Justice summary

Although it’s not possible to come up with a universal definition of justice, it makes sense to deal with different theories of justice over the history of philosophy, compare them, and weigh their strengths and weaknesses against one another.

We therefore shouldn’t think of the great philosophers as antiquated thinkers, but as engaging interlocutors and advisers on practical questions of our modern, everyday situation: How should we judge progressive taxes? Am I allowed to make promises I can’t keep? How can we make a solid argument for same-sex marriage? Philosophers like Kant, Aristotle and John Rawls give us answers that in turn help us find our own answers.

The founder and most famous exponent of Utilitarianism was Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), an English moral philosopher and social reformer. His utilitarian philosophy assumes that all people want to pursue pleasure and well-being, and to avoid pain and unhappiness. This assumption is the foundation of the Utilitarian moral standard.

According to this philosophy, actions that cause well-being or happiness are moral, whereas actions that trigger unhappiness or suffering are wrong. An important postscript: it is never one person’s own happiness that counts, but the happiness of the others. A truly just action promotes the happiness of many people, not only that of an individual.

The philosophy of the Libertarians is based on the principle that freedom is the greatest good we have. All other rights and obligations are either subordinate to or are derived from that principle. Our freedom may only be limited if it curtails other people’s freedom.

And thus Libertarians see justice as respecting and preserving people’s freedom. The consequences arising from this have a wide-reaching political and economic significance: for example, people cannot be stopped from managing their money freely. Laws that interfere with the free market violate the freedom of the individual and are thus unjust. Consequently, Libertarians speak out against taxes, social security contributions and public health insurance – which they consider an inhibition or theft.

German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argues that an action’s moral worth is based on the motives preceding it. He considers an action just when somebody does the right thing for the right reason.

Kant uses the following example to explain the question of just and moral actions.

What’s the difference between a billiard ball and a human being?

Of course there are a million different answers to this question. But according to Kant, the most important is this: the billiard ball obeys solely the laws of physics. When we hit it, it rolls forward; if we let it fall, it falls down.

In order to understand the universal pillars of justice, American philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) suggests that we perform the following thought experiment: We should ask ourselves which social principles we would live by if we existed in a hypothetical state of pure equality, behind a “veil of ignorance.”

By this veil of ignorance and state of natural equality, Rawls means there would be no social classes, genders, ethnicities, political views or religious beliefs. We would all be equal: nobody would know where they’re from or what role they’d have in an as-yet undiscovered social order.

The core of John Rawls’ philosophy of justice builds up an argument that the distribution of income and opportunities may not be based solely on random factors.

Let’s contemplate the image of a race to illustrate this thought concretely.

Justice, wrote Greek philosopher Aristotle, is the highest aim we can strive towards: “Neither the evening star nor the morning star is so marvelous.”

But how can we achieve this good and worthy goal?

Is it unjust when same-sex couples are prohibited from getting married?

Aristotle teaches us that we would do best to answer such a question by first considering the telos of marriage as a social institution.

The key message of this book is:

People have been thinking about the question of justice for millennia, and the answers have been as varied as the thinkers who came up with them. The reason? Justice means more than judging right from wrong. When we talk about justice, we have to discuss how we want to live, what worth we assign to freedom and whether certain virtues are more worthy than others.

This book answered the following questions:

What is just and how do we create morals?