ABSTRACT
Why should one raise the question about the origin of justice? – the question whether it is ‘natural’. As Glaucon states it, the assumption seems to be that justice, especially refraining from doing harm to other people, is contrary to nature. That is why it needs justification, just as it does if you undertake something burdensome or unpleasant. This shifts the attention to the consequences of morality, to what it promotes or brings. Utilitarianism, for example, emphasises happiness. It is almost like a question of the justification of morality, contrasted with a consideration of what it is. The question may be raised when there is a suggestion that morality is arbitrary, as might seem to be implied by the contention that it is an affair of custom rather than of nature; the notion that morality is a sort of instrument or a convenience. So in social contract theory, which incidentally holds that all social institutions are so. It is as if asking, ‘Why are people moral?’ were asking what they expected to gain or to avoid by it.
