ABSTRACT

Pre-Naturalist Ideas of Justice What is justice? Where does the human sentiment for it come from? What is its rela-

tionship to various processes such as cooperation, conflict, altruism, empathy, sympathy,

and punishment? My dictionary’s definition of justice goes around in circles, defining it as

“the maintenance or administration of what is just.” It previously defines just as “con-

forming to a standard of correctness; righteous; merited; deserved” and gives as synonyms

the terms fair and upright. Because the predicate is contained in the subject, this defi-

nition does not do us much good. But we cannot expect too much from dictionaries

because the question of the origin of moral sensibilities such as justice has occupied

philosophers for centuries. Supreme Court Justice Potter once said that he could not

define obscenity but knew it when he saw it. We too have difficulty defining justice but

know it when we see it. Given that justice is intimately woven into our discipline, we

should expect to see a lot of pondering over its origins and meaning, but we do not.