Justice as a principle of morality
The concept of justice
One of the universal and important concepts of moral consciousness and the principle of ethics is justice.
The future as the embodiment of the ideal, including the idea of good, is unthinkable without justice. Faith in its triumph is an indispensable prerequisite for a highly moral human existence. This faith, however, should not be blind, but should be based on knowledge of the nature and essence of justice. Without this, it is impossible to build a society on the principles of justice.
Justice is the general ratio of values, goods and their specific distribution between individuals, the proper order of human coexistence, which corresponds to the ideas about the essence of man and his inalienable rights.
Ancient Greek philosophers also thought about justice. The category of "justice" is one of the leading in the works of English philosophers J. Locke, Herbert Spencer, Russian thinker Peter Kropotkin, in studies on the ethics of the Modern Age, when the development of bourgeois democracies began and the need arose to substantiate the idea of a legal state. Historians, lawyers, politicians, teachers, and writers also tried to comprehend it.
In everyday consciousness, justice is understood as something self-evident. However, when trying to interpret this concept, certain difficulties arose. The main one is the concrete-historical nature of justice, which was drawn to the attention of D. Hume, who considered justice as an artificial virtue in contrast to other, natural ones. Without a doubt, ignoring the concrete-historical nature of justice is unjustified (for example, the understanding of justice in bourgeois society differs significantly from the ideas about justice in the era of feudalism). However, the absolutization of the concrete-historical changing nature of justice is a direct path to relativism, nihilism.
Knowledge of the essence and principles of justice can significantly influence a person's moral ideas. Traditionally, justice is considered to be the order of human coexistence, which corresponds to humanistic ideas about the nature and essence of man and his inalienable rights, about the harmonious coordination of the needs and interests of the individual, society and humanity. In contrast to the concepts of good (everything that has a positive meaning for a person) and anti-good, in particular "good" and "evil", with the help of which individual phenomena are evaluated, taken in themselves, justice characterizes the ratio of two or more phenomena from the point of view of good and anti-good between people. It assumes a correspondence between the practical role of different individuals in the life of society and their position, between their rights and obligations, their activities and rewards, real merits and their public recognition, between crime and punishment. Justice requires an equivalent exchange of activity and its results. It simultaneously determines the relations between people regarding their mutual obligations and regarding the distribution of material and spiritual goods created by joint efforts.
The problem of justice in its moral sense arises when an individual wonders whether he should adhere to the requirements of morality in conditions when other people often neglect them, and to what extent this is fair.
Justice in general is objective in nature. If encouragement or punishment is applied arbitrarily, then there can be no question of justice in this case. Justice, as an independent power force, acts in accordance with the nature of the act, abstracting from any personal sympathies and antipathies. However, there is also a moment of the conditional in justice, which was noticed by supporters of the doctrine of the social contract. One of the consequences of the conditionality of justice is considered to be the requirement of consistency and consistency in the activities and behavior of a person, which is sometimes placed above objectivity.
Scope of application of justice
The scope of application of the concept of "justice" is unlimited, it covers political and economic systems, laws, social institutions, interstate relations, assessments, judgments, attitudes, decisions, actions, life positions of people and even the distribution of luck and misfortune.
In a class society, "justice" is a concept not only of moral, but also of political and legal consciousness, since the distribution of goods and anti-goods is within the competence of the state. At the same time, political decisions and laws, even if they are legitimate, are subject to moral assessment, which does not always coincide with current political and legal norms. On this basis, public opinion decides whether political and economic regimes deserve preservation or whether they should be replaced as inhumane, such as those that degrade the dignity of citizens.
The category of "justice" is also applied to people. Those who adhere to legal and moral norms, a given word, fulfill their duties, respond with good for good are considered just, those who commit arbitrariness, violate people's rights, do not remember the good done to them, etc. are considered unjust.
Initially, the understanding of justice consisted in recognizing the indisputability of the norms of primitive society. To be fair meant to adhere to the generally accepted order. Therefore, justice was then identified with the power of custom.
Types of justice
Given the motivational motives, a distinction is made between retributive and distributive justice. Retributive justice required that a person's punishment correspond to the crime he committed. This is recorded in the expression "Life for life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Its main form was the institution of tribal revenge. Distributive justice provided for the equal distribution of benefits and responsibilities to each member of the community or proportional to his actions, significance, etc. Taking this into account, equal and proportional-distributive justice are distinguished. According to the requirements of equal justice, all individuals of a clan or tribe received an equal share of what was obtained through joint efforts on a hunt or collected in the forest or field. This was a necessary condition for people to survive in a shortage of means of subsistence. Elements of equal justice can be traced in all historical eras. It is difficult to unequivocally assess its role, since it combines both positive and negative meanings. The understanding of justice as equality has become its stable moral image, a kind of archetype that is deeply rooted in the public consciousness. At the present stage, this is manifested in a tendency to "equalize", in a negative attitude towards wealthy people regardless of how they obtained their benefits. This is often accompanied by envy. Politicians who strive for power especially often resort to the principle of equality. However, having obtained it, they, as a rule, refuse it. With the emergence of classes and the state, written laws and law appear, which claim the status of true justice. This led to the replacement of equalizing justice with proportional distribution (differentiated level of responsibility for performing different types of work and differentiated distribution of benefits), which became a powerful driving force for the progress of society. The entire history of class society is the history of the struggle of the disadvantaged for justice. The bourgeoisie made a significant contribution to this process, destroying the feudal system and replacing it with freedom of private property, legal independence and political equality of people. The understanding of justice as equality is being revived again. However, it is already about economic or social equality, primarily as equality of rights. Legal ideas about justice are becoming dominant.
The problem of justice in modern conditions
The problem of justice is also relevant in modern society. After all, some people are luxurious, while others are poor, every second in the world someone dies from malnutrition or lack of medicine. In conditions of rampant terrorism, no one feels safe even in the most democratic countries. This problem is especially relevant in post-Soviet states, including Ukraine. It has acquired extraordinary acuteness in the social aspect, since the principle of socialism “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his work” has never been implemented. In addition, the crisis in the domestic economy, corruption, and criminalization of society have a negative impact on this process.
The development of civilization, new challenges to humanity require constant updating of the concept of justice both in global dimensions and in relation to the realities of national existence, since, as the modern American sociologist John Rawls states, “justice is the main virtue of social institutions, just as truth is the main virtue of scientific systems.” In his concept of social justice, he tries to reconcile the interests of the individual and society, inviolability, individual freedom and self-regulation of society, its productivity, coordination, and stability. The humanistic nature of J. Rawls’s concept of justice is evidenced by his words in defense of the interests of man as an individual: “Each individual possesses inviolability, which even the most prosperous society cannot neglect. In view of this, justice rejects the very idea that the lack of freedom of some can be a justification for the greatest well-being of the majority of people. It follows that it also does not allow the idea that the sacrifice of some people can be compensated for by the greater well-being of others. Thus, in a just society, equal freedom of citizens is regarded as something planned in advance. ” According to Rawls, “modern societies are rarely well organized, since the distinction between just and unjust in them is still debated.” Given the shortcomings of the principle of equal opportunities and taking into account the positive aspect of the principle of equal results, he took as the basis of his concept of social justice two different principles:
1. Every person should have an equal right to the most general system of equal basic freedoms, comparable to similar systems of freedoms of all other people. This principle implies equality in the possession of all basic rights.
2. Social and economic inequalities should be so organized that they give the greatest benefit to the least well-off citizens, and also be applicable to occupations and social statuses accessible to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. According to this principle, social and economic inequality is allowed, for example, in wealth and power.
It is not easy to assess the realism, to predict the feasibility of this concept. It is undeniable that its humanistic potential refutes the dogmas of communist ideology about the reactionary nature of bourgeois ethics and sociology.
In addition to the problem of social justice, which is determined by the nature of political power, law, and social policy of the state (the legal aspect of justice), there is also the problem of justice as a way of individual behavior, which was also stated by Aristotle, distinguishing justice in relation to the law and in relation to other people. We are talking about its moral aspect. In this sense, justice is aimed not so much at relations between citizens as at individual arbitrariness, demanding not to encroach on another person (not to cause him physical harm, moral injury, not to shift his duties and worries onto him, not to betray him, etc.), as well as not to encroach on his property (material and spiritual values).
Treason is considered a double injustice. The same applies to situations when a guard or guide becomes a murderer, a watchman becomes a thief, a guardian appropriates the property of the one he is protecting, a lawyer protects the interests of the opposing party, a judge takes bribes, etc. In each of them, a person, entering into contractual relations, assuming obligations, not only violates them, but, using his position, causes harm to his partner precisely in the sphere of existence that he has undertaken to protect.
Recognizing the important role of justice in the life of society and man, it cannot, however, be overestimated or absolutized. Because even the achievement of absolute justice in legal relations and in personal relationships will not by itself make people happy. If a person, having significant potential, does not realize himself, justice is nothing for him. In addition, justice can be official, unspiritual. It is only one of the facets of the ideal of society and the individual.