by Dr. Nicolaus Tideman
Blacksburg, VA
To explore the relationship between morality and
economic justice, it is important to define both concepts
carefully. With each concept, it is useful to provide a
definition in two stages. In the first stage, one
specifies the general nature of the concept, and in the
second, and perhaps more controversial stage, one specifies
the particular content.
Beginning with morality, a first-stage definition
of morality is that it describes the way good people
behave. This is a description of morality that one might
reasonably expect to be non-controversial. In the second
stage of the definition, one specifies how it is that good
people behave.
Consider a famous quotation from Luke (10: 25-29):
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.
"Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal
life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law?
What do you read there?" The lawyer answered, "You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your
mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And Jesus said to
him, "You have given the right answer. Do this and you
will live."
But wanting to justify himself, the lawyer asked
Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied with the
parable of the Good Samaritan, which makes the point that
everyone is our neighbor. Thus Jesus was saying that the
meaning of "love your neighbor as yourself" is that we must
love everyone as we love ourselves. There is an
interesting parallel between Jesus' prescription in the
parable of the Good Samaritan and the Utilitarian
prescription that what is good is what maximizes the total
happiness of all sentient being. Both prescriptions say
that a good person, a moral person, will count his own
well-being as no more and no less important than anyone
else's, in deciding what to do.
If morality consists of counting the well-being of
all persons equally in deciding what to do, the difficulty
with morality is that we need to be saints to follow this
prescription. And there are few saints among us.
Now consider justice. At the first definitional
stage, justice is the principles of equality and
evenhandedness that explain why coercion is acceptable.
Evidence that this is what justice is comes from the image
of justice that adorns many public buildings. Lady
Justice, the Greek goddess Themis and Roman goddess
Iustitia, has a sword in her right hand, a pair of scales
in her left, and a blindfold across her eyes. Actually,
the blindfold seems to have first been added by German
artists in the 16th century, who wanted to suggest that
people were interfering with the clear vision of Justice.
But the symbol was re-interpreted as demonstrating
impartiality, and has remained. Lady Justice does not need
to see who you are to know how to treat you. She treats
all alike. The scales are also subject to at least two
interpretations. Some say that Lady Justice places the
arguments of disputants in the two pans of her scales to
see which has the greater weight. But there is another use
of scales. They can be used to ensure equal division. A
divisible substance of value is divided justly when the
portions in the two pans balance. This is the
interpretation that I prefer.
The sword symbolizes the willingness to threaten or
use force to ensure that people abide by the dictates of
justice. The feminine gender of Lady Justice adds to the
credibility of the idea that someone with a sword might use
it only to ensure that justice is done, and not for
self-aggrandizement.
The second part of the definition of justice
specifies the content of the principles of equality and
evenhandedness that justify coercion. One possibility is
that justice is the process that we use to ensure that
people behave morally. I believe that this is a
misunderstanding of justice. If justice is used to require
people to be moral, then morality as human decisions to do
what is right disappears. Furthermore, it is dangerous to
trust anyone with the power that is necessary to ensure
that people behave morally.
Finally, there is the biblical injunction, "Judge
not, that you be not judged." To me, this does not mean,
"You better not judge others, or else God will judge you,"
but rather, "If you go around making judgments about who
deserves to be punished for their lapses in behavior, you
are likely to start subjecting your own behavior to the
same scrutiny, and you will suffer from your own judgment
of yourself." It is not healthy to encourage people to
judge others.
As an alternative to justice as enforcing morality,
I suggest that justice is what we fall back on when
different ideas about morality bring us into conflict.
Morality is a sphere in which each person is allowed to
make his or her own decisions, while justice is based on a
few principles that are so fundamental that breaches of
them cannot be tolerated.
I suggest the following two basic principles of
justice.
- Every person has a right to himself or herself.
- All persons have equal rights to the gifts of nature.
The fundamental role of a right to oneself in Western
thought is reflected in the abhorrence we feel toward
countries that try to prevent their citizens from leaving.
Whatever else justice may mean, it means at least that
people are allowed to separate themselves from those whom
they feel are oppressing them.
The idea that justice requires equal sharing of the
gifts of nature is less obvious. The gifts of nature are
land, minerals, water, the frequency spectrum,
geosynchronous orbits, and anything else that is scarce,
not incorporated in human bodies, and not the product of
human effort.
The plausibility of a principle that all persons
have equal claims on the gifts of nature can be appreciated
by considering the alternatives. Present human practice
allows for claims on the gifts of nature based either on
having appropriated a thing first, or having held it for a
fairly long time since grabbing it from someone else. If
first appropriation is allowed as the basis for a
respectable claim, then it is possible that all land will
be claimed, and a person who is supposed to have a right to
himself will have no where to exercise that right. When he
says, "If that is yours, where is mine?" he is told, "You
don't get any. You didn't get here soon enough." A rule
of just ownership by first possession also induces people
to waste resources trying to be first.
When recognition is granted to claims on the basis
of the amount of time that has passed since their unjust
origin, grabbing from previous claimants is encouraged by
the prospect of the recognition that will come if one can
just hang on long enough to what has been grabbed. Saddam
Hussein might reasonably have calculated when contemplating
the invasion of Kuwait, that, based on past human practice,
if he just managed to hold onto it for a few years it would
be recognized as just as legitimate a part of Kuwait as any
other region was a legitimate part of any nation.
We recognize the inherent equality of all humanity when we
recognize an obligation of every person and nation to leave
gifts of nature for everyone else of the same value as what
they appropriate for themselves.
Such a rule has an interesting effect on the
interaction between morality and justice. People who have
rights to themselves may want to use those rights to form
communities or nations that impose moral standards on their
citizens, standards such as an obligation to support those
in need by providing a specified fraction of one's income.
A person who is reluctant to abide by such a rule can say,
"Don't I have a right to myself? How is it just that you
seek to impose this obligation on me?" When an obligation
to share the gifts of nature equally is recognized, such a
person can be answered, "We have appropriated for ourselves
only our share of land and other gifts of nature. We have
left gifts of equal value for you. Our rules represent our
conception of a good society -- what we wish to devise with
our shares of the gifts of nature. If you don't like it,
you are free to combine with others who share your vision
of a good society, using your share of land and other gifts
of nature."
Thus a concept of justice based on the right of
every person to himself or herself, and on equal rights to
the gifts of nature, makes it easy for people who disagree
with each other about morality to treat each other with
respect, each continuing his or her efforts to persuade
others to adopt a particular morality while respecting the
rights of others to themselves. Justice specifies that
when we disagree with one another about what morality
requires of us, we should each be able to appropriate an
equal share of the gifts of nature, on which to pursue our
own conception of morality.
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Professor Nicolaus Tideman may be emailed at
ntideman@vt.edu. He is past president of the Robert
Schalkenbach Foundation.