ABSTRACT

Justice has to do with the distribution of benefits and burdens, rewards and punishments. The concept is clear, but the conceptions, the various interpretations of that concept, and the theories of application are anything but clear. On the contrary, they are systematically contested. Is justice a transcendental reality, as Plato (reading 1) held, an artificial construct as Hume (reading 4) argued, or a formal property having to do with proportional distribution, as Aristotle (reading 2) believed, or simply what the contracting parties invent in mutually self-interested agreements, as Hobbes (reading 3) held, or something to do with ownership, a giving to one according to his deserts, as Simonides reports in Plato’s Republic and as the Roman legal philosophers Cicero and Ulpian, as well as Thomas Aquinas, contended (tribuens suum cuique, “render to each his due”)? Actually, for all his skepticism about traditional political philosophy, Karl Marx (reading 5) seems to share with the Roman jurists, the classical desert theory. The utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill (reading 6), seems to have held a version of this doctrine, deeming it the central meaning of justice, which in turn signifies simply the most stringent requirements of utilitarian morality. Kant also held this position, making it a premise for an argument for the existence of God and life after death.1 Is justice simply the secular analogue to the religious doctrine of rewards and punishment according to merit? As we shall see in Part II, contemporary political

philosophers, such as John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Gregory Vlastos, and Derek Parfit have rejected or reduced the salience of this classic conception of justice as desert for more egalitarian or need-based conceptions.