Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

1. Rationality and justice are never neutral; they are always embedded within a specific historical tradition.

Does justice permit gross inequality of income and ownership?

The illusion of neutrality. Modern society is deeply divided over fundamental moral questions, such as the nature of justice and the rules of practical rationality. We often mistakenly assume that there is a single, neutral, and universal standard of reason to which any rational person must assent. In reality, our moral and philosophical concepts are always constructed out of historical fragments inherited from different, often incompatible traditions.

The Enlightenment's failure. The Enlightenment attempted to construct a universal framework of rational justification independent of all social and historical particularities. However, this project failed, resulting in a fragmented culture where competing moral claims are asserted without any shared rational basis for resolution.

• The Enlightenment sought to replace tradition with universal, self-evident principles.
• This attempt produced a multiplicity of competing, unresolved philosophical systems.
• Modern academic philosophy has become a means of defining disagreements rather than resolving them.
• Public debate has degenerated into a series of non-rational assertions and counter-assertions.

A historical alternative. To overcome this impasse, we must recover a conception of rational enquiry as something embodied within specific historical traditions. Rationality is not a timeless, abstract standard, but a historically developing process that vindicates itself by overcoming the limitations of its predecessors.

2. The Homeric world integrated justice and action through socially defined roles, where goodness meant fulfilling one's functional duty.

To do what my role requires, to do it well, deploying the skills necessary to discharge what someone in that role owes to others, is to be agathos.

The cosmic order. In the Homeric world, the concept of dike (justice) was inseparable from a single, divinely ordained cosmic order that structured both nature and society. To be just was to conduct oneself in accordance with this order and to fulfill the duties of one's socially defined role. Excellence (arete) was measured by how well an individual performed the tasks required by their role, particularly that of the warrior-king.

The role of passion. Action in the Homeric poems is driven by the thumos (spirit or energy) and is subject to the incursions of passion and divine intervention. Homeric characters do not engage in modern, self-reflective practical reasoning; instead, they call to mind what they know of their roles to resist disruptive passions.

• Dike represents the objective, cosmic, and social order.
• Arete is the functional excellence required to fulfill one's role.
• Thumos is the physical and emotional energy that drives action.
• Practical reasoning is limited to identifying the necessary means to pre-established, socially defined ends.

The seeds of conflict. While the Homeric world integrated excellence and success, it also contained latent tensions. The contrast between achieving excellence and winning the prizes of victory would eventually become problematic, setting the stage for post-Homeric Greek debates.

3. The post-Homeric transition split human excellence into a conflict between the pursuit of success and the pursuit of virtue.

The contrast between the two conceptions of justice in respect of both content and justification scarcely needs to be spelled out further.

Excellence versus effectiveness. As Greek society transformed, the pursuit of excellence became separated from the pursuit of success and power. This division generated two competing conceptions of justice and practical rationality: one focused on the goods of excellence (desert and virtue), and the other on the goods of effectiveness (power, wealth, and reciprocal cooperation).

The role of the polis. For those committed to the goods of excellence, the polis (city-state) was the essential arena for integrating and ordering all human activities toward the overall human good. Justice was understood as a virtue of character, a disposition to give to each person what they deserve according to their merit.

• Justice of desert: Based on merit, virtue, and the objective ordering of goods.
• Justice of effectiveness: Based on utility, reciprocity, and the mutual containment of self-interest.
• Prudence of excellence: A virtue that transforms desires to align with the good.
• Prudence of effectiveness: A skill used to calculate the most efficient means to satisfy pre-existing desires.

The sophist alternative. Conversely, the protagonists of effectiveness viewed the polis as an arena of competing interests where justice is merely a compromise between self-interested parties. This view, championed by the sophists and Thucydides, reduced justice to a set of rules designed to secure cooperative effectiveness.

4. Plato rescued moral enquiry by showing that rationality requires a systematic progression toward an objective, timeless good.

The theory of forms is primarily a theory of inquiry, a theory ignorance of which by those engaged in enquiry will necessarily lead them to fail, because they will not understand adequately what they are doing.

The Periclean synthesis. Pericles presented the Athenians with an idealized, democratic version of the Homeric hero, in which the pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of imperial power were treated as harmonious. But the realities of the Peloponnesian War exposed the deep contradictions in this rhetorical vision. The Athenian empire's treatment of weaker states, such as Melos, revealed that in external relations, the Athenians recognized only the justice of effectiveness—the right of the stronger.

The tragic critique. Sophocles, in plays like the Philoctetes, exposed the potential incoherence of the Periclean view by portraying the conflict between the demands of competitive success and the requirements of a justice based on desert. Yet tragic drama could only pose these questions; it could not provide a rational resolution.

• Periclean rhetoric combined argumentative and manipulative forms of persuasion.
• The Athenian empire justified its actions by appealing to the right of the stronger.
• Sophocles exposed the conflict between competitive success and the justice of desert.
• Thucydides' history showed how the separation of virtue from practical intelligence led to the ruin of Athens.

The Socratic method. Plato rejected the Thucydidean view by arguing that without virtue, both theoretical and practical rationality are impossible. He inherited from Socrates the method of elenchos (refutation), which showed that conventional beliefs were inconsistent and unreliable. But to move beyond mere skepticism, Plato had to develop a new conception of dialectic.

5. Aristotle synthesized virtue and practical reason, arguing that true rationality is impossible without the moral virtues.

To be uneducated in the virtues is precisely to be unable as yet to judge rightly what is good or best for oneself.

Completing the project. Aristotle understood his own philosophy as a continuation and correction of Plato's. He replaced Plato's transcendent Forms with a teleological metaphysics in which forms are immanent in the natural and social world. For Aristotle, the polis is the natural and completed form of human community, within which alone human beings can actualize their potential.

The role of experience. Aristotle argued that we must begin our enquiry from the endoxa—the received opinions and practices of our community. Through epagoge (induction), the mind moves from these particulars to grasp the universal concepts that provide the first principles of science.

• Endoxa: The starting point of enquiry in the shared beliefs of the community.
• Epagoge: The process of moving from particular experiences to universal concepts.
• Nous: The intellectual capacity that grasps first principles.
• Episteme: The demonstrative science derived from those first principles.

The necessity of the virtues. Aristotle insisted that the intellectual virtue of phronesis (practical wisdom) is inseparable from the moral virtues. Without a virtuous character, an individual cannot identify the true good in particular situations and is therefore incapable of sound practical reasoning.

6. Augustine introduced the concept of the will, transforming justice into an act of divine obedience and love.

The human will is then the ultimate determinant of human action and the human will is systematically misdirected and misdirected in such a way that it is not within its own power to redirect itself.

The universal law. Augustine transformed the classical understanding of justice by grounding it in the divine law revealed in scripture and accessible to human reason as natural law. Unlike the Greek polis, the scope of Augustinian justice is universal, extending to all human beings as members of the civitas Dei (City of God).

The invention of the will. Augustine introduced the concept of the voluntas (will) as the ultimate determinant of human action, a concept lacking in classical Greek philosophy. The human will is systematically misdirected by pride (superbia) and can only be redirected toward the love of God by divine grace.

• Voluntas: The independent, originating power of choice.
• Superbia (pride): The fundamental vice of self-love and self-reliance.
• Humilitas (humility): The essential virtue required for the love of God.
• Grace: The divine gift necessary to heal and redirect the corrupted will.

The political theology. This theological psychology led to a radical critique of pagan political orders, including Rome. Augustine argued that without the love of God, there can be no genuine justice, and therefore pagan states are not true republics but merely cooperative bands of robbers.

7. Aquinas achieved a monumental synthesis, reconciling the pagan rationality of Aristotle with the Christian theology of Augustine.

Prudentia perfects those who possess it by providing the kind of control over one's actions which is required for all the virtues.

The Thomistic synthesis. Aquinas achieved a monumental synthesis by integrating the Aristotelian account of the virtues and practical reasoning with the Augustinian theology of the will and grace. He argued that while human beings possess a natural capacity for virtue and practical reason, these natural virtues are radically incomplete unless they are perfected by the theological virtues, especially caritas (charity).

The role of synderesis. Aquinas explained our natural knowledge of the moral law through synderesis, an infallible habit of the practical intellect that grasps the primary, self-evident precepts of the natural law. Conscientia (conscience) is the application of these general principles to particular situations, a process that is liable to error.

• Synderesis: The infallible grasp of the first principles of natural law.
• Conscientia: The fallible application of those principles to action.
• Prudentia: The cardinal virtue that directs the application of moral rules.
• Caritas: The supernatural love of God that forms and perfects all other virtues.

The limits of positive law. Aquinas argued that human positive law is only binding insofar as it conforms to the natural law. Unjust laws are not true laws but acts of violence, and the virtue of justice may require us to disobey them to serve the common good.

8. The Scottish Enlightenment attempted to preserve a tradition of moral consensus but was subverted from within by Hume's skepticism.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

The Scottish tradition. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Scotland developed a distinctive intellectual tradition that attempted to synthesize Calvinist theology, Roman-Dutch law, and a rereading of Aristotle. This tradition, represented by figures like Stair and Gerschom Carmichael, assumed that there is a shared, rational consensus on the first principles of justice and morality.

Hume's skeptical challenge. David Hume subverted this tradition from within by adopting a thoroughgoing version of the "way of ideas." He argued that reason is entirely passive and cannot motivate action; instead, our actions and moral judgments are driven entirely by our passions and sentiments.

• Reason is the "slave of the passions" and cannot provide motives for action.
• Moral judgments express feelings of approbation or disapprobation, not rational truths.
• Justice is an "artificial virtue" contrived to secure the stability of property.
• Sympathy is the natural mechanism that extends our moral sentiments to others.

The Anglicizing transition. Hume's philosophy provided a rationalization for the commercial, property-oriented social order of eighteenth-century England. In doing so, he rejected the traditional Scottish view of justice as based on desert and divine law, replacing it with a justice of cooperative utility and property-stabilization.

9. Modern liberalism is not a neutral framework for resolving disputes, but is itself a highly dogmatic and competitive tradition.

The overriding good of liberalism is no more and no less than the continued sustenance of a liberal social and political order.

The liberal illusion. Modern liberalism began as a project to discover a neutral, tradition-independent framework of rational justification that could resolve conflicts between competing moral and religious views. However, this project failed, and liberalism has itself become a highly specific, historically contingent tradition of enquiry.

The preference-expressing self. In the liberal tradition, the self is understood as a bundle of heterogeneous, incommensurable preferences. Practical reasoning is reduced to a calculation of how to maximize the satisfaction of these preferences, and justice is understood as a set of rules designed to regulate the bargaining process between self-interested individuals.

• The self is a preference-expressing agent with no overall, overriding good.
• Practical reasoning is a calculation of utility and preference-satisfaction.
• Justice is a set of procedural rules to govern the bargaining process.
• The public realm is an arena of competing interests where substantive moral claims are marginalized.

The dogmatism of neutrality. While liberalism claims to be neutral with respect to rival conceptions of the good, it actually imposes its own highly specific conception of the good—the continued sustenance of the liberal social and political order—upon all those who participate in its institutions.

10. The rationality of a tradition is demonstrated by its capacity to survive and resolve its own internal epistemological crises.

We, whoever we are, can only begin enquiry from the vantage point afforded by our relationship to some particular tradition of enquiry, through which we have affiliated ourselves...

The rationality of traditions. MacIntyre argues that the only way to engage in rational enquiry is from within a specific tradition. The standards of rational justification themselves emerge from and are part of a history in which they are vindicated by their ability to transcend the limitations of their predecessors.

The role of translation. When different traditions encounter one another, they may find that their concepts are untranslatable and incommensurable. To understand another tradition, one must learn its language-in-use as a second first language, rather than attempting to translate it into a neutral, internationalized language of modernity.

• Traditions are historically developing processes of rational enquiry.
• Epistemological crises occur when a tradition's methods become sterile or incoherent.
• A tradition is vindicated when it can explain the failures of its rivals.
• Translation requires learning an alien language-in-use as a second first language.

The final choice. Ultimately, we are confronted with a choice between competing traditions of justice and practical rationality. We cannot evaluate these traditions from a neutral, tradition-independent standpoint; we must choose which tradition to inhabit and carry forward.

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