1What is Justice? The Concept
Justice is one of those core moral and political terms which claim universal importance and feature centrally in all social and political theories. Indeed, for many theorists it is the prime and overarching concept of public life, although it is increasingly overshadowed by the global attention being accorded to human rights, a phenomenon which is discussed in Chapter 12. The almost universal popularity of justice breeds a diversity of analyses and applications of the term ‘justice’ which can bewilder and discourage those who seek precision and clarity in their approach to political issues Disagreement abounds over what it means to call a situation just or unjust, about what sort of actions are just or unjust, about who ought to do what to bring about justice, and about how we should go about settling these controversial matters. This book seeks to provide an overview of this contentious territory, exploring and testing those claims to universal value which the language of justice evokes, outlining a framework within which to compare and assess theories of justice, and suggesting how we might arrive at our own views on what justice is about and what sort of principles of justice we ought to adopt.
Arguments about justice and injustice feature centrally in current political debates concerning law, social policy and economic organization Inequalities of income and employment opportunities, disparities in property ownership, deprivations which arise from unemployment, disablement, illness and old age, uncompensated injuries sustained through accident or as a result of the criminal behaviour of others, and the sufferings of the victims of class, race, gender and state oppression –all these, and much more, are routinely denounced as not simply wrong, but wrong for a particular sort of reason – because they are unjust. What is it about all these disparate situations that prompts us to condemn them as unjust, rather than, for instance, cruel or mean or unkind?
We can begin to answer this question by identifying some core examples of evident injustice. In law we can point to ‘miscarriages of justice’ through the wrongful conviction of persons who are innocent in the sense that they did not commit the offences with which they were charged, or through the imposition of excessive damages resulting from an unlucky accident In employment we can point to examples of injustice which occur when two equally well qualified persons are paid at different levels, or a person is not hired because he or she is of a particular gender or sexual orientation. In politics we can point to the exclusion of certain groups from an equal share in decision-making and the use of wealth to influence political decisions which result or acquiesce in gross inequalities within and between nations. Failure to recognize achievements and beneficial contributions to the welfare of others are further examples of things that are normally taken to be a matter of justice. Ultimately a theory of justice has to formulate the criteria we should use to identify what sort of situations and actions are properly described as just or unjust, thus answering the normative question ‘what is just?’ or ‘what does justice require?’. However, before we can hope to answer that sort of question adequately we must first orient ourselves to the issues involved by addressing the prior conceptual question: ‘what is justice about?’ or ‘what sort of considerations does justice raise?’. Once we have an idea of what sort of issues justice raises, then we are in a much better position to decide what sorts of things are right because they are just and what sort of things are wrong because they are unjust. The prior philosophical task is, therefore, to come to a view of what sort of issues the language of justice is concerned with. The starting point here is to identify the values and assumptions which feature distinctively in the discourse of justice generally so that we can begin to distinguish justice from that of other social and political values, such as efficiency, autonomy, equality, dignity, humanity and love.
This chapter addresses the conceptual issue as to what characterizes justice in comparison to other social and political values. I note the range of social and political contexts in which justice features and I draw attention to the ideological or partisan political associations of different approaches to justice in all their diversity, going on to argue that, despite this diversity, it is both possible and useful to identify, albeit provisionally, a working concept of justice which marks it off from other values and is typically present to some degree in all these conflicting approaches.
An alternative approach is to include anything and everything that justice in its broadest sense might be about. However, the particular
conceptual analysis of justice I adopt in this chapter is a relatively narrow one that seeks to identify the core distinctive meaning of ‘justice’. I suggest that it is helpful to think of justice as being a combination of recognizing the basic equal worth of all human beings together with a commitment to the distribution of good and bad things on the basis of desert In the next chapter I refine and turn this conceptual thesis into something more like a normative analysis by commending a particular conception of desert that includes the possession of socially valued personal qualities, such as intelligence, when these are associated with ‘moral desert’, that is things, such as choice and effort, for which the person should be praised or blamed in moral terms I label this interpretation of desert as having to do with ‘merit’ and I describe this particular normative theory of justice as ‘meritorian’, while emphasizing that this conception of justice is founded in an affirmation that all human beings have equal moral significance.
This is a brief summary of the theory of justice that I commend in this volume. It is, however, like most philosophical theories, a contentious and disputed analysis In fact, most of the theories discussed in this book do not give desert such prominence. Most of them reject or bypass the idea of desert altogether and even dissociate some types of justice from distribution altogether. However, the association of justice with distribution of benefits and burdens, or advantages and disadvantages, is less contentious than the connection with desert Most theories of justice focus on some aspect of distribution of valued and disvalued things, such as pleasure and pain, material goods, status and political power. Nevertheless, although justice is about distribution, distribution is not always about justice. Justice deals with distribution for a particular sort or cluster of reasons There are many other moral considerations, such as the efficient allocation of resources (utility), the relief of suffering for its own sake (humanity) and prior obligations (such as group loyalty and promise keeping) which affect moral choices about how goods and ills ought to be distributed. Although the language of justice can be and frequently is used loosely to cover all these distributive rationales, in its distinctive meaning justice takes into account only some of the morally relevant factors that justify distributions of one sort or another
Tying the meaning of justice in its distinctive sense to distribution in accordance with desert goes beyond reporting on the highly variable uses of the term. It is selective of its distinctive uses and is to some extent a stipulation designed to bring clarity to a confused and confusing area of social and political discourse We therefore need to be aware that some philosophers argue that distribution features in social and political
justice (sometimes called ‘distributive justice’ or ‘social justice’), but not in other spheres of justice, such as corrective justice and tort law. Others accept the distributive thesis but argue that desert, although a feature of personal or individual justice, either does not, or should not, feature in the design and critique of social and political institutions, if only because it is very difficult to know precisely what it is that people actually deserve. Some contend that the very idea of desert is mistaken since it assumes that what we do is the product of our freewill, when in fact all our actions are determined by factors, including our genetic make-up, which are outside our control. Still other philosophers believe that the discourse of justice is so ill defined and variable that there is nothing that can usefully be said about it overall except that it is an affirmation of what is morally or legally acceptable or unacceptable in human relationships.
There is, however, undoubted heuristic value in starting out with a working theory of justice as a framework for making comparisons and engaging in philosophical discussion. Moreover, if we seek to identify the distinctive elements within the discourse of justice it is both plausible as a matter of discourse analysis and useful as a matter of conceptual orientation to focus on how far ‘who gets what’ reflects our basic beliefs as to what is fair in a sense which captures the common conviction that differential holdings and treatments ought to reflect the merits or deserts of those involved This was the view of classical theorists such as Aristotle who held that ‘all men agree that what is just in distribution must be according to desert in some sense’ and echoed by the great liberal theorist John Stuart Mill (1806–73): ‘it is universally considered just that each person should obtain that (whether good or evil) which he deserves; and unjust that he should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which he does not deserve. This is perhaps the clearest and most emphatic form in which the idea of justice is conceived by the general mind’ (1910 [1863] p. 41; see also Sidgwick 1901, ch. 5).
One of the reasons why desert-based concepts of justice fell out of favour in the latter part of the last century was the place of the contrary view in the enormously influential theory of justice expounded by John Rawls (1921–2002) who denied that there was such a thing as ‘natural’ or moral desert, since individuals could not take the credit or responsibility for all the factors that contribute to their good and bad conduct (see Chapter 5). This rejection of desert fits in with another of Rawls’s contentions, that, in the public sphere at least, justice takes priority over all other moral considerations, such as utility, liberty and freedom from pain. After all, even those who believe in natural desert do not consider
that it is the only or even the most important moral factor relevant to the distribution of what Rawls calls the ‘benefits and burdens arising from social cooperation’. We do not need to accept the thesis that justice is, by definition, the prime or most important and overriding social and political value. In fact, it is clear that justice is, in actual practice, only one type of moral standard used to evaluate social and political circumstances and that it is not always the morally most important one. In this case, it is easier to go along with the association of justice with desert for this does not imply that desert is always the overriding moral consideration in public life.
When the first edition of this book was published in 1988 there were few desert-based concepts of justice being propounded (but see Feinberg 1970a; Miller 1976; Sher 1979; Sadurski 1985) Interestingly this has now changed. Desert-based analyses of justice are coming back into prominence (Pojman and McLeod 1999; Miller 1999; Kagan 1999; Olsaretti 2003), particularly in contemporary theories of ‘luck egalitarianism’ which are discussed in the next chapter (Cohen 1989; Dworkin 2000) This strengthens the original case for using a desert-based analysis as a framework for the exposition and critique of a broad range of theories of justice, most of which adopt a different standpoint.
However, because what are accepted in philosophical circles as being theories of justice are so disparate in content, I adopt a two-level analysis of theories of justice At the first level, those who are generally regarded amongst English-speaking philosophers as important and original theorists of justice have in recent times been presented in their own terms and in accordance with their own assumptions about the meaning and scope of justice. None have been excluded on the grounds that their theories are not really about justice at all but about something else which is mistakenly called justice, although such exclusionary treatment might have strong philosophical justification in some cases. At the second level, the theories presented are subjected to criticism from a desert point of view. This provides a unity of theme and ongoing coherence in my assessment of conflicting theories of justice, and may also serve the purpose of rendering the meritorian theory of justice more persuasive.
The roots of justice
The extensive variety, internal complexity and long history of the ideas which are associated with the notion of justice make many different perceptions of justice seem – at least initially – equally plausible. This is
well illustrated by the common beliefs that justice is primarily a negative, conservative, minimal, purely public but, within its sphere, overriding virtue: beliefs which are all illuminating in their way but which can be highly misleading and contentious.
Those who hold that it is essentially a negative virtue hold that justice is largely concerned with how people should not treat each other, for instance, that they ought not to harm other people. There is certainly some basis for the belief that it is the sense of injustice or grievance that is at the core of our ideas about justice and explains its powerful emotive force. Justice is normally the language of complaint, hostile reaction and sometimes of revenge It is in resented deprivation and the consciousness of having been wronged that much justice talk is rooted, an analysis to be found in many theorists, such as Adam Smith (1723–90), who held that justice comes down to blaming and punishing those who harm others (Smith 1976 [1759], pp. 78–91). Justice is therefore often thought of as a negative virtue whose demands can be met simply by doing nothing beyond refraining from injuring others. According to one contemporary theorist, ‘the grammar of justice is intimately connected with the invocation of justice when we object to wrong’ and hence to feelings of indignation and abhorrence (Wolgast 1987, p. xii). On this view, justice, in so far as it is a positive or action-requiring virtue, is about righting wrongs through punishment, ensuring compensation for victims, or in some other way responding appropriately to the perpetration of injustice. This explains why theories of justice throughout the centuries have tended to reflect the perceived unfairnesses of the time, be they related to property, gender, race or political power. Associated with the negative view of justice as essentially having to do with injustice is the assumption that justice is a purely conservative value of righting wrongs (Smith 1976 [1759], Book II). More generally, the idea of injustice is closely associated with reactions of disappointment to unfulfilled expectations. Hence justice, at least in its negative expressions, can have strong conservative implications in that it seeks to sustain the status quo in society against destructive and disorderly intrusions. Thus, justice is often taken to require keeping within the rules of established social relationships, treating everyone in accordance with the expectations that have been legitimated by customary arrangements, conventions and laws, and putting right any deviations from accepted social norms. From this point of view correcting injustice is required to sustain existing social relationships.
However, most worked-out views as to what constitutes injustice involve a more substantial vision of justice with a positive element that
requires action which goes beyond putting right the wrongs that have been done and includes promoting an ideal of just human relationships as part of a harmonious and healthy society. This was very much the vision presented in Plato’s classic work The Republic, in which a just society is portrayed as a hierarchical but harmonious system of social classes within which each group plays its part in meeting the needs of the whole. Moreover, reformist political programmes, which highlight novel grievances or extend traditional expectations to other social groups, standardly appeal to a commun i ty ’s sense of j ust i ce and i n j ust i ce .
Established social rules and laws are not immune to the critique of injustice There are reformist as well as conservative notions of justice and there are positive (or active) as well as negative (or passive) notions of justice, which commit their users to bring about admirable social arrangements.
Other conceptual associations of justice are founded on the fact that justice is a standard ingredient of the language of legitimacy. This is part and parcel of the social contract tradition which has underpinned Western political philosophy from Hobbes in the 16th century to Locke in the 17th and Rousseau in the 18th, and which forms the basis of Rawls’s theory of justice (see Chapter 5). Political regimes use their role in furthering the cause of justice as a central basis for the justification of their right to rule, while the perpetration and protection of injustice by governments is a common justification for civil disobedience and political revolution. In this context justice, as distinct from benevolence or utility, often represents the minimal requirements for the vindication of political power. This fits its perceived importance in the hierarchy of values. Nevertheless justice is also used to express perfectionist ideals about the best forms of human relationships in the most utopian of societies which no actual state can be expected to achieve. The goals of full equality of opportunity, fair rewards for socially beneficial effort and countering the impact of luck on people’s well-being, are examples of aspirational ideals of justice. States which are way beyond the threshold of legitimacy may still fall short in terms of justice, and the concept of justice has applications far beyond identifying the threshold of political legitimacy There are maximalist as well as minimalist notions of justice, as is well illustrated by the socialist maxim ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’ (see Chapter 8).
Astrong case can also be made for the assumption that justice is primarily a public or political virtue in that it concerns the conduct, institutions and objectives of states, officials and public bodies rather than purely economic or domestic matters, which constitute the private
sphere This is the case for Rawls (see Chapter 5) Hence the association of justice with law and public policy (Sidgwick 1901, ch. 5) Indeed, justice is normally considered to be the legal virtue and largely out of place in personal relationships. And yet, the relevance of justice is not confined to narrowly political matters. Families, friendship groups and voluntary associations as well as courts and governments can be just and unjust, although this may not be central to their objectives. Further, it is a matter for investigation both whether justice in the small group has any bearing on justice in the state, and whether justice in the law is the same sort of thing as justice in the society as a whole – but it is clear that justice has significant applications in all these areas There are social as well as political notions of justice. Indeed, criticism of restricting the discourse of justice to the ‘public’ sphere is a frequent theme of socialist and feminist theorists.
Another common assumption is that justice is peremptory, or, in technical philosophical jargon, deontological, or ‘right in itself ’irrespective of its consequences. Indeed, justice is often seen as a particularly forceful deontic or imperative norm that does not permit of delay, deviation or compromise. Justice, it is often asserted, must be done and be done in full before any other objectives or values can be implemented. This assumption of the primacy and imperiousness of justice sometimes goes with the view that it is possible to be precise about what justice requires in a way that is not feasible with other more expansive and intangible virtues. The peremptory character of justice fits easily with the notion of justice as a minimal and negative virtue according to which justice is maintained as long as people do not injure others in specified ways. More positive and open-ended approaches to justice accommodate the view that justice is simply one virtue amongst others, and one which may have to give way to what are, on occasions, more pressing and important values, such as liberty or loyalty, particularly outside the spheres of law and politics. Yet even these more diffuse analyses of justice do not always do away with its deontic form and connotations.
Many other perspectives on justice reveal assumptions which are in tension or outright conflict with each other. Justice may be viewed entirely as an individual or also as a group matter It may be tied to law or dissociated from all coercive relationships. It may be viewed as the expression, or as the antithesis, of love and concern. It may be associated with decision-making in accordance with general principles, or with careful consideration of the ‘merits’ of each particular case. This kaleidoscope of diverse images presents a confusing and often incoherent picture of justice. One way of approaching this diversity is to note the
ideological or partisan political associations of different theories of justice.
Justice and ideology
Behind and beyond the differing perspectives on justice outlined above stand competing political and social ideologies, different world-views which combine basic value commitments with a set of assumptions about human nature and society. Ideologies, such as liberalism, socialism and feminism, have a major effect on what it is that justice is thought to be about and why it is or is not significant. Justice takes on different guises in different political ideologies and these ideologies adapt the notion of justice so as to fit more readily into their preferred outlook. Justice may also be seen as ideological in a more specific and derogatory sense, popularized by Marx (1818–83), according to which it offers a phoney vision of an ideal situation of equality and fairness which actually masks and perpetrates oppressive power relationships It is part of the Marxist theory of exploitation that the class with economic power in a particular type of society is sustained in power partly by the ‘false consciousness’ of those classes who mistakenly accept the ideals of the ruling class as representing the interests of all social classes. Thus justice, in a capitalist system, is the ideology of the ruling class in the sense that, even if it is accepted by everyone, it nonetheless represent the interests of capitalists and falsely purports to legitimate existing social and economic relationships as being objectively in the interests of everyone. Asimilar association between ideas of injustice and the phenomenon of male dominance is found in many feminist theories of justice
While there is no doubt that all moral and political concepts are part of the culture and rhetoric which sustain existing power relationships, I have already noted that the language of justice is frequently used to criticize existing power relationships, making it implausible to argue that justice always disguises legitimation of the status quo, although there is no doubt that it frequently does so. Nevertheless, all operative theories of justice are ideological in the weak sense that they are embedded in a particular world-view. Thus, it is illuminating to compare libertarian, welfare liberal and communitarian ideologies of justice, even if it turns out that they are not all equally self-serving.
Libertarian justice stresses individual rights as the irreducible basis for social organization, with justice being a matter of each individual getting that to which they are entitled by virtue of their exercise of these rights.
This is the approach, derived from John Locke (1632–1704) and adopted by Robert Nozick (see Chapter 3). In content such rights cluster around the idea of the autonomy and independence of each individual and the premise that all individuals may choose to do what they like as long as they do not infringe the rights of others. For libertarians, justice is a normative structure within which individuals can pursue their own goals without infringing the rights of others. It is limited, precise and stringent. Libertarian justice has more to do with freedom than equality, for although there is a strong presupposition of formal equality whereby persons are equal with respect to their equal possession of identical rights, there is no suggestion that the exercise of these equal rights will or should result in anything like an actual equality of social and economic positions Indeed, the opposite is assumed
The ideology of welfare liberalism, of which John Rawls may be taken as a mild example, in that he gives priority to assistance for the least well-off (see Chapter 5), also gives central place to individual rights, though it is more concerned with justice as a matter of the general distribution of benefits and burdens in a society in which outcomes as much as process are important variables. Here ‘welfare’ refers to the totality of the happiness and well-being of all persons and particularly to the alleviation of the sufferings of the poor and disadvantaged. In this ideology justice is focused on the distribution of welfare but is quite open-ended with respect to what form that distribution should take or to what range of social and economic benefits and burdens it applies to. It is individualistic with respect to its commitment to the value of each distinct person but holistic in the way it seeks to go about achieving justice through the management of a society to produce a fair overall distribution of goods and evils within a system of equal basic rights.
In this respect welfare liberalism has affinities to the moral theory of utilitarianism, according to which the ultimate moral standard is maximal utility (happiness or well-being), so that moral decisions come down to calculating what makes for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which in practice often means prioritizing the relief of suffering Equality of distribution has to be seen in the context of maximizing the realization of everyone’s desires, with equality of distribution coming in as one way of producing the quantitatively best outcome. If distributions are considered just in so far as they are effective in reducing suffering, welfare liberalism merges with what might be called liberal socialism However, as we shall see, Rawls is concerned with distancing himself from a purely utilitarian philosophy by giving over-
riding significance to certain basic rights that stand in the way of maximizing welfare.
It should be noted that utilitarianism, as a moral theory stressing the significance of the consequences of human actions and organizations, can underpin ideologies with very different outcomes in which the stress on equality, beyond the assertion that each individual counts for one in the calculus of utility, is not seen as having egalitarian implications whereby everyone is roughly in the same social and economic condition. Instead, the emphasis is placed on individual liberty in contexts where there are protected opportunities for unfettered exchange between individuals as the principal mechanism for attaining the greatest happiness of the greatest number. We may see this form of utilitarianism at work in economic theories of justice, such as Richard Posner ’s (see Chapter 6), and various forms of political ideology which are sometimes referred to as ‘economic rationalism’. In this guise, utilitarianism features as an alternative to Nozick’s scheme of rights as the justification for libertarian views on the limited role of the state.
Both libertarianism and Rawls’s more welfare-oriented liberalism rest on strong assertions of individual independence and autonomy as the bedrock of justice. In this they may be contrasted with a range of ideologies that stress the priority of society, community or state over the conception of individuals as units which are detachable from their cultural context ‘Communitarian’is a convenient label to identify positions which seek to get away from the stark individualism of individual rights and regard all values as embedded in a particular social or community culture, the understanding being that all cultures, even individualistic ones, construct a set of values and expectations within which all human interaction takes place ‘Justice’, on this communitarian view, refers to the proper functioning of a particular type of society in accordance with its own values and world-view.
As a viewpoint, communitarianism is distinguished by its rejection of the more extreme forms of individualism according to which societies are simply organizations to promote the interests of individuals whose values and significance are established independently of the society of which they are a part Communitarianism becomes more ideological in a narrow political sense when it adopts either the form of a traditional conservative commitment to sustaining existing social relationships, as in the case of Edmund Burke (1729–97), or the form of a proactive movement committed to the creation of an ideal of genuine community. Proactive forms of ideological communitarianism may take various guises, including visions of a socialist utopia in which justice is done in
that there is actual substantive equality brought about by seeing to it that people have what they need to be full and equal members of their society, or a feminist ideal in which gender oppression is eliminated and cooperative and caring values dominate.
These and other contrasting ideological approaches to justice are all reflected in the particular theories discussed in this book Thus Nozick (Chapter 3) is an identifiable libertarian and Dworkin (Chapter 4) is a liberal with some libertarian tendencies with respect to rights. Rawls is a modified welfare liberal. Posner (Chapter 6) is an economic utilitarian.
Marx (Chapter 8) is a type of communitarian. Young (Chapter 9) may be seen as a feminist with both liberal and communitarian elements These ideological divisions are important for the understanding and interpretation of theories of justice, but they are not the prime focus of this book
Rather the object is to offer analytical expositions and philosophical critiques of the principal contending theories which have most relevance to the contemporary world and which may be taken up and used within different ideologies.
It is not denied that political divergencies often underlie the juxtaposed ideas of justice as negative or positive, conservative or reformist, minimalist or maximalist. And it is acknowledged that conceptual analysis of key political concepts, such as justice, cannot be ultimately insulated from ideological disagreement. Nevertheless, there is much to be gained by way of clarity and understanding from a philosophical discussion which initially puts to one side overt ideological disagreement and seeks to work on the concepts, distinctions and presuppositions involved in different theories of justice. When, in due course, we come to take a position on ideological issues, we can then aspire to make choices which are more lucid and better informed Approached in this way philosophical discussions of such concepts as justice may reveal that conceptual frameworks may often be detached from their ideological origins and deployed in new ways within different ideological contexts. This opens up the range of choices available to us as we struggle with the ultimately personal matter of articulating our own moral and political outlook
Justice and distribution
Any account of justice must be able to take account of the immense variety and complexity of its meanings, applications and ideological associations and seek to uncover such unity as may underlie its different political manifestations without minimizing the extent of significant
disagreement In the absence of the naive belief that there is a ‘true’ or ‘correct’ meaning of ‘justice’, we must proceed by elucidating the actual deployment of the language of justice in all its variety to the point where stipulative choices have to be made in order to arrive at a clear and coherent set of conceptual distinctions which point up the nature of the political questions which are at issue in the contemporary world There may be no one correct analysis of justice but there are certainly more or less useful ones.
In these circumstances it is tempting to fall back on the technique of outlining an exceedingly vague and catch-all analysis which captures all the varied uses of justice as the term is actually used and then to move rapidly on and distinguish the varying conceptions of justice which embody the differing and competing moral views which coexist within the catch-all umbrella concept. The concept is then taken to provide the ‘meaning’ of justice, while the conceptions enunciate the evaluative criteria variously deployed to determine that certain types of situation are just or unjust. Thus the concept of justice may be analysed as a set of principles for assessing social and political institutions, while conceptions of justice represent differing views on the proper content of these principles.
Rawls, for instance, sees justice as a set of principles for ‘assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society’ and defining ‘the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social co-operation’ (1971, p 4) In this context, the concept of justice means ‘a proper balance between competing claims’, while a conception of justice is ‘a set of related principles for identifying the relevant considerations which determine this balance’ (p. 10).
Alternatively, since Rawls’s starting point does not take in all the uses to which the language of justice has been put, we might, in preference, adopt the more traditional approach according to which the concept of justice is defined as ‘giving to each his [or her] due’ , with rival conceptions of justice indicating what is to count as a person’s due in accordance with differing moral outlooks. Thus Miller (1976) holds that ‘the just state of affairs is that in which each individual has exactly those benefits and burdens which are due to him’ (p. 20) and goes on to say that ‘the important questions about justice emerge when we try to settle what a person’s “due” actually means’ (p. 24).
According to either view, it may be assumed that analyses of the concept of justice tell us what justice is all about in a detached and philosophical manner, while analyses of the differing conceptions of justice state what justice is in concrete terms and so enter the disputed arena of contentious and ideological political debate. In this way, utilizing the
concept/conceptions distinction is a common and to some extent an illuminating and unavoidable strategy, but it has certain drawbacks, which, as we shall see, are exacerbated by current assumptions about the primacy of justice as a political value.
In particular, there is a danger that the concept of justice is rendered too broad and its distinctive moral territory is thereby obscured This happens when the concept/conceptions distinction becomes disengaged from the actual uses of the language of justice in the everyday social and political debates from which the conventional analyses take their initial material and impetus. This is particularly so at the ‘concept’ level which often fails to capture the distinctive content of the consciousness of justice in normal life, in contrast to other ideals, such as humanity or the pursuit of happiness Indeed any analysis which sets out to capture the full range of uses to which the language of justice is put may turn out to be unmanageably open-ended, taking in the entire compendium of fundamental political concepts. This characteristic of over-extendedness, which tends to be the fate of all political terms with essentially favourable emotive connotations, is a common and unfortunate result of the deployment of the concept/conceptions distinction. Here it is best to follow Aristotle in Book Vof his Nicomachean Ethics where, having distinguished between justice as the ‘complete virtue’ and justice as ‘a part of virtue’, he goes on to concentrate on the latter. Taking Aristotle’s lead by seeking the distinctiveness of justice as a moral value, we should note that justice does not arise in our treatment of inanimate things, and possibly not in our treatment of animals. Thus Raphael contends that ‘justice and injustice, impartiality and partiality, arise only in our treatment of human beings’ (1970, p. 177). Precisely what it is about persons that makes them appropriate subjects for justice is unclear. It may be their capacity for feeling pleasure and pain; it may be their possession of reason and/or their capacity for making choices and acting accordingly. It is part of a theory of justice to identify the characteristics of human beings which are logically presupposed by these conceptual limitations on the applicability of justice and make it clear why justice applies only to our treatment of persons.
Auseful starting point here is the influential analysis of justice provided by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76). For Hume justice is a conventional device for preserving social order by settling disputes between individuals who are making incompatible claims on relatively abundant but nevertheless scarce resources. This means, in Hume’s case, that justice is primarily concerned with a system of property, but his view can be more generally stated in terms of the thesis that
justice has to do with the distribution of benefits and burdens, and in particular the distribution of available but scarce resources. Thus injustice may be regarded as a feature of situations in which one person or group of persons wrongly receives less or more than other persons or groups. This makes justice essentially a matter of contested unfavourable comparisons concerning the allocation of desirable and undesirable objects and experiences in a society or group.
If we accept this view, we can then proceed to distinguish different types of justice according to the nature of the valued and disvalued things whose distribution is in question, whether they be economic (economic or social justice), political (political justice), educational (educational justice) or punitive (criminal or corrective justice), and then consider the nature of the ‘justicizing’ (that is ‘just-making’) factors in each sphere of distributive concern.
This distributional definition of justice may be considered unduly restrictive in its exclusion of all aggregative or quantitative factors. Surely, it is argued, it matters how much there is to distribute as well as how the distribution is made Indeed, for Hume, the significance of justice is the social utility of having a settled system of property rules. Perhaps for this reason, Rawls, who takes a basically distributive view of justice, argues that justice does involve the maximizing of benefits so long as those worse off are advantaged to some degree. Others take a similar line, either in a weaker form, to the effect that maximizing benefits is not in itself unjust, or in a stronger form, in which justice positively requires maximization of benefits – always provided that certain distributive considerations are also taken into account.
The move to incorporate aggregation along with distribution into the domain of justice can be seen as an example of the tendency to broaden the concept of justice so that it may take in all socially desirable objectives. Rawls himself, as we shall see, is somewhat cavalier with respect to the distinctive meaning of justice, and it is unsurprising therefore that the prima faciemoral desirability of maximizing goods and minimizing evils should be brought into his overall scheme of justice It is regrettable that this overinclusive approach weakens a contrast which is one of the fixed points of most analyses of justice, namely the qualitative difference between considerations of justice and the principle of utility (that is, the principle that it is always right to maximize goods and minimize evils).
One of the standard objections to utilitarianism is that it leads to distributions which are substantively unjust in that it permits sacrificing the interests of some individuals to promote the well-being of others if the latter gain more than the former lose. This fixed-point contrast between
justice and utility is greatly weakened when aggregative considerations are introduced into the concept of justice. Rawls’s line is not, however, fatal to the contrast between utility and justice, since the essence of utilitarianism is the claim that utility is the sole moral criterion, both of aggregation and distribution, and any view which limits the role of utility is, to that extent, non-utilitarian Nevertheless it would seem better to claim that increasing the quantum of utility without reference to its distribution is not contrary to justice rather than to say that maximizing utility is part of the justice ideal.
Amore radical dispute about justice and distribution concerns the claim that it is fundamentally misleading to link justice to any distributive goal whatsoever. Thus Hayek (1976, pp. 62–100) denies that the distribution of benefits and burdens is the consequence of a distributive process, and argues that the whole notion of social or distributive justice is therefore meaningless. No person or group, he contends, has made a general distribution of wealth or any other desirable or undesirable thing. It is therefore mistaken to speak of a distribution as being unjust, for only the actions of persons can be unjust This, in turn, means that it is nonsense to speak of redistribution, since there never was in the first place any distribution which could serve as the basis for a revised distribution. He then goes on to argue that the attempt to impose patterns is inherently destructive of liberty. Thus, in a society where there is a free market in commodities, so that the overall outcome of economic activity is not the product of conscious choice but the unintended consequence of the innumerable discrete choices of individuals, there can be no use for the idea of redistributive justice, and the attempt to impose a distribution is destructive of the freedom of the individual within that society. Hayek’s approach fails to make the important distinction between states of affairs which are consciously and deliberately brought about and those which can be intentionally altered, whatever their origin. There is an uncontroversial and choice-neutral sense of ‘distribution’in which it refers simply to the quantity of any given variable belonging to a number of distinct individual entities or persons And, where there is any possibility of a distribution which affects human welfare being changed by human action, then there may be reason to assess that state of affairs in terms of justice and injustice, or indeed in terms of balancing one liberty against another, so that appropriate remedial action may be attempted. Whether or not the original distribution is the intended result of human action is immaterial, unless we wish to go on and raise the separate question of who, if anyone, is responsible for its occurrence Hayek is not, of course, unaware of this distinction. His position is rather
that, in a liberal society, no one has the duty to promote any particular distribution, if only because this cannot be done without constant interference with individual liberty to an extent which would destroy the free market. This is an ideological position which gives priority to certain forms of liberty over justice and does not in itself render the idea of distributive justice meaningless in situations capable of being changed by political intervention. Furthermore it sometimes makes perfect sense to speak of situations as just or unjust when it is not within anyone’s power even to change them. Value judgements do not always have to be directed at action in each instance of their use. They may also be used to assess the desirability of unalterable situations Certainly it is possible to hold the pessimistic view that, in an imperfect world, justice is an ideal norm which is capable only of very limited implementation
Nevertheless the idea that justice is essentially concerned with sustaining a particular pattern of distribution in desired goods and undesired ills does seem too constricting in so far as it ignores those theories which regard justice as having to do with acting in accordance with one’s rights or entitlements Thus, as I discuss in Chapter 3, Nozick (1974, Part II), argues that a person’s possessions or ‘holdings’ are just if they are the result of legitimate actions, that is, actions which are in accordance with rules of ownership, transfer and the rectification of illegitimate transfers, whatever the distributive pattern which results. Without dropping the term ‘distributive justice’, Nozick favours what he calls a ‘historical’ rather than an ‘end-state’ approach to justice in which justice is a matter of how people came to possess their holdings, rather than a matter of measuring holdings against some characteristics of the holders – such as their needs or their moral merits – which would enable us to think in terms of a particular pattern as the end-state of the distributive process in which holdings are matched with the present characteristics of the individuals concerned.
It is relatively easy to brush aside as overly dogmatic the refusal to countenance the possibility of end-state views of justice which Nozick, like Hayek, rejects for what appear to be primarily ideological reasons, such as hostility to the welfare state. It is certainly possible for societies to strive to attain patterned distributions, even if they are largely unsuccessful and sometimes coercive in the pursuit of their chosen goals. It is less easy to rule out historical or entitlement theories as possible theories of justice on the grounds that they do not directly relate to distribution as a preconceived objective. However, there is no formal difficulty here since distributions, considered simply as patterns, may be characterized by variables which incorporate reference to past events, as when the rele-
vant distributive characteristics are such historical facts as the occurrence of a promise or the receipt of a gift. Indeed this approach overlaps with some standard specifications of patterned end-states, particularly those which draw on the relative deserts of the holders of goods. To distribute according to merit and demerit is an inherently backwardlooking exercise Distributive definitions of justice require only that existing patterns may be altered in the direction establishing favoured patterns and need make no demand that these patterns be ahistorical in their variables.
Yet it may be true that the distributive paradigm does exclude important aspects of justice Thus, as we will see in Chapter 9, Iris Marion Young considers that an overemphasis on distributive issues masks the significance of class, race and gender oppression as exemplars of injustice. Even if we stick with the view that justice in all its manifestations has to do with questions of distribution it may still be useful to distinguish something called ‘distributive justice’ from other types of justice, even though these other types have an essential connection with distributive matters Thus, in a distinction which goes back to Book Vof Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,we may contrast ‘distributive justice’ and ‘corrective justice’. Distributive justice, in this narrow sense, refers to the distribution of benefits to social groups, while corrective justice, in a broad sense, concerns punishments, compensation for injuries and unfair exchange (sometimes referred to as commutative justice) In recent times this distinction has been developed into a contrast between ‘social justice’ which has to do with ‘the distribution of benefits and burdens throughout a society’ and ‘legal justice’ which concerns ‘punishment of wrongdoing and the compensation of injury through the creation and enforcement of a public set of rules’ (Miller 1976, p 22)
In Chapter 2, I argue that this distinction is misleading as a general account of the relationship between law and justice, if only because law is a key instrument in the determination of the overall distribution of benefits and burdens in a society. But it is often useful to give separate attention to those distributive issues which arise in situations where one individual has wronged or harmed another, and these issues do tend to be dealt with by distinct areas of law The general characteristic of these situations is that some corrective procedure is in order, perhaps because of a specific demerit of an offending individual (as in the area of criminal law), or because of specific harm caused through the fault of another person which calls for compensation or redress (the law of tort), or because of some unfairness or other impropriety which has arisen in the processes of exchange or other voluntary agreements in society (the law
of contract) All these situations (i) presuppose a specific interaction between individuals and the demand that something like the status quo, as it existed before that interaction, be restored; and (ii) do not seem to involve a broadly based comparison between individuals. This is a limited matter of seeing justice done either between individuals or to individuals, and, perhaps for this reason, ‘it seems proper to call this a form of individual, not of social justice’ (Honoré, 1970, p. 65), even if both involve a degree of redistribution of benefits and burdens.
The close relationship between justice and distribution of advantages and disadvantages is disputed by those who concentrate their attention on issues of social, economic and political power, particularly when power is seen as a form of oppressive relationship. Thus both Marx and Young are more concerned with freedom from economic, social and political domination than they are with the distribution of goods or offices. Such theorists may seek to shift attention away from the distribution of economic benefits and burdens towards oppressive social, economic and political relationships and argue that justice (or rather injustice) is a matter of oppression rather than distribution Of course, this may be only to say that the most important distributions are distributions of power but this in itself is an important corrective to the outlook of those who work with a narrow consumer view of the sort of distributions which justice is about.
Asimilar response may be made to those contemporary theorists who regard social ‘recognition’ as the fundamental issue at stake in advancing to a more just society. Thus Charles Taylor argues that in a multicultural society the sort of justice that matters is one which emphasizes rights as a way of acquiring recognition or acceptance of equality of status in society Much here depends on what we take ‘recognition’ to involve. If it is a matter of treating every individual as being of equal importance then it is readily accommodated within those desert-based approaches that start with the assumption that just distributions should be in accordance with ‘equal worth’, unless unequal worthiness is involved However, we may also interpret the emphasis on recognition as offering a wider than usual conception of what it is that is to be distributed, with less emphasis on material equality and more on what is often, after Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), called ‘respect for persons’.
There is still, however, the more general criticism that there are many morally relevant factors other than equal respect and desert which have a bearing on the distribution of desirable and undesirable things. For instance, the allocation of scarce resources so as to maximize economic outcomes may be morally correct but not because it is just. Similarly
distributions of power to provide social harmony may be admirable without being just. This takes us back to the second defining ingredient of justice: its association with desert.
Justice and desert
Academic and political attempts to distance justice from desert are the result of a number of important social and intellectual concerns. One is the practical difficulty of knowing and determining what people deserve, of comparing their deserts and of bringing about appropriate proportionate distribution of rewards and punishments. Another is the nagging doubt that people are genuinely free to determine their own behaviour Scientific approaches to human conduct suggest that actions, like everything else, are the result of causes which we are powerless to resist. The philosophical theory of ‘determinism’ , in arguing that all events are part of a chain of cause and effect, seems to undercut the defensibility of praising human actions over and above those of natural events Even those who hold to the idea of moral desert and justify the moral praising and blaming of human conduct doubt whether desert is an important consideration in the organization of large-scale social and political life.
However, there are counter-arguments to all these concerns, and there is a general persistence in the belief in human freedom of choice and moral autonomy. This is reflected in a recent resurgence of philosophical interest in moral desert and its relationship to justice, some of it overt and some of it focussed on the idea that justice should compensate for or negate the impact of luck and focus only on outcomes for which people are genuinely responsible (Cohen 1989; Dworkin 2000), a concept that has close affinities with desert in the context of rewards and punishments.
Further, it is a common and enduring belief in most modern societies that human beings are in some sense equally ‘deserving’, which derives from a conviction that all human beings are of equal worth. This is not a direct endorsement of moral desert, but it does incorporate a fundamental part of most desert theories, which is that everyone’s well-being is of equal moral significance in that it has equal more value or importance, so that undeserved inequalities are unacceptable or at least morally regrettable. While the commitment to the equal worth of all human beings is not confined to those who believe in moral desert, it does serve as an essential ingredient within the desert-based approach to justice according to which, ideally, justice requires that we treat each other in terms of our equal worth and our unequal worthiness.
Desert-based theories of justice are not strongly ‘egalitarian’in the sense that a just society is one with few and very limited economic and other differentials, although they may be if they hold that differences in desert are relatively small and should not be given much weight. However, desert theories are egalitarian in the weaker sense that they are committed to the fairness of unequal distributions that are not justified by the relative deserts of those involved. On this view, every person ought to enjoy essentially the same or equivalent circumstances, which may or must be overridden by considerations of desert or merit.
I call this presumption ‘prior equality’ to indicate that this is the starti ng po i nt from wh i ch departures must be j ust i f i ed Us i ng the concept/conceptions distinction, the desert-based analysis holds that the concept of justice assumes prior equality as the initial benchmark and requires that departures from this benchmark reflect the deserts of those involved – while differing conceptions of justice have to do with what counts as desert. This develops into the general contention that a state of affairs is just if and only if it is one which accurately reflects the equal worth and unequal worthiness of sentient and autonomous persons
The apparently traditionalist analysis of justice in terms of equality and desert is rendered unexpectedly open in its implications when it is dissociated from the common assumption that justice is necessarily the prime social value, even if only in matters of distribution. When conjoined with the now almost standard premise that justice is the prime value of sound social institutions, conceptions of justice become antagonists for ideological supremacy in a manner which distorts rather than clarifies the distinctiveness of justice-relevant considerations. If justice is defined as the priority political value, then whatever is adopted as a political priority automatically becomes dignified with the title of justice. On the other hand, if we take the view that the moral significance of justice in relation to other values is external to its analysis, and remains a matter for independent moral assessment – so that justice is not axiomatically given any special privileges in the competition for political primacy – then we can adopt a more dispassionate approach to the question of what justice is about.
From this ideologically less pressured position it is plausible to say that the desert analysis of justice captures most accurately the import of the language of justice in its distinctive uses, emphasizing both equality and desert without committing us to the idea that either substantive equality or treatment in accordance with desert is an overriding social value However, to deny the political primacy of justice runs counter to the consensus of most contemporary theorists of justice in the liberal
tradition Justice is generally held to be second only to economic prosperity as the prime value of contemporary social and political organizat i on . Hence, the s i gn i f i cance of arguments about j ust i ce as an ‘essentially contested’ concept which many different ideological positions wish to claim as their own and interpret in their own way in order to promote their particular view of right relationships
Although desert-based concepts of justice have been vigorously disputed by some recent theorists, notably Sandel (1982), who pioneered the ‘communitarian’ label, it is generally held that, at least in distributive matters, ‘justice is a very important, perhaps the most important virtue displayed by a society’ (Sadurski 1985, p 12) Few take the line – which is canvassed in this book and has become more accepted since the publication of the first edition in 1988 – that justice is only one distributive consideration amongst others, and, while very important, it is a consideration which is not necessarily of the highest moral significance either in public or private life. Once we give up the dogma that justice is constituted by the first and overriding principles of social and political organization, then it may be possible to agree on a more reflective and specific working concept of justice which takes its place alongside overlapping and competing ideals such as liberty, utility and humanity or benevolence.
In reading the literature on justice it is important to be aware that the majority of theorists simply assume the overriding moral priority of justice, at least in public life Indeed, the priority of justice has become so much a common philosophical premise that it has for many theorists the feel of an analytic truth. This is clearly a mistake. Of course, if ‘justice’ is (somewhat arbitrarily) defined as the overall standard of social rightness, then logically no other value can stand prior to justice since all relevant values are subsumed under its umbrella But if justice is anything less than the sum or proper balance of all social values, its priority cannot be taken for granted, even in distributive matters. Judgements of priority are substantive moral opinions and the priority of justice as a particular value, once brought into the light of day, may be open to serious doubt. It is always possible to define justice as the prime social value and then to go on and fill in its content with whatsoever is thought to be morally most important in social distribution But this dogmatic approach has the effect of undermining our efforts at conceptual clarification by removing the constraints imposed by the historically dominant informal logic of the language of justice in actual political debate, thereby rendering dangerously misleading any subsequent appeals to our ‘intuitions’ about what we think is ‘just’ or ‘unjust’, for such intuitions are rooted in our operative rather than in our stipulative normative concepts.
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többiek nem rendelkeznek; ez az átöröklés. Ezek a tulajdonságok erősen belegyökereztek a szervezetbe, mert az összes elődökével közösek. Az egyéni környezet befolyása tehát nem nyomja el egykönnyen, ellenben megmaradnak egyformáknak a külső körülmények különbözősége ellenére. Van valami belső erejük, mely a kívülről ható ingerekkel szemben megtartja állandóságukat; ez az öröklött tulajdonságok ereje. Ez az oka, hogy világosan körülírhatók és pontosan meghatározhatók. A társadalmi területen nincs meg ez a belső ok. Ezeket a specifikus tulajdonságokat a továbbtenyésztés nem szilárdítja meg, mert csak egy nemzedéken keresztül tartanak. Az a szabály, hogy a keletkező új társadalmak más fajhoz tartoznak, mint a belőlük keletkezők, mert az utóbbiak kombinálódva merőben új tulajdonságokat hoznak létre. Csak a gyarmatosítást lehetne a tenyésztés útján való átültetéshez hasonlítani; hogy pedig a hasonlóság megfelelő legyen, szükséges még, hogy a gyarmatosok csoportja ne vegyüljön más fajhoz vagy más változathoz tartozó társadalmakkal. A faj megkülönböztető tulajdonságai eszerint az öröklékenységből semmi erőtöbbletet nem nyernek a célból, hogy az egyéni változatoknak ellenállhassanak. Ellenben a körülmények befolyása alatt a végtelenségig változnak és módosulnak; sőt amikor meg akarjuk őket közelíteni és kiküszöböltünk minden változót, ami őket körülveszi, gyakran csak valami meghatározhatatlan maradvány esik a kezünk ügyébe. Ez a meghatározhatatlanság természetesen növekszik aszerint, amint nagyobb a jellemvonások összetétele. Mert minél összetettebb valamely dolog, annál különbözőbb kombinációkat alkothatnak a részek, melyekből össze van téve.
Ennek a következménye, hogy a specifikus típus nem mutat olyan biztos körvonalakat, mint a biológiában, nem számítva a legegyszerűbb és legáltalánosabb tulajdonságokat.48)
ÖTÖDIK FEJEZET.
A társadalmi tények
vonatkozó
A társadalmi fajok felvétele elsősorban a tények csoportosítására szolgáló mód, magyarázatuk megkönnyítése végett; a társadalmi morfológia tulajdonképpen út a tudomány magyarázó részéhez. Mi tehát az utóbbinak a módszere?
I.
A szociológusok nagy része abban a hiszemben van, hogy a jelenséggel számot vetettek, ha megvilágították, hogy mire való és mi a szerepe. Úgy érvelnek, mintha a jelenségek csak a szerepre való tekintettel léteznének és mintha nem volna más meghatározó okuk, mint az általuk betöltött céloknak világos vagy zavaros értelme. Ezért hiszik, hogy minden meg van mondva, ami megértésükhöz szükséges, amikor megállapították a célok valóságát és kimutatták, hogy a jelenségek miféle társadalmi szükségletnek tesznek eleget. Így Comte az emberi faj fokozatos haladását arra az alapvető célra vezeti vissza, amely az embert közvetlenül arra
ösztönzi, hogy bárminemű helyzetét minden körülmények között
szüntelen javítsa,49) Spencer pedig egy nagyobb boldogság szükségletére. Ennek az elvnek segítségével magyarázza Spencer a társadalmi alakulatot a kooperációból származó előnyökből, a kormányhatalmat a katonai kooperáció szabályozásából eredő előnyből, a családi alakulatokat pedig abból a szükségletből, mely a szülők, gyermekek és társadalom érdekeinek minél tökéletesebb összeegyeztetésében áll.
De ez a módszer összezavar két nagyon különböző kérdést. Valamely tény hasznos voltának kimutatása még nem jelenti annak megmagyarázását, hogy hogyan lett és miért van úgy, amint van. Mert a ténynek alkalmazása specifikus tulajdonságokat tételeznek fel, amelyek ezekre az alkalmazásokra jellemzők, de a tényre nem. Az, hogy szükségünk van a dolgokra, nincs hatással arra, hogy ilyenek, vagy amolyanok legyenek, a szükséglet nem hozhatja őket elő a semmiből és nem adhat nekik lételt. Más fajta okoknak köszönik létezésüket. Annak a haszonnak érzéklése, amit a dolgok nyújtanak, arra indíthat ugyan bennünket, hogy felvegyük ezeket az okokat és belőlük merítsük a bennük foglalt hatásokat és ne ezeket a hatásokat hozzuk elő a semmiből. Ez az állítás nagyon világos, annál inkább, mivel anyagi, vagy legalább lélektani jelenségekről van szó. A szociológiában sem lenne többé vitás, ha a társadalmi tények teljes anyagtalanságuk folytán, nem szabálytalanul, minden belső realitás nélkül jelennének meg. Amint ezeket mint tiszta észkombinációkat tekintik, úgy látszik, hogy hasznosságuk gondolatával együtt jönnek létre. De mivel mindegyiküknek megvan az az ereje, hogy a mi erőnkön uralkodjék és minthogy megvan a tulajdon természete, előállásukhoz nem lehet elegendő maga a puszta kívánság, sem az akarat. Szükséges még hozzá, hogy legyenek adva alkalmas erők, melyek létre tudják hozni ezt a meghatározott erőt és olyan sajátságok, melyek előteremtik ezt a külön sajátságot. Ez csak ilyen feltétel mellett lehetséges. Hogy felélesszük a családiasság szellemét ott, ahol elhalványult, nem elég, hogy hasznát mindenki megértse; közvetlenül azokat az okokat kell működésbe hozni, melyek helyreállítására egyedül képesek. Arra,
hogy valamely kormánynak a szükséges tekintélyt megteremtsük, nem elég csak szükségét érezni; azokhoz a forrásokhoz kell egyedül fordulni, melyekből minden tekintély ered, vagyis erősíteni kell a hagyományokat, a közszellemet stb., tehát az okok és okozatok láncolatán messzebb kell visszamenni, addig, míg nem találunk egy pontot, ahol az emberi cselekvés eredménnyel hozható működésbe.
A kutatás e két módjának kettős voltát az is bizonyítja, hogy tény lehetséges anélkül, hogy haszna volna, akár mert valamely életcélnak sohasem volt alárendelve, akár, mert egykor hasznos volt, s minden hasznát elvesztette és csak a szokás ereje által folytatta létét. Valóban a társadalomban még több ilyen maradvány van, mint az organizmusban. Sőt olyan eset is fordul elő, hogy egy szokás vagy társadalmi intézmény funkciót cserél, úgy hogy természete ezért nem változik meg. Az ispaterestquemjustaenuptiaedeclarantelv ugyanolyan formában megvan a mi törvénykönyvünkben is, ahogy a régi római jogban megvolt. De akkor az apai tulajdonnak a törvényes feleségtől származó gyermekek felett való jogait védte, ma sokkal inkább a gyermekek jogait védelmezi. Az eskü kezdetben a törvényszéki bizonyításnak egyik módja volt, ma a tanúzásnak szokásos és jelentékeny formája. A keresztyénség vallásos dogmái századok óta nem változtak, de a mi modern társadalmainkban nem az a szerepük többé, ami a középkorban volt. Innen van, hogy a szavak új fogalmak kifejezésére szolgálnak, anélkül, hogy alakjuk megváltozott volna. Végre a szociológiában és az élettanban igaznak elismert tétel, hogy a szerv független a funkciótól, vagy legkülönbözőbb célokra szolgálhat és amellett ugyanaz marad. Ennek az a magyarázata, hogy az okok, melyeken létük alapul, függetlenek a céloktól, melyekre szolgálnak.
Egyébként nem akarjuk azt állítani, hogy az ember törekvései, szükségletei és vágyai sohasem működnek közre aktiv módon a társadalmi fejlődésben. Ellenkezőleg, bizonyos, hogy a fejlődést siettetni vagy gátolni tudják azokra a feltételekre való vonatkozásuk szerint, amelyektől valamely tény függ. Csak semmiből egy esetben sem tudnak valamit előteremteni, s közreműködésüknek, bármilyen
hatásuk is van, csak működő okok révén van helye. Valójában egy cél, még korlátolt mértékben is, csak úgy járulhat hozzá valamely új jelenségnek létrejöveteléhez, ha maga új, akár úgy, hogy minden részében újra formálódott, akár pedig átváltozott formája valamely régi törekvésnek. Mert ha nem akarunk valami præstabilitált, mintegy gondviselésszerű harmóniát követelni, akkor nem lehet elfogadni, hogy az ember keletkezésétől fogva magában hordjon virtualiter minden törekvést, melyek a körülmények ösztönzésére felébrednek és csak az alkalomra van szükségük, hogy érezhetők legyenek a társadalmi fejlődésben. A törekvés már maga is dolog; és csupán azért, hogy mi hasznosnak véljük, nem fog sem előállani, sem megváltozni. Erő ez, melynek megvan a saját természete; s hogy ezt a természetet életre keltsük vagy befolyásoljuk, erre nem elég, hogy valami hasznát találjuk. E változások előidézésére a fizikailag bennük foglalt okoknak kell működni.
Példaképpen kifejtettük a társadalmi munka általános fejlődését, kimutatván, hogy ez szükséges arra, hogy az ember fenntarthassa magát azok közt az új életviszonyok közt, melyek közé a történelmi fejlődéssel egyidőben kerül; fejtegetésünkben jelentékeny szerepet tulajdonítottunk annak a törekvésnek, melyet helytelenül önfentartási ösztönnek neveznek. De még sem volna helyes egyedül ennek a törekvésnek adni előnyt a legelemibb specializáció felett sem, ha első helyre tesszük is. Mert ez hiábavaló törekvés, ha azok a feltételek, melyektől ez a jelenség függ, már meg nem valósultak, vagyis, ha az egyéni különbségek a társadalmi tudat progressziv meg nem határozottsága folytán és az öröklött befolyások következtében nem növekedtek meg eléggé.50) Sőt a munkamegosztásnak csak akkor kellene kezdődni, amikor hasznát felismerték és szüksége érezhetővé vált; szükségképpen csak az egyéni különbségek fejlődésének, mely az izlések és alkalmasság nagy eltéréseit is magában foglalja, kellene ezt első eredményként létrehozni. De azonkívül az önfentartás ösztöne nem magában és nem ok nélkül termékenyítette meg a specializáció ez első magvát. És hogy ez ilyen irányt vett és minket erre az új útra térített, az az oka, hogy az út, melyet előbb követett és velünk is követtetett,
elzárult, mert nagyobb népsűrűséggel járó erősebb küzdelem mind nehezebbé tette azoknak az egyéneknek fenmaradását, kik általános munkára adták magukat. Így állt be az irányváltozás szüksége. Más részről, ha a mi tevékenységünk a mindinkább fejlődő munka megoszlására nézve kedvezően változott, az a magyarázata, hogy ebben az irányban is legcsekélyebb volt az ellenállás. Egyéb lehető megoldás a kivándorlás, öngyilkosság és bűn volt. Azok a kötelékek, melyek bennünket országunkhoz, az élethez kapcsolnak, a rokonszenv, melyet hozzánk hasonlók iránt tanusítunk, az átlag esetekben bizonyára erősebb és ellentállóbb érzelmek, mint a szokások, amelyek nagyobb specializációtól eltántoríthatnának bennünket. Ez utóbbiaknak minden keletkező nyomásnak ellenállás nélkül engedniök kellene. Így még részben sem jutunk teleologikus szemlélethez, mert nem mondunk le arról, hogy az emberi szükségleteknek a szociológiai fejtegetésekben helyet adjunk. Mert ezek a szükségletek csak olyan feltétel mellett befolyásolják a társadalmi fejlődést, ha magukban fejlődtek és a változások, melyeken átesnek csak olyan okok alapján fejthetők ki, amelyeknek a végső célokhoz semmi közük sincs.
Az előbbi elmélkedéseknél sokkal meggyőzőbb maga a társadalmi tények praxisa. Ahol teleológiai világnézet uralkodik, ott többékevésbbé az esetlegesség is uralkodik; mert nincsenek célok, nincsenek eszközök, melyek minden emberre szükségképpen kényszerítő hatással volnának, még ha feltételezzük is, hogy azok körülményeken alapulnak. Az adott körülmények között minden ember véralkata szerint alkalmazkodik ahhoz az eszközhöz, melyet más egyébnél előnyösebbnek tart. Egyik úgy igyekszik változtatni rajta, hogy összhangba hozza szükségleteivel; a másik inkább magán változtat; mérsékli vágyait, hogy elérje ugyanazt a célt, minthogy az utak különbözők lehetnek és egyformán lehet velük célt érni. Ha tehát igaz volna, hogy a történelmi fejlődés bizonyos jól vagy rosszul felismert célok szerint halad, a társadalmi tényeknek végtelen sok különbözőséget kellene feltüntetniök és szükségképpen minden összehasonlítás merő lehetetlenség volna. Épp az ellenkezője igaz. Kétségtelen, hogy a külső események, amelyeknek lefolyása a
társadalmi élet felszínét alkotja, népek szerint változnak. De azért van, mert minden egyénnek megvan a maga története, jóllehet a fizikai és erkölcsi organizáció alapjai mindegyiknél azonosak. Valóban mikor a társadalmi tényekkel csak valamelyest érintkezésbe léptünk, ellenkezőleg, meglep bennünket a hasonló körülmények között uralkodó csodálatos szabályosság. Sőt a legaprólékosabb és látszólag leggyerekesebb szokások is meglepő egyformasággal ismétlődnek. A házassági ceremóniák, melyek látszólag pusztán szimbolikus jellegüek, mint pl. a nőrablás, pontosan meglelhetők mindenütt, ahol van bizonyos családi típus, mely ismét össze van kötve az egész politikai szervezettel. A legbizarrabb szokások, mint a couvade (férfi betegágy), a leviratus, az exogamia, a legkülönbözőbb népeknél megfigyelhetők, s egy bizonyos társadalmi állapot tünetei. A végrendelkező jog a történelemnek egy bizonyos fázisában tűnik fel, s többé-kevésbbé fontos megszorításai alapján meg lehet mondani, hogy a társadalmi fejlődésnek melyik idejéből való. Könnyű volna egy sereg példával előhozakodni. A kollektiv formáknak ez az általánossága bizonyára megmagyarázhatatlan volna, ha a végső okoknak olyan nagy fontosságuk volna a szociológiában, mint amilyet nekik tulajdonítanak.
Ha tehát társadalmi jelenséget meg akarunk magyarázni, külön kellkutatnunka hatóokot,melylétrehoztas a funkciót,amitvégez.
Inkább a funkció szót használjuk a vég vagy cél szavak helyett, mert a társadalmi jelenségek általában nem azért léteznek, hogy hasznos eredményeket hozzanak létre. Azt kell megállapítani, hogy van-e megegyezés a megfigyelt tény és a társadalmi organizmus általános szükségletei között és miben áll ez a megegyezés, anélkül, hogy figyelmet fordítanánk arra, hogy valami célt szolgált-e vagy sem. A célkitűzéssel foglalkozó kérdések különben sokkal szubjektivebbek, semhogy tudományosan tárgyalhatók volnának.
A problémáknak e két fajtáját nemcsak hogy el kell különíteni, hanem ajánlatos általában az elsőt a második előtt tárgyalni. Ez a rend valóban megfelel a tények rendjének. Természetes, hogy a jelenség okát kell keresni, mielőtt megkísérelnők hatásainak
meghatározását. Ez a módszer annál logikusabb, mert az első kérdést egyszerre megoldván, gyakran segít a második megoldásában. Valóban az összetartozás kötelékének, mely az okot az okozathoz kapcsolja, kölcsönösségi jellege van, melyet nem ismertek fel eléggé. Kétségtelen, hogy az okozat nem lehet ok nélkül, de ennek megfordítva szüksége van a maga okozatára. Az okozat az okból meríti erejét, de ez viszont pótolja azt neki alkalomadtán és nem tünhet el anélkül, hogy az reá vissza ne hatna.51) Például az a társadalmi visszahatás, amit a büntetés fejez ki, a kollektiv érzelem intenzitására vezethető vissza, melyet a bűn megsért. De másrészről megvan az a hasznos funkciója, hogy az érzelmeket az intenzitás ugyanegy fokán tartja, mert ezek az érzelmek elgyengülnek, ha ki nem engesztelődnek az ellenük elkövetett sérelmek.52) Éppen így a hagyományok és hiedelmek megrendülnek abban a mértékben, amint a társadalmi milieu összetettebb, mozgékonyabb lesz, határozatlanabbak, bizonytalanabbak lesznek s a gondolkodó képességek fejlődnek. De ugyanezek a képességek feltétlenül szükségesek a társadalmaknak és az egyéneknek, hogy alkalmazkodhassanak a mozgékonyabb és összetettebb környezethez.53) Abban a mértékben emelkedik a tünemények száma és minősége, amint az emberek kénytelenek intenzivebb munkát végezni. De ez a gazdaságosabb és jobb termelés azért szükséges, hogy a költségek pótoltassanak, melyekkel a nagyobb munka együtt jár.54) A társadalmi jelenségek oka korántsem annak a funkciónak gondolatbeli anticipációjában áll, melyet hivatva vannak betölteni; ez a funkció ellenkezőleg, legalább is legtöbb esetben, az előre létező (præexistans) oknak fentartásában áll, melyből a jelenségek erednek; az elsőt tehát könnyebben megtaláljuk, ha a második ismeretes.
Ha a funkció megállapítását csak másodsorban végezhetjük, azért az szükséges a jelenség magyarázatának teljessége végett. Ha a tény haszna nem az, aminek létét köszöni, általában meg is kell hasznának lenni, hogy fenmaradhasson. Ha nem szolgál semmire, ez már magában elég, hogy ártalmas legyen, mert ebben az esetben
költségbe kerül eredmény nélkül. Ha tehát a társadalmi jelenségek átlagának ilyen parazita jellege volna, a szervezet költségvetését deficit érné, s így lehetetlenség volna a társadalmi élet. Tehát, hogy ez utóbbinak kielégítő értelmezését adjuk, ki kell mutatni, hogy a jelenségek, melyek anyagául szolgálnak, mi módon működnek együtt, hogy a társadalmat vele és a külvilággal harmóniába hozzák. Kétségtelen, hogy a szokásos formula, mely az életet, mint a belső és külső környezet közi megegyezést fogja fel, csak megközelítőleg helyes; általánosságban ugyan helyes és hogy az életet megértessük, nem elég rámutatni az okra, amitől függ; meg kell még találni legalább is az esetek nagy részében azt a részt, amely hozzáadódik a tényhez ennek az általános harmóniának megállapításánál.
II.
Miután ezt a két kérdést elkülönítettük, meg kell határozni a módot is, amely szerint megoldhatók.
A szociológusok által követett magyarázó-módszer teleológikus és egyúttal lényegében pszichológikus is. E két irány összefügg egymással. Valóban, ha a társadalom emberek által, bizonyos célok szempontjából alkotott intézmények rendszere, e célok csak egyéniek lehetnek, mert a társadalom előtt csak egyének létezhettek. Tehát az egyénből sugároztak ki azok az eszmék és szükségletek, melyek a társadalmak alakulását meghatározták, s ha minden tőle származik, szükségképpen mindent vele kell magyaráznunk. A társadalomban tehát csak egyéni öntudat van; s így az utóbbiban találjuk meg az egész társadalmi fejlődés forrását. Következőleg a szociológiai törvények csak összefoglalásai lehetnek a legáltalánosabb lélektani törvényeknek. A kollektiv élet legfőbb magyarázata annak kimutatása lesz, hogy az mimódon bontakozik ki általánosságban az emberi természetből, akár úgy, hogy közvetlenül
vezetik le belőle előzetes megfigyelés nélkül, vagy úgy, hogy kapcsolatba hozzák vele azután, mikor már megfigyelték.
August Comte körülbelül szószerint ezeket a szavakat használja rendszerének jellemzésére: «Mivel a társadalmi jelenség – mondja –egészben véve nem más, mint az emberiség egyszerű fejlődése, anélkül, hogy új képességek jöttek volna létre, tehát, amit én az alábbiakban kifejtettem, minden létező képesség, amit a szociológiai megfigyelés fokonként feltár, megtalálható legalább is csírájában abban az őstípusban, amit a biológia a szociológia hasznára már előbb megalkotott.55) Ez azért van így, mert szerinte a társadalmi élet uralkodó ténye a haladás és hogy másfelől, ez a haladás egy kizárólag pszichikai ténytől függ, attól az ösztöntől t. i., amely az embert öntermészetének mindjobban való kifejtésére ösztönzi. A társadalmi tények annyira közvetlenül az emberi természetből erednek, hogy mindjárt az első történelmi kialakulások folyamán le lehet belőlük vezetni, úgy hogy nincs szükség a megfigyelésre.56) Igaz, Comte elismeri, hogy ezt a deduktiv módszert lehetetlen a fejlődés előrehaladottabb periódusaira alkalmazni. Csakhogy ez a lehetetlenség pusztán gyakorlati természetű. Ennek az az oka, hogy olyan nagy a távolság a kiindulópont és a végpont közt, hogy az emberi ész tévútra jut, ha ezt irányadó nélkül akarja megtenni.57) De azért az emberi természet alapvető törvényei és a haladás végső eredményei közti viszony analitikus marad. A civilizáció legösszetettebb formái nem egyebek, mint a fejlett pszichikai élet. De ha a szociológiai meggondolásnál a lélektani theóriák sem elegendők, mint premisszák, ezek akkor csak a próbakövet szolgáltatják, mellyel kipróbáljuk az induktiv úton nyert tételek erejét. «Társadalmi törvényt – mondja Comte –, melyet történelmi módszerrel nyertünk, ha még oly nagy tekintély támogatja is, nem szabad addig végérvényesen elfogadnunk, míg az észszerűen össze nincs kapcsolva az emberi természet pozitiv elméletével, direkt vagy indirekt, de mindig elvitázhatatlan módon.»58) Tehát mindig a pszichológiáé az utolsó szó.
