Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do?

 INTRODUCTION (1375)

  I. ARISTOTLE AND HAYEK ON JUSTICE, NEED, AND PRICE (1377)  

II. ARISTOTLE ON THE ANIMUS TO LIVE AND THE VIRTUES AND VICES ASSOCIATED WITH WEALTH(1380)

 A. Price-Gouging and Awarding the Purple Heart (1382)  

III. INDIVIDUALISM AND THE MORAL LIMITS OF THE MARKET (1384) 

A. Selling Kidneys, Assisted Suicide, and Consensual Cannibalism (1385) 

B. Military Service (1386) 

C. Gestational Surrogacy (1388) 

IV. IDEALIZING CONSENT: THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM AND THE WHOLE TRUTH ........................................ (1390)  

V. CONSENT AND MORAL OBLIGATION(1392)  

VI. IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE: A PUBLIC CULTURE HOSPITABLE TO DISAGREEMENTS? (1394)  

VII. THE BEST PLACE FOR CANDID POLITICAL TALK: UNIVERSITIES? (1396)  

VIII. THE JUSTICE THAT MATTERS MOST: CRIMINAL(1398) 

A. Private Eyes, Private Sanctions: Guardians of Justice(1399)

 CONCLUSION(1402) 

A. A Case for Injustice: Gratitude(1402) 

B. Beyond Justice: Happiness(1403) 

 INTRODUCTION 

My intention is to respond to Michael Sandel’s book, Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? as much as possible in kind.  I seek to engage in moral reasoning and consider the arguments of political philosophers, not in order to trace the history of ideas or refine their interpretation, but to clarify and express my own beliefs. 

 Accepting Sandel’s invitation to reflect on my moral and political convictions with his guidance, I will not rely on findings of nonphilosophical disciplines, such as history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, law, or public policy, nor enlist their modes of analysis. 

Also like Sandel, I will invoke examples, both public and personal.2 The plethora of examples Sandel discusses is impressive, and a chief strength of the book. They challenge the reader to think hard about them. Yet the harder one thinks, the more alternative interpretations, contrary to Sandel’s, one sees; his analysis does not always entertain, or acknowledge the possibility of, motives for conduct more complex than those expressed or apparent. This may be an unfair complaint; words on a page cannot entirely capture the complexity of human souls, and fiction may succeed more than philosophy. But maybe that acknowledgment helps rather than hinders the aims of philosophy. Philosophers whose accounts of the complexity of the human condition are especially helpful to my critique include Aristotle, Friedrich Hayek, Michael Oakeshott, and Adam Smith. 

Although I intend to respond to Sandel and keep his views in the forefront, rather than becoming immersed in interpretive quarrels about political philosophers, I will have to discuss Aristotle fairly often. That is not only because Sandel takes his bearings from Aristotle, but also because I do too, more or less, and we evidently read Aristotle differently. 

Sandel faithfully conveys Aristotle’s view that a good society depends on the virtues of its citizens, that it should cultivate those virtues, and therefore that it needs to determine what virtues are worthy of honor and reward. Aristotle does deny that law can be neutral; those who make law should first reflect on the most desirable way of life. 

Sandel’s orientation to virtue, however, leaves out Aristotle’s qualifications and skepticism. The most desirable way of life, both for individuals and a polity, attends to survival. Accordingly, Aristotle discusses not only distributive justice, which determines who should be recognized and what qualities honored, but also economic and punitive or criminal justice. Economic justice entails its own set of virtues and a proper disposition toward wealth. Parts I through V of this Essay – on economic justice, virtues connected to wealth, individualism, and (two on) consent – provide a stronger defense of market economy than does Sandel. Parts VI and VII concern Aristotle’s skepticism about the possibility of a virtuous democratic culture and propose accordingly to restrict politically erosive talk to public and private institutions such as universities. Part VIII applies, to the United States today, Aristotle’s counsel that circumstances may require a polity to focus more on preserving itself than on virtue by calling for more attention to crime prevention and punitive justice. A final section of closing thoughts, in contradistinction to the interest of Sandel’s book, makes a case for injustice and what lies beyond justice, namely happiness. 

 ARISTOTLE AND HAYEK ON JUSTICE, NEED, AND PRICE I. Book V of Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics, devoted to the subject of justice, recognizes three kinds: distributive, economic, and punitive. Government concerns distributive justice because it distributes offices and honors, rights and privileges. As Sandel writes towards the end of his book in Chapter 8, “Who Deserves What? / Aristotle”: “When we discuss distributive justice these days, we are concerned mainly with the distribution of income, wealth, and opportunities. For Aristotle, distributive justice was not mainly about money but about offices and honors. Who should have the right to rule? How should political authority be distributed?” Aristotle recognizes nonetheless that money-matters have a justice of their own, which differs from unilateral political justice inasmuch as it concerns mutually voluntary interpersonal conduct in the form of economic exchange.7 Yet a third kind of justice pertains to involuntary or coerced interpersonal conduct, injurious and fatal.8 Aristotle thus describes honorific, economic, and criminal justice as follows: 

 Of particular justice and that which is just in the corresponding sense, (A) one kind is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution . . . and (B) one is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions between man and man. Of this there are two divisions; of transactions (1) some are voluntary and (2) others involuntary – voluntary such transactions as sale, purchase, loan for consumption, pledging, loan for use, depositing, letting (they are called voluntary because the origin of these transactions is voluntary), while of the involuntary (a) some are clandestine, such as theft, adultery, poisoning, procuring, enticement of slaves, assassination, false witness, and (b) others are violent, such as assault, imprisonment, murder, robbery with violence, mutilation, abuse, insult.