the development of the virtue of justice
specifically under non-ideal or unjust social conditions, one modeled
on Kohlberg's original architectonic understanding of the virtue, is
defended by Jon Garthoff (Garthoff 2018). 



Finally, in recent work Talbot Brewer has argued that a
"revisionist" version of Aristotelian virtue ethics does a better
job than competitors (including Kantian and contractualist theories)
at recognizing the "irreplaceable value" of each human being
(Brewer 2018). Brewer believes that a robust conception of the virtue
of justice does important work for such a theory, not just focusing on
distribution and allocation, but more generally establishing the space
for virtuous recognition of ways that others can demand that we treat
them (Brewer 2018, p. 25). Still, Brewer invokes Aquinas to argue that
such justice is not enough, that that what is required is a
recognition of a virtue of love to unify and perfect the other virtues
of character.


## 5. Recent Developments



While Rawls' work has sparked an explosion of work in
distributive justice and social justice more generally, in recent
years a variety of strategies to return to a focus on justice as a
personal virtue has emerged. These strategies vary across both
dimensions we have considered, taking with various degrees of
seriousness the connection between institutional and personal forms of
justice, and focusing on the latter as a virtue, among (and like)
other virtues.



One such strategy is that of Jon Drydyk, who builds on the
"capability approach" to human welfare to make a case for
a capabilities-based account of the justice of individual agents, in
particular as against an "Aristotelian" approach that
stresses justice as a matter of response to merit. Acting justly
involves "striving to reduce and remove inequalities in
people's capabilities to function in ways that are
elemental" to a truly human life (Drydyk 2012, pp. 31, 33). This
is a "subsidiary" virtue account, in that we begin with a
prior conception of the content of the requirements of justice, and
conform the virtue to this conception. However, Drydyk emphasizes
justice as a virtue of individuals, rather than institutions or
societies. Drydyk's strategy offers a counterpoint both to the
Rawlsian way of thinking about just societies and to the ancient Greek
way of thinking about justice as a virtue of individuals.



John Hacker-Wright argues that what is needed to replace a
"legalistic" concern with moral status (as on modern
liberal conceptions of justice) is instead an ethic of virtue with a
different conception of the virtue of justice. Instead of a concern
for the resolution of claims in something like reciprocal, contractual
relations, Hacker-Wright's conception of the virtue of justice
is a matter of sensitivity to "vulnerability of value" in
things, animate and otherwise. Thus, the threat of unjust --
vicious -- wronging hangs not only over people who are sufficiently
cognitively impaired so as not to perceive insults, but also corpses,
animals, and even rare and valuable rock formations (p. 463). This
counts as a sense of justice in that, on Hacker-Wright's view it
is not merely that we can act wrongly or viciously toward such
entities, but (following Midgley 1983) that they can be wronged by us
by our doing so. However, while Hacker-Wright claims that on a virtue
ethic "The character of the agent is recognized as ineliminable
in picking out facts as they figure in our moral deliberation,"
this does not strictly speaking seem to be true, as prior to virtue
there is *value* which it is up to the just or virtuous person
to respond with sensitivity (Hacker-Wright 2007, pp. 461, 463,
464).



David Schmidtz and John Thrasher suggest rethinking the relationship
between social justice and individual justice (Schmidtz and Thrasher
2014). Turning Plato's account of justice in *Republic*
on its head, they depict justice as a bridge between a virtue of the
soul and of the *polis*: because we are essentially social, we
need community, and justice is a matter of harmony with the community.
On their view this is (largely) a matter of compliance with rules and
institutions that enable people to live in harmony and flourish
together.



An alternative proposal for thinking of the justice as a personal
virtue ties it intimately to the experiences we have as emotional
creatures. On this approach, instead of justice standing as distinct
from "natural virtues" motivated by passions (as on
Hume's account), or needing to be replaced by
sentimentally-driven attitudes such as care or compassion, justice is
to be seen as a virtue largely *constituted* by emotion
(Solomon 1994, Roberts 2010). The virtue amounts to a stable
disposition of character to respond in the relevant ways to instances
of injustice, perhaps consisting in those occasions in which one does
not receive his or her due, and on the other hand to be disposed to a
"will to give each his due" (Roberts 2010, p. 38). For
Roberts, this is a will to realize "objective justice,"
and as on other recent accounts, the virtue (and the passion) are
theoretically subsidiary to this primary notion of "objective
justice."



There are also recent ventures in the spirit of the ancient Greek
thinking about the individual virtue of justice. Rasmussen and Den Uyl
(2005) argue for two interpersonal senses of justice (pp. 160-63). One
is the familiar Aristotelian virtue. The second is a
"metanormative" principle governing the institutions and
legal frameworks in which individual agents (just and otherwise) live
their lives and exercise their practical agency. The second of these
senses of interpersonal justice does not draw its content from the
exercise of virtue, but rather makes a place for it. The former does
depend on virtue overall (including the exercise of practical wisdom)
for its demands, but these are construed broadly in the traditional
way of rendering to each his due. Bloomfield (2011) similarly suggests
extending the Aristotelian virtue of justice, but in an inward
direction, arguing that self-respect is necessary for happiness, and
treating oneself fairly requires treating oneself fairly, as one
treats others fairly, as a property of justice as individuals.



On the other hand, Wolterstorff (2008) argues that the eudaimonism of
Greek thought prevents a proper appreciation for the nature and
significance of justice and rights. Whether there is theoretical space
remaining for a virtue of justice is not a question Wolterstorff
considers, but he does believe there is no hope for an adequate grip
on justice in an Aristotelian or Stoic framework. 



Recent thinkers have grappled with the question of priority between
formal principle and virtue that vexed Aristotle, and offered
solutions that for the most part subordinate the virtue of justice to
the prior notion of the justice of distributions, as Aristotle himself
seems to have suggested. Bernard Williams claims explicitly that this
is so (Williams 1980, p. 197), as does David Wiggins, in an attempt to
bring a "pre-liberal," Aristotelian conception of justice
to bear on modern liberal conceptions, a la Kant and Rawls (Wiggins
2004). To do so, Wiggins distinguishes three senses of justice: (A) a
matter of outcomes or states of affairs in which each gets what is
due; (B) a disposition to promote justice (A); (C) a condition of the
polis in virtue of which (A) is realized. Wiggins claims that the
proper outcome of this collision of conceptions is one that recognizes
a form of *logical* priority of justice (A) over justice (B)
(p. 489). At the same time, against Williams he insists that the
normative demands of justice (A) are "comprehensible" only
within the perspective of a person with justice (B). And in fact he
claims that a necessary condition on acts and outcomes satisfying the
norms of justice (A) is that they be recognized to be so by those with
the virtue of justice (B). Wiggins' thinking here is not
transparent, but perhaps the thought is that the logical point is
purely formal: someone with justice (B) must, in act or judging
justly, be responding to some norm which counts as justice (A). But,
as *merely* formal, that tells us nothing about the substantive
content of that norm. To get that, we have ineliminable need to refer
to the judgment of the person with justice (B). That marks a way
perhaps of restoring Aristotle's focus on virtue in coming to
understand the virtue of justice. 



LeBar (2013, 2014) takes a similar tack in attempting to incorporate
Kantian and post-Kantian insights into just demands on the treatment
of others into an Aristotelian virtue framework. On his view, there is
no way to specify the contents of the demands of justice, or to spell
out its norms, independently of the wider possession and exercise of
the virtues, including the virtue of practical wisdom. At the same
time, what the virtuous and just person sees, in inhabiting a social
world with equals in moral standing, are the norms which have become
associated with the liberal conception: the standing to obligate
others and hold them accountable, for example.



Finally, all of these are Western treatments of an individual virtue
of justice. May Sim (Sim 2007, 2018) makes the case that there are
informative parallels between the Confucian treatment of the virtues
(in particular, yi) and the virtue of justice as adumbrated in Plato
and Aristotle. 


## 6. Conclusion



There are many different conceptions of the virtue of justice, and
only some of them are distinctively virtue ethical. Many non-virtual
ethical approaches put forward theories of virtue, and what
distinguishes them from virtue ethics is that the given theory of
virtue comes later in the order of explanation, rather than itself
serving as the basis for understanding (all of) morality. This is
especially the case with justice, where (as we have seen) it is
naturally tempting to account for the *norms* of justice first
and derive an account of the *virtue* in light of those norms.
The question of the priority of norms of justice or the virtue of
justice is likely to continue to generate exploration and debate, as
is the question of how our lives as social and political animals
contributes to understanding the virtue of justice. These vexed
questions have inspired a profusion of views and no doubt will
continue to do so.