" but I disagree that this means that doing things like helping the poor or trying to stop climate change don't constitute a form of justice."
Suppose you believe that climate change, or something else, harms everyone. Is trying to stop it still a form of justice?
Consider the distinction between justice arguments and non-justice arguments from the opposite of your ideological position. A deontological libertarian will object to taxing the rich on the grounds that taking money from someone who has justly earned it is a violation of his rights, hence unjust, however much money he happens to have earned. A consequentialist libertarian will argue that permitting a polity to redistribute income ends up making everyone, on average, worse off, because it gives people an incentive to spend resources trying to be the ones redistributed to not the ones redistributed from and not only does that make the society poorer, there is no good reason to expect the people you want to favor to win the rent seeking struggle. The former argument is about justice, the latter is not.
> Suppose you believe that climate change, or something else, harms everyone. Is trying to stop it still a form of justice?
I think the answer would depend on the manner in which that harm is distributed, and whether the distribution conflicts with the stated norms of our Republic (admittedly, this kicks the can down towards the spooky sign that reads 'meta-ethics').
If the distribution is perfectly uniform across the polity, you could still argue there exists an injustice, in a Rawlsian sense. Behind the veil of ignorance, you may not only lack knowledge on *who* you will be, but also on *when*. Is there not a credible definition of justice which finds it unjust for a generation to secure a more comfortable existence at the expense of a much greater burden on their successors?
If like me you find this worth thinking about, then we might agree that 'environmental justice' or even 'climate justice' are adequate terms to describe the object of our discussion.
"It feels unjust that some people are born in Mail and some are born in California and that determines their life outcomes more than anything they do."
At the same time, you run into the limits of fairness. 'Lottery of birth' isn't synonymous with 'luck', in large part because people make efforts for their descendants to 'rig' the lottery, and negating that effort is itself unfair.
At the large scale, some of that has to be determined by effort to create the society the child is born into. A child born in Botswana or Gabon (to pick two of the more developed sub-Saharan African countries) has a better chance at life than a child born in Mali. This is unfair to the child born in Mali, but part of this unfairness is due to effort by previous generations in Botswana and Gabon to make their societies more functional. A magical fix to this to make things fair for the child in Mali as compared to the other two would be unfair to the previous generations that did the work.
At individual scale, pure genetic chance is more luck (although some of it is in choosing a partner). On the other hand, individual differences are harder to balance; is physical attractiveness a fair trade off for intelligence? Which is worse, an increased chance of cancer, or an increased chance of mental illness?
And, of course, some of those 'birth lottery' effects are still other people's responsibility. It's not the child's fault that they were born to a single parent, but it's not exclusively (or even primarily) societies fault. Any way to fix that unfairness is unfair to someone else. It's tough to admit, but there are somethings that can never be made fair.
I think this was why I offered to explain white fragility. I felt similarly surprised by Scott and commenters saying they had never heard these terms and didn't understand what they might mean
1. I think there is some low likelihood that the history of systemic racism that I have learned about is false, in which case the idea of white fragility doesn't really make sense, although for anyone who encounters that history and believes it, I think they could probably still experience white fragility
2. White fragility could be a lot less common than I think it is; it could be that many people are either totally unconvinced by or totally uniformed about what I think of as the history of systemic racism, and therefore their reaction is simply incredulity rather than defensiveness as I and others might suspect. Or, we might be working from very different moral premises about the duty of human beings toward each other, i.e. they might not have any problem with systemic racism, nor any guilt from the privilege they receive from that system.
3. Do you think that white fragility does not exist? I get that people don't appreciate others assuming that they are experiencing white fragility, and I have conceded above that it may happen less frequently than liberals often assume. You might not like the choice of words and want it to be called something else. But why wouldn't white people have a negative, defensive emotional reaction when faced with the idea that they have caused harm to people of color, given that they think of themselves as good, not-racist people? It's a natural reaction - a lot of people don't like to find themselves in the role of the villain. Like I said in some previous comments, I have experienced it within myself multiple times. It felt horrible to me when I realized that I was the one causing harm, and I got emotional and defensive about it. It has taken practice to be able to respond calmly in situations where someone points out a racist impact that I have had. At the very least, it seems to me like a common experience of white liberals who pride themselves on "valuing diversity."
I think maybe I do take issue with the label. As a comparison, consider acrophobia, the extreme or irrational fear of heights. If someone refuses to climb a 20 foot ladder because they are scared, we might say that they are acrophobic. However, if someone climbs the ladder and we shake it violently, making the person worry that they might fall, we might still expect to get their heart racing and adrenaline pumping, but we wouldn't necessarily take this as evidence that they are acrophobic.
To define defensiveness in response to an accusation (especially an accusation where the stakes could be perceived by the accused as high, and where the accused may not a priori accept the accusation as true) as "fragility" seems incorrect.
If a store clerk sells alcohol to a minor without realizing the customer is a minor, and they are so accused, they might try to defend themselves. To call that "clerk fragility" seems odd. If a driver exceeds the speed limit (say due to a broken or miscalibrated speedometer), and tries to defend themselves, again it seems odd to call this "driver fragility". In both these examples, the facts are against the accused, but it is possible they did not intentionally commit these violations. It seems odd to describe people trying to defend themselves from these accusations as a hallmark of fragility.
The definition of white fragility that I have taken from your comment above would seem to readily extend the "fragility" label to anyone making statements of self defense against any strict liability crime, and that seems overly broad. Even more so if that label were applied to a defence of any crime whatsoever. It seems wrong to apply "fragility" in the general case as it just doesn't seem correct to call a large fraction of statements of self defense "fragility". And then when narrowed to the specific case of accusations of harm to people of color, it doesn't seem like defensiveness in such cases are sufficiently distinct as to deserve a special application of the term.
Switching gears to the self introspective "negative, defensive emotional reaction" that seems to underlie fragility. I participate in a capitalist society: I work at a job in exchange for a salary, I pay money for food and shelter and healthcare, etc. Capitalism clearly has winners and losers; people who get a better deal out of the system, and those who get a worse one.
If someone accused me of harming the poor, I might be defensive: I might say that I give to charity. Someone might come back at me saying even still that by participating in capitalism at all, I'm contributing to the continued and inevitable oppression of the lower classes. Ok, by some definition of terms, sure, I guess someone can claim that. Does my defensiveness constitute "middle-class fragility"? I don't think so.
I'm not sure what we expect of the accused bourgeoisie here. Action at the ballot box? Join a communist revolution? Maybe "middle-class blindness" or "middle-class indifference" might be better labels. As some sort of call to action to engage or change minds, those both seem a little better than "middle-class fragility". Though for someone who acknowledges capitalism's flaws, yet who's not going to abandon capitalism, it seems like any label is probably a tough sell.
Maybe the capitalism example doesn't map well to the white fragility case, but I am inherently suspicious of a label that applies only in special cases and can't be coherently generalized to seemingly symmetric cases. And I have not yet seen evidence that the concept of white fragility is undeserving of that suspicion.
(For a less charitable take, consider "witch fragility": the negative, defensive emotional reaction you get from witches when you accuse them of having harmed other people through the practice of witchcraft. The harms cited may indeed be real, but disagreement with the causal lineage of those harms should not by itself constitute evidence of a unique kind of fragility specific to the demographic of the accused.)
Thanks for replying. This conversation is helping me a lot. It makes sense to me that where we disagree might be over whether white fragility should be its own particular label at all, which is a super contextual question.
The thing that stuck out the most to me about your response was what you said about being "inherently suspicious of a label that applies only in special cases and can't be coherently generalized to seemingly symmetric cases." My guess based on that statement (and this may be assuming a lot, so please correct me where I err) is that we disagree about the status of systemic racism in the current day.
My guess is that you see systemic, impactful racism as largely a thing of the somewhat faraway past - slavery, genocide against indigenous people, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow, etc. and is not having much of an impact on people of Color today. My guess is that you might also think there is some amount of anti-white racism, which you would estimate at present has about an equal impact as anti-Black or anti-indigenous, etc. racism. If that is the case, it makes a lot of sense to me that you are suspicious of such an asymmetric term as "white fragility" with no counterpart such as "Black fragility" or the like.
I think that systemic racism is still a thing of the present, having impacts such as voter ID laws specifically targeted to prevent a higher ratio of people of Color from voting, vastly higher rates of incarceration for Black and Brown people despite similar crime rates to white people, preferential hiring (and renting to, and anything else you can apply for) of people with white-sounding names continuing to result in a huge wage gap and an even larger wealth gap between people of Color and white people. From my understanding of mainstream biology, basically any disparities we find between racial groups are evidence of differences in how people are impacted by social structures, not biological differences between racial groups, because different racial groups are not biologically relevant groups, only socially relevant groups.
So, from my perspective, it is actually very necessary to have racially asymmetric terms, because we live in a racially asymmetric world.
Did I hit on a difference between our underlying assumptions, or did I totally miss?
Nope. These are “justice” as in distributive justice and corrective justice. Aristotle. If you think “criminal justice” when you hear these phrases, that’s you.
The people using these phrases think, to the extent they think about it, that these forms of justice can be achieved by giving to those who have not, mostly without taking from those who have. If there is a fantasy here, it is utopian plenty, not retributive harshness.
But the term "Nazi" is not nearly as broad as "justice" so it's not really comparable. Personally, ive only really seen these vindictive people on the internet (which i dont think is an accurate representation of the general public). And while the term justice may be more popular now, I think more people are also questioning what exactly justice looks like.
The idea of a world of good people and "saints" lends itself more readily to the concept of villains deserving of retribution. It's more useful to have discussions about the nuances of the concept of justice rather than simply saying "your idea of justice is wrong or incomplete. Stop using that word". It's more useful to strive for a just world rather than a good world of saints.
I'm not a frequent user of the schema "X justice", so I could be wrong. But I think retribution is a big part of it. Reflecting on the ways I've heard the term used, its users don't seem inclined towards incrementalist change or giving to the have-nots. Rather, the notion seems to be that the status quo is intrinsically and intentionally unjust, and that a revolutionary shift is necessary to bring about a new just order.
What you've described is redistribution, not retribution. Left wing people sincerely believe that the world would be improved if the wealth of the rich was distributed to the poor. Calling this "retribution" isn't an argument, it's just an insult.
Redistribution involves two things: taking from the haves, and giving to the have-nots. I fully believe you that you're more motivated by the latter than the former. But I think many on the left are motivated just as powerfully by the confiscatory part.
There's raw indignation at the exorbitant wealth and conspicuous consumption of the hyper-rich, totally independent of how that wealth could be otherwise used. As for this being an "insult" - I don't think people are wrong to be indignant or outraged this way. Billionaire excess is very often genuinely outrageous! Confiscatory and retributive impulses aren't always bad or wrong!
The tendency to distrust and pull down wealthy people can be seen a positive adaptation. Wealth is easily translated into.power, and extreme wealth can be translated into a tyranny.
of course , complaints complaints from the right about *justice are the same thing. Eg
"The problem with this is that social justice advocates are very keen to colonize anything and everything they can under the mantle of justice because it increases the importance of what they are saying. If "climate change justice" is mostly about random small island countries getting inundated or Las Vegas running out of water, it can only go so far. If *every* kind of environmental problem can be tied to "climate justice" and it increasingly is, it magnifies the importance of the topic and the people yelling about it."
Its a complaint that a certain group are power grabbing, getting too big for their boots, etc.
The two prong requirement works for articulating why so many people are against redistribution as we have seen it in practice. We have been efficient in taking from the rich (when considering what we ask of the wealthy in terms of proportion of government revenues), but incredibly inefficient at giving to the poor. The funds are subject to exceptionally higher levels of fraud, waste, and abuse than those and often times benefit people that are as despicable as the most venomous billionaire--but happen to have aligned themselves with whatever political interest brought forth said redistribution efforts (housing authority chiefs, corrupt local politicians, cronies). In my experience many people aren't mad about paying taxes, they don't believe their tax dollars will make any difference worth a damn.
Eh. The SS sincerely believed throwing Jews into the ovens would improve the world, too. Sincere delusional belief while executing deep moral wrong is nothing new among humanity, and its existence in any particular situation is no moral defense whatsoever. Only in Marvel movies do the villians think of themselves as villains and enjoy it.
This person has a sincere belief that behaviour X will help people, but The Nazi's had a sincere belief that behaviour Y would help people! Redistributing wealth taken via coercion from the trillion dollar 1% is a moral wrong because SS! Get rebutted, radical redistributionist :)
Calm down. I'm pointing out that believing you're doing good while doing evil is so commonplace among human beings that it must count for zero when one is assessing right and wrong, and it's just silly to even bring it up as an argument. Sincerity is the least important component of virtue. Vladimir Putin sincerely believes he's helping Ukraine. People who support and oppose abortion both sincerely believe they're helping the would-be mothers. Et cetera. I'm sure you sincerely believe you made a powerful argument, and I'm equally sincere in thinking you didn't.
Of course, the converse is also true. Perhaps many leftists are acting out of intent of retribution against the rich, as the original post tries to darkly hint at. So what? As you've pointed out, intent doesn't matter, only effects. If people reduce climate emissions and give more money to poor countries out of spite, does that not still improve the world?
Suppose person X is proposing action Y. If the question is "is action Y morally good or not?" then, indeed, it doesn't matter why X is proposing it. If the question is "is person X morally good or not?" then it does matter, though it's possible that X sincerely intends something we could all regard as good _but_ that Y is so horrible that we can't see anyone proposing Y as anything but evil.
But here the question isn't either of those, it's "is X after retribution rather than merely redistribution?". And for _that_, X's intent is very relevant indeed.
If some left-winger wants a big transfer of wealth from the very rich to the very poor (or to the fairly poor, or to the merely-not-particularly-rich), then to whatever extent their motivation is to make the poor better off rather than to make the rich worse off as such they're aiming for redistribution but not for retribution.
(Also: 1. I wonder whether you actually have much evidence that the typical SS member was throwing Jews into ovens _because they sincerely thought it would improve the world_. Doubtless some of them were, but I suspect plain ordinary hatred was often at least as important. And: 2. it might be worth distinguishing between "X sincerely thought doing Y would improve the world" and "X sincerely thought doing Y would accomplish Z" where Z is something you/we approve of as much as X does. Perhaps the guys in the SS thought that having fewer Jews in the world was just intrinsically good, and they thought throwing Jews into ovens made the world better for that reason; that feels to me importantly different from the situation where a leftist wants to move money from the rich to the poor because he wants there to be less misery and poverty; you might think what he wants to do is a bad idea for other reasons, but I'm hoping you agree with him that misery and poverty are things we should want there to be less of.)
(Not so) fun fact, the hate for jews in Germany actually (at least partially) originated because they were seen as rich and exploitative :/
On a wider point, I don't think the parent wanted to make a hitler-ate-sugar argument - you're not becoming the SS for wanting to take money from the rich. But it's very easy to be very wrong about being right and the commenter made an extreme argument to showcase that point.
> Only in Marvel movies do the villians think of themselves as villains and enjoy it.
"Hero" and "villain" are not the only possibilities. Some people may reject this frame, and see themselves e.g. as "doing whatever any reasonable person would be doing in their place". It is quite easy when one uses a circular definition, where "reasonable" means "one who would do the same thing".
I suspect that many people who are seen as "villains" by their opponents, simply see themselves as "normal", "reasonable", or "smart".
"The only reason people complain about me is that they wish they were as smart as me, so they could be in my place instead, and then they would do exactly the same thing! You believe they would not? Well, then they are idiots!"
Even people who consider themselves virtuous, may simply care about some virtue other than helping people. "I am doing the right thing; and if some people get hurt in the process, it is a price I am willing to pay!"
That's too extreme. If you'd said "almost nobody sees themselves as a villian" I'd agree, but I believe that some few both do and revel in it. Consider the number of gamers who like to "grief" the obviously weaker.
I concur. It may be that “______ justice” campaigners who are attracted to the punitive element are a minority but they are frequently the noisiest.
Food shortages played a big part in the French Revolution, but when the heads started tumbling into baskets ‘the people’ began enjoying the spectacle for its own sake.
They still had no bread but it was enjoyable to see privileged people humbled, humiliated and killed.
I fear this goes to something deep in the human soul/psyche that when we are suffering, if we can’t get relief, we take some pleasure from seeing someone else suffer.
Mostly it's an opportunity to lay claim of being in charge of the re-distributive efforts - to gain power with other people's money as it's gifted through your channels to the supportive masses. It's called 'justice' because that imparts a patina of official-sounding legitimacy to what is really pure grifting. Justice is available through the rule of law, not the law of mobs.
This is close to the core of why we should use "justice", in fact :)
Consider the example of USA giving foreign aid to the Marshall Islands. This could be a generous gift (to use your language), making the USA a country of saints (to use Scott's language).
However, put yourself in the shoes of someone living in the Marshall Islands. That person knows that their country will disappear by 2050 due to rising oceans, and it's no fault of theirs at all. Rather, it's the fault of everyone, roughly in proportion to how much carbon they have put into the atmosphere. So if the country with the highest carbon footprint in the world pays some money to the Marshall Islands, this is not just feel-good kindness... it's an urgently needed step toward a bit more fairness and justice in this world.
Consider reading the article rather than mounting an ad-hominem attack on its source?
More seriously: even if the *average* altitude is 2m, there are plenty of important populated places near the coast that are at much lower altitude. You seen to imply that the problem only starts once the sea rise reaches 2m...?
And if it leads to still greater urbanization, and distance from traditional ways, thus more ultimate vulnerability to sea level rise - it still was fair and just, full stop?
John Mcwhorter wrote a good example of justice framing diverting from better solutions in the NYT
Racial justice assumes there is an ongoing institutional and prevalent force acting against the well being of black Americans. Mcwhorter examined things like police interactions among black Americans and others of the same income cohort. Little to no difference. Historically, over half of people in redlined communities were white
If we assume there are specific racially villainous actions that can be stopped we fail to help anyone because it's apparent that the problem is racial only at the very margins
Do we attempt to impose justice or to reform for progress? Mcwhorter proposes: teaching phonics to underprivileged kids, ending the drug war, and expanding access to and respect for trades rather than focusing only on college. Racial justice seems to especially propose white people undergo a spiritual change to stop their mystical inherent oppression and punishing those who do not participate in this
Climate change is probably the highest impact instance of justice solutions vs 'positive' solutions
Justice demands that a great wrong exists and must be categorically remedied. Thus the policy focus is that dramatic and immediate action be taken to achieve a grand goal of essentially preventing any major harmful effects. This isn't the kind of issue where you ask economists for input. But according to economists near term hard caps on emissions are something like half as effective as carbon taxes. And the costs will outweigh the benefits if the tax is clearly above the cost of the warming prevented. Justice demands that no bad thing happen but implementing it with that mindset is more costly and less effective. A straightforward analysis of Paris puts the benefit as low as 10 cents per dollar spent
It's of a piece with the other species of justice framing that Scott is talking about in the article. There's an inherent underlying assumption that we would have equality of outcomes in a just world. There is absolutely no reason to believe this.
It's basically pitting 'justice' in a state of perpetual war against bad luck, uneven genetics, uneven geography, human self-interest, the natural tendency toward centralisation and hierarchy in both the economic and political domain, and basically every other force that creates unequal outcomes in human societies- not least of which is personal choice.
Unfairness is baked into the world at so many levels or emerges so rapidly from organic human processes that expecting a mere absence of malice or even-handedness in dispute-resolution to produce equity is laughable, so in practice this vision of 'justice' has to become totalitarian and all-encompassing. Every variable- including personal choice- has to be coerced into irrelevancy.
Discipline in schools being degraded by complaints over 'disparate impact' is a fair example. It essentially guarantees that the worst-behaving individuals in the worst-behaving group can get away with more the worse they behave. Choice being decoupled from outcome in practice encourages the worst kind of choices.
I don't want to say that unequal outcomes imply you have zero injustice- it could theoretically be the case that black students really are being disciplined more heavily than the case merits- but the patch being applied here is guaranteed to create *drastically more injustice* in addition to basically destroying the ability of other kids to get an education. It's complete madness.
Criminality in any sane society requires mens rea, or at the very least criminal negligence. We do not prosecute for murder those who cause the death of others, accidentally, and notwithstanding exercising due care. That's just bad luck.
Even assuming arguendo your description of the facts (that the Marshall Islands will subside beneath the sea as a direct result of US emissions of CO2), you would need *additionally* to make the case that the US did this deliberately, in order to destroy the Marshall Islands, or with criminal negligence, i.e. knowing full well this would be the result and ignoring any possibility of doing something different. That's the only way this could turn into an issue of justice.
The criminal negligence is a pretty strong argument. Only a very few can be demonstrated to have acted with knowledge of doing harm. OTOH, nobody can be shown to have particularly targeted the Marshall Islands.
It's not really "their money" if its gained through exploitation and wage slavery. It is simply giving people what is theirs. There's an old trade unionist saying that "Profits are wages not yet distributed".
Lol, capitalism isn't just "anything done for profit" - if that's your definition, then we're not talking about the same thing here. Pretty much any conquest, or really any bad action, even by a communist country, could be said to be motivated by "profit" in the general sense, so that argument is basically just "someone doing bad stuff = capitalism".
What most people are talking about when they refer to capitalism is free markets (which necessarily implies private ownership of capital). Free markets and private ownership have brought billions out of poverty, most recently in China and India.
The general criteria for "victims of communism" or "communist death toll" or any similar trite formulation is essentially "Anytime somebody died under a communist government" so the logic that you're applying to communism is being applied to capitalism.
Of course unsurprisingly you now object to such a criteria when its convenient which would illustrate a double standard.
The life expectancy of citizens in the worlds' freest, most market-oriented nations in the world are generally much higher than in the command economies and have historically been much higher than countries that declare themselves socialist. If you really believe in this way of attributing deaths to economic systems, and I don't think you are being sincere, then you ought to incorporate the pseudo-deaths caused by ubiquitous corruption and bureaucratic mismanagement of soviet agriculture/medicine/safety into your toy model. Otherwise you're comparing people lined up and shot vs people dying from all-cause mortality inside a profession they voluntarily selected.
Every step of this analysis is completely deranged, but let's just start with item 1.
In what sense do you believe that capitalist countries financed fascism, and how are you arriving at the conclusion that fascism killed 200 million people?
Is there such thing as exploitation or wage slavery? I'm having trouble with the idea that if I offer to pay someone a wage to do something for me, and they do it, they then rightfully own my profit from that.
I could just as easily say it is the employer who creates the profits by arranging for profitable goods/services to be made and sold. And obviously the workers are not entitled to the profits because that was not part of our agreement. Seems straightforward? If the workers create the profits, why don't they just do that themselves? Why do they need the employer? Could it be that the employer does something valuable?
I'm all in favor of employers being justly compensated for their labor, whereas people such as yourself are only in favor of these select individuals being satisfactorily compensated. It's a certain bourgeois chauvinism based on a mistaken idea of production.
Also, to respond to "workers are not entitled to the profits because that was not part of our agreement". This implies a fair agreement and one properly consented to. If somebody threatens you with poverty (i.e economic blackmail) then that's not meaningfully consented to. Its sort of like saying Tibet is rightfully China's because of the Seventeen Point Agreement, context matters in other words.
This simplified strawman economics model of a business has to stop being used.
The workers that built the capital that the company needed to start, such as the construction workers that built the factory and the manufacturing workers that built the machines the factory runs on need to be paid for their work... and were, with the people that paid them before the first product had rolled out of the factory (the investors) promised a share of the profit. And if the business goes under, as I understand it, it's the investors that lose their money.
The factory janitor doesn't produce a single thing, but their job is just as necessary as every line worker. Same with the truck driver, the HR person, the accountant... and the managers and executives. I don't like that the connections to other business, law makers, and regulators is more important to the success of the business than the quality of its product, but that's not the market's fault, and that's why the people at the top of big business are where they are.
Because labor all by itself doesn't create anything. I can dig holes and refill them all day without creating an iota of economic value. It's labor *plus* capital (machines, technology) *plus* good ideas and leadership that creates economic value. If the workers provided all three, then OK they created the profits, but in that case -- they supply the work, the capital, and the leadership, like a small business might reasonable argue -- then typically these days they *do* receive and enjoy the profits.
But if *all* the workers supply is labor, and the capital and leadership is supplied by someone else, nope. That's like arguing the vast bulk of privates in an army should get all the credit for a military victory, ignoring the role of sophisticated weaponry, intelligence, and good generalship. Basically it confuses a sine qua non with a cause.
Good leaders by themselves without anybody to take orders don't create anything and without worker-created profit you wouldn't be able to afford any machines or technology. Everybody should get the fruits of their labor whether they're leaders or at the very lowest level. The pandemic has illustrated quite clearly which individuals are the "essential workers" and they are paid dirt wages while their boss swims in cash.
Because they made a prior agreement to give those goods to the employer after they were done, in exchange for a fixed wage. If someone just builds something on their own without making such a prior arrangement, then they are indeed entitled to it under capitalism. Most people, even many communists when pressed on the question in isolation, don't find anything intuitively wrong with being able to enter into such contracts. Adding on the concept of ownership of property you create ("entitlement to the fruits of your labor"), and you de facto support free markets.
When this is pointed out the traditional communist fallacy is to then say, well, this isn't fair because the capital that the employer owns that incentivizes such agreements was somehow "stolen". But that line of rhetoric very rarely elaborated upon and obviously not necessarily true; if I write a computer program like Photoshop and someone rents it to do work, it seems really strange to argue that I'm somehow stealing from them.
Who controls what their alternatives are? The justifications behind the abuses of the capitalist system ring quite hollow. This doesn't make the alternatives any better, of course. What is basically boils down to is that any group of people who control power will fight amongst themselves for a larger share, unite against an outsider getting some of their power, and scheme to increase their power. The names used to describe the way in which the power is centralized and controlled don't really matter. (If you're an anti-capitalist, look into the way unions tend to become corrupt. If you're pro-capitalist, look into Upton Sinclair's description of the meat packing industry.)
Yes, but the trade unionists are as biased as the employers. Neither is capable of rendering an objective evaluation of relative value contributed. (And neither am I.)
>If you think “criminal justice” when you hear these phrases, that’s you.
I think Scott's point is that it's not just him, it's the majority of people who hear the word. Most of them have never heard of distributive justice, or even if they have still mostly associate justice with criminal justice.
Fairness is something that even some animals understand. Almost every child needs to be told that the world isn't fair, because they start from an innate assumption that it should be. Perhaps we should just talk about fairness instead of justice and then this complaint goes away?
how many kids do you have? I have 3, and just can't recall experiencing with any of them that innate sense of fairness you are describing, much less any episode where I told them the ugly truth about the world and witnessed their disillusion. The do understand instinctively concepts like retribution, tit for tat, etc., I think.
Those studies seem to reach conclusions more measured than the tweet makes them appear. In particular, they tend to say that there is only 'weak evidence' or that there is only evidence for 'a rudimentary sense of fairness' rather than state baldly that there is a 'replication failure'. The complaint about the logic of the experiment seems rather superficial too - in humans, if someone sets themselves on fire to protest the suffering of their people, they've increased the amount of suffering of their people in the world. The 'illogic' of it might be interesting, but it's hardly a strong argument that it doesn't happen, or that the protester isn't really protesting what they say they are.
And the "cute videos are mind viruses that produce 'zombie ideas'" cute quote is a mind virus too. Describing an idea with bad sounding words makes no difference to its truth value.
My kids get really angry when they feel they are being treated unfairly, it’s true. But when daddy says it’s not fair for him that you won’t let him eat breakfast, they don’t care. “The sense that the world ought to be fair” is, I think, much better described as “high confidence that my concept of fairness matters, but the concepts of fairness of other people are irrelevant, especially when they want things I don’t.”
In the inequity aversion terminology, this means your children are showing "disadvantageous inequity aversion". That's where individuals protest if they lose out unfairly. "Advantageous inequity aversion" is rarer, that's where individuals protest if others lose out unfairly.
I think that a complaint that they have been treated unfairly made as if they believe this is a meaningful reason to be upset indicates that they believe fairness is important. Believing fairness is important enough to make personal sacrifices in order that others are treated fairly is a different thing.
It isn't 'fairness' that they think is important to them. It's _getting what they want_.
There's a pretty huge difference, right? If each one wants to have their book read, they both protest that the outcome isn't fair, even if what i do is choose a book that neither one of them wants.
"Justice as Fairness" is a line associated with Rawls. But most people don't treat them as synonyms, and their first association for the word "justice" will be things like criminal justice. "Fairness" does sound more suitable for Scott's lens, but I don't know if it gives the same scope for saintliness/utopianism. You can imagine a superlatively fair person, but not as naturally as a superlatively benevolent one.
Nonsense. Having reared 5 of them to adulthood (or close enough), I am confident no child is *born* with any sense of "fairness." Generally it has to be beaten into them, in fact. "No, it's not OK to take your brother's toy just because you want it and he's too small to resist."
Fairness is a sophisticated adult social value -- nature has no such concept, and if you could talk to a lion and ask whether it was fair that she preferentially targed young and weak members of the gazelle tribe for eating, she would be very puzzled indeed. It's certainly true that adults sometimes train their kids to expect a little more fairness in the wide world than they can expect within the confines of the family, but this has more to do with inadequate parenting than social failure. Anyone who trains his kids to expect a society of 300 million to function with as much intelligent insight into each of its members as a family of 4 is...kind of dumb, honestly.
You sound like you'd be a good source of data here. Especially since you're an adult who thinks that fairness is a sophisticated adult concept that has no meaning in nature, and presumably have brought up your kids with that opinion.
Have your children at a young age ever complained that they have been treated unfairly as if they think this is a meaningful reason to be upset?
Have they ever been upset that a sibling has appeared to receive higher rewards or attention when they were equally deserving?
To be honest, I'll be quite surprised if you answer no, but I'm interested to find out. If you doubt that other parents experience "It's not fair" as a weirdly common refrain from kids let me point you to this book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/its-not-fair-amy-krouse-rosenthal
If anything, I would say that the concept of 'life's not fair' is a sophisticated adult concept that kids have to have beaten into them.
My claim that kids have an innate sense of fairness is perhaps stronger than I have concrete evidence for, but it is not such a strong claim that I'm saying kids usually let their sense of fairness rule over their self-interest. These are two different things.
Sorry, but I think you're failing to make a distinction.
1) Yes, kids have desires, and they want those desires satisfied. (Usually *right NOW*.)
2) They also have a sense of fairness. This doesn't change what they want. But it can either reinforce or weaken their demands for it.
3) Unfortunately, their sense of fairness is not symmetrical. They don't necessarily accept that if it's fair that somebody share a cookie with them, that means that it's fair that they share their cookie with someone else. They feel ownership in their cookie, but they don't directly feel the ownership someone else has in the cookie that person is holding.
Reading the replies, enough people agree with him to constitute decent evidence that he's right about how "justice" sounds to the average ear. My point is just that if he's right about that, the use of "X justice" is less a cynical attempt to sneak a free ride on the popular sense of justice as retribution than a sincere misunderstanding of how the language of justice will be received. These phrases are coming out of an academic/activist community where people read and listen each other and debate what is best, and where the sense of justice as retribution is at its weakest. If anything, this is a group with a thin theory of mind about popular understanding, not a thick theory of how to hijack people's natural retributiveness for their own ends.
I disagree, the people in the activist community who use these terms have a pretty thick theory of mind; the phrasing is meticulously tuned to manipulate.
Not many people have read Aristotle. In common parlance, "justice" implies a crime, a victim, and a perpetrator. Justice is achieved through punishment. Yes, making the victim whole is also an objective to be pursued, if possible; but the primary goal is to harm the perpetrator in proportion to the harm he inflicted on the victim (modulo situational circumstances). Thus, while "helping the poor" can be achieved by e.g. giving them money or food, "financial justice" can only be achieved by harming rich people -- ideally, but not necessarily, by taking away their money and giving it to their victims, the poor people.
I think this might be easier for speakers of other languages than English. For example, in German "Gerechtigkeit" means justice in the sense of "fairness" and "treating everyone equally". There would be other words related to courts, such as "Rechtsprechung".
Thus terms like "Klimagerechtigkeit" are clear and don't have the negative connotations that Scott writes about.
Using and abusing the word "justice" is quintessential for mob mobilization. You don't get to fly on the wings of memetic spreading unless you use that particular word. And that has absolutely zero to do with Aristotle, in whose times the Twitter handle @theRealAristotle would not have existed.
As for "gerechtigkeit" - which is rooted in the German word for "right" - it might also be translated as "righteousness". In any case, "selbstgerechtigkeit" pretty much does translate to "self-righteousness".
Googling tells me that the analogue of the American Department of Justice is called Bundesministerium der Justiz in Germany (and similarly in Austria and Switzerland) and that Justiz has mostly legal sense in German. So, yeah, it seems like Klimagerechtigkeit and climate justice have quite different connotations.
In general, I believe it is unproductive to blame miscommunication on the other party. After all, you can't control how they'll hear things, only how you say them.
In light of that, and insofar as Scott is not an isolated example of hearing this way, perhaps this sort of phrasing could be improved.
(Reflexively, you also can't control how other people will say things, only how you hear them. Therefore, that my view also implies that Scott could improve the discourse by hearing these people better. Your comment is not without merit, but "that's you" is an unproductive accusation.)
Aristotle? When did Aristotle talk about distributive or corrective justice? Aristotle's definition of justice was about interpersonal obligation and primarily a personal trait. That is what the term social justice originally meant when it was invented by Catholics. But distributive and corrective justice are 19th century terms meant specifically to criticize that conception of social justice. People like Mills then read that backward into Plato (but not Aristotle, as far as I know).
Though notably Mills ultimately said justice was of secondary interest to utilitarianism which is how he justified things he admitted were unjust. Yes, it's not fair to take a rich man's property simply because he's rich, but it produces utils by giving it to the poor. Justice thus had to give way to higher moral, utilitarian principles, which were unjust in particular but were a form of what he called distributive justice. He specifically admits that this is justice GIVING WAY to higher principles, not just some obvious application of morally intuitive justice.
Check out Nicomachean Ethics, book 5 where Aristotle discusses the different kinds of justice. At 1130b, Aristotle brings in the kind of justice "exercised in the distribution [dianomhs] of honor, wealth, and the other divisible assets of the community, which may be allotted among its members in equal or unequal shares" [taken from the free translation on Perseus]. His major treatment of this subject in his Ethics occurs in the following chapter, NE 5.3. But he discusses this topic all over the Politics, and gives and reasons from principles of distributive justice all over the place there, most famously in his principle that the best flute ought to be given to the best flute player.
It's just not plausible to read distributive justice as something Mill invented in the 19th Century, in the face of this 2400 year old text that is plainly talking about this subject.
Adam Smith also wrote about commutative justice and distributive justice in Theory of Moral Sentiments, at least from the second edition off their of my head, in the mid 1700’s, pointing to Aristotle and Cicero I believe. Might be wrong about Cicero.
I've just searched my version of the text (as in ctrl+f) and can't find the term distributive justice. So I'm not sure what you specifically mean but I can't find it.
My kindle version (can't find the hard copy) puts it in Book 3, Section 2, Chap. 1 "Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety." That part describes it as "a becoming use of what is one's own," akin to Grotius' (not Cicero) definition of justitia attributrix. Somewhat later Smith compares it to the distributive justice of Aristotle which "consists in the proper distribution of rewards from the public stock of a community" in a footnote.
Edit: if you meant to ask where it was in Nicomachean ethics, Smith notes "See ... 1.5 .c.2." I don't know how that might translate to Aristotle, however, or if it is the editor of TMS making that location reference or something.
I'll take a look. But distribution of rewards doesn't strike you as different from utilitarian or progressive distributive justice? Reward implies desert is earned through action, not through simple necessity, doesn't it?
If you take "distributive justice" to mean "the concept of whether society is fair" which includes economic aspects then of course that's been discussed forever. Long before the term itself was invented. You could argue it's a theme in the Iliad where the king deprives Achilles of Briseis and disrupts the just distribution of war booty. But that's not usually what distributive justice means. It instead means a specific modern conception of what is economically fair in society.
In that sense, no. You're quoting that out of context to read a 19th century concept back into Aristotle. Remember, like Plato Aristotle was a member of the oligarchal political faction, not a democrat and not a utilitarian.
The Bekker translation on Perseus inserts all kinds of anachronistic terms like political science. The Greek word used in that line is dianomais (διανομαῖς). I think that's what you mean by dianomhs. Dianomais means distribute in the sense of deliver, like distributing mail. Notably, it is what herders do to animals. It specifically does not mean distribute in the sense of justice or desert. A better translation, "one type is that which is created in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the polity." I expect he's thinking, for example, of one year when Athens ran a budget surplus (due to a particularly good year in the state silver mines) and debated about where that money should go. They ultimately bought ships but they thought about just giving it out as a kind of political dividend.
He is specifically not talking about the redistribution of private property to create social equity. Plato does actually talk about that and he directly condemns it as a tool of wannabe tyrants. But certain people read it back into the text for ideological reasons.
If you define distributive justice to mean "a specific modern conception" then sure you can assert that by definition Aristotle cannot be talking about it. I cannot see exactly how you are distinguishing between "'the concept of whether society is fair' which includes economic aspects" and your apparently very different "specific modern conception of what is economically fair in society." I *think* that you think that the modern term distributive justice always means "redistribution of private property to create social equity," which I do not think that the poster you were responding to above, nor the people who talk about social justice, use it to mean. At most you can say that *your* conception of distributive justice is one you find in Mill and attribute to him since he gives a utilitarian argument for it.
Here's a little more Aristotle from further down the page, since you accuse me of taking him out of context: "This is also clear from the principle of ‘assignment by desert.’ All are agreed that justice in distributions must be based on desert of some sort, although they do not all mean the same sort of desert; democrats make the criterion free birth; those of oligarchical sympathies wealth, or in other cases birth; upholders of aristocracy make it virtue." [From a free translation, but my Irwin translation is not much different] Aristotle's point is that distributive justice means distributing goods such as wealth and honors, to people in society, and that we do so according to some notion of what we think people are worth. But different societies assign worth in different ways. By the by, it is a corollary of this view that if you want to change society fundamentally, you must necessarily want to *re*distribute, i.e., to change the distribution of such goods.
It's true that Aristotle is no lover of democracy. He does argues against Plato in favor of private property (Politics, Book 2), and in so doing is clearly arguing for one form of distributive justice over others.
The poster you were criticizing is completely correct that Aristotle distinguishes distributive justice from justice concerned with punishment, and that is precisely the right response to the original article. (You are correct that the form of the word here is διανομαῖς; the dictionary entry is for διανομή and I was tired.
To your question below, I think it's important to read thinkers carefully and not read things out of them based on my historical preconceptions. But the main reason I wrote here was because I thought you were wrong, thought the person you were responding to was right, and was willing to go down the rabbit hole with you.
> I *think* that you think that the modern term distributive justice always means "redistribution of private property to create social equity," which I do not think that the poster you were responding to above, nor the people who talk about social justice, use it to mean. At most you can say that *your* conception of distributive justice is one you find in Mill and attribute to him since he gives a utilitarian argument for it.
No, at most what I can say is that the person who, as far as I know, invented the term used it in that fashion. And that other people adopted it to mean something else. Neither of which is not what you're talking about. I'm not saying you're wrong to use that definition. But I'd need you to explain it.
Are you going to grasp the nettle and claim, then, that a woman being passed around as property is distributive justice? If it is then how is the term not all encompassing of any kind of economic morality? If not, what is your definition? As I said, if you just mean "people have opinions about what's fair and unfair and that includes matters of wealth" then sure. Hell, the Code of Hammurabi is implicitly distributive justice then. But that seems like such a broad definition as to be useless?
I don't think that it is just to treat women as property. But if someone made a claim that women ought to be treated as property, I would take that as a claim about distributive justice, one that is wrong. Similarly, I think that it is unjust to bury widows with their husbands. If someone made a claim that they ought to be, I would think that person were making a claim about what punishment would be just, one that is wrong.
Also, yes, there probably are things in the Code of Hammurabi that are about distributive justice (although the stuff I remember is about punishment). But Aristotle is getting credit here because he pointed out the distinction between these two kinds of justice, or two uses of the term justice: just distribution and just punishment. And that is the distinction that Scott is ignoring in the OP.
Actually, question for you: It's clearly important to you, in some sense, that the idea is old and longstanding. Why is that? Let's say I'm right and that distributive justice is a creature of the 19th century. Do you feel this weakens it in some way? I ask because I run into A LOT of people dubiously trying to read things back into the Classics. I've never understood the instinct.
I know you are not asking me, but I will take a swing at the question. I think it is valuable to know that a concept is older rather than newer for a few reasons:
1: Knowing how far back the topic goes suggests that it was important for a long time, and might just be a really tough question, instead of one that only smart moderns even thought to ask. Teaching economics, just about every 101 class has one kid who thinks you could solve unemployment by the government just hiring everyone, and likely thinks we are all stupid and/or evil for not just doing that. Pointing out that people have tried that for millennia and it doesn't work well is useful. Likewise questions of "You are not alone in your troubles. Consider all these people just like you in the past..."
2: If you have a perfectly good term for something, and suddenly it goes out of use and another term pops up that seems to be talking about the same thing but with none of the historical arguments being brought to bear, you know something is up. Typically you can root around the history and find "Oh, one side of the debate got entirely wrecked, and the losers went off to lick their wounds, returning with a brand new term to argue about that is said to be completely different but is actually the same and they hope no one will notice." The modern term "mandatory volunteering" for high school students comes to mind... we called that slavery, or at least forced labor, back in the day.
3a: Newer ideas that are popular are likely to be worse than older ideas that are popular. Humans are really bad at consciously picking cultural features and societal designs, but over time things that work get adopted pretty well, so older things that remain salient over time are more probably more workable.
3b: Older ideas that keep cropping up over time are more likely to be based in human nature than human imagination. If some pretty clever modern philosopher says "Boy, people being out of work and stuck home alone during COVID was really rough on them mentally" I think "That might be true." When I see Samuel Johnson also says "If you are idle, be not isolated; if you are isolated, be not idle" that makes me think "Wow, I bet that is much more likely to be true." If I see Grotius or Cicero or Aristotle also saying "Holy crap, people go nuts when they are left alone with nothing to do for a little bit" I assign it a very high likelihood of being true.
Another example is the question of "Why doesn't PTSD ever seem to get mentioned in early writings about war, indeed not much until WWI?" That leads you to wonder if something changed recently, or what.
4: (Related to 3b) Older ideas that have not been struck down as crazy are more likely to be true because they have had lots of time to be repudiated; many old ideas an arguments become so ingrained in the culture because they are accepted as true, that people forget where they came from. If an idea turns out to be really old, I should be able to find dozens of commentaries and arguments against it, many of much higher quality than what you get lately. If those don't work, or didn't work, I can feel more confident that there is really something to the idea.
Likewise, every time someone says "How can you even own something?" I want to point them to Grotius, who pretty exhaustively went through every possible state of ownership with regards to things humans care about. Those became the basis for 20th century international law, but everyone sort of forgets about those arguments because we are so used to ownership everywhere as the default. Even if you don't accept all of e.g. Grotius' arguments, you have the framework to go from, as opposed to starting from scratch.
5: New things might best be thought of as just an experiment that might work. Maybe someday future generations are going to look back and say "Wow, that universal suffrage thing was NOT a good idea." I'd be less likely to expect regret if I could look back from now and see cases where it worked out, and more likely to expect regret if I see lots of cases where it was tried and failed horrible.
6: The later 1800's and early 1900's saw the rise of some really hideous and anti-human ideas. All else equal, if an idea spawned around that time I place a much higher probability of it leading to horrific consequences.
I think that about sums it up for why I look upon older ideas with more sympathy than newer ones.
Lots of good stuff here, although I am not sure I agree with you that older ideas are more likely to be true than newer ones. But I would add that I think lots of people disparage reading old texts as somehow not really engaging with the ideas afresh and being willing to think for yourself. And that surely is a trap you can fall into, of thinking ideas are true just because they are old. But you can fall into such traps as easily reading Quine or contemporary authors. In fact, it might be easier because today's writers use terms and ideas that are already familiar to you, making it harder to break out of your own thinking and learn really new ideas.
Definitely agree on the use of terms etc. and would add that older authors will bring up situations that are totally outside one's experience and help to see things in new ways. Plato's Euthyphro really did that for me; what modern would have to consider "Is it right for me to prosecute my own father for murdering one of our slaves?"
Sure. I guess I'm most frustrated by people retroactively inserting ideas. Like the use of the word distributive justice in the Aristotle translation. That's not a good translation but they obviously want to retroactively insert the actual concept. Now, we can of course agree that he is discussing something and economics and fairness. But the idea that he was advocating for something like a modern welfare state is absurd. To take another example, the idea that international realism was invented by the Greeks is just cope. Yes, the Melian dialogue has some of the concepts, but it's not some thesis of the Athenian worldview.
1: Right, but my point is that the argument goes from "lots of people had lots of thoughts about what was fair economically" to "the idea of distributive justice, a modern term and issue in the next election, was discussed by Aristotle." That's only true in the vaguest, broadest sense. That doesn't mean it's not worth learning! But very rarely do you get such direct lessons. Except maybe in terribly obvious things.
2: I'm not sure about this. Social justice, as originally defined, was a conservative Catholic belief. The Catholics still hold basically similar beliefs but the term was appropriated by the left and then later abandoned by Catholics. Without too much change in underlying ideology. But I do agree there's a lot to be gained by ignoring the specific terms and seeing what the actual object of conversation is. The issue is that you then have to retranslate it back into terms people understand.
3a: I'd agree to this with the modification of "ideas" to "customs." Socrates didn't actually run anything. He was a philosopher and from an out of power faction. Studying how Athens worked is useful in this sense. Studying how Socrates thought Athens ought to work is still useful but less so.
3b: Fair enough.
4: I agree with this. It's even more useful to see the arguments of defeated political factions because it's entirely possible they knew something you didn't. Even if you find them unconvincing you at least understand what your own side overcame. Broad, long lasting political movements usually have at least some sense to them. If you can't think of why that is you don't really understand them. And if you don't understand something you don't understand it's opponents either. This is kind of what I gestured to in my other comment: Aristotle argues against something like the state caring for everyone. This doesn't denigrate the idea and can actually be useful for understanding it.
I agree that Aristotle wasn't talking about a modern welfare state, but I think that confusion is in how "distributive justice" came to be used now, not whether it made sense in Smith's time. He certainly wasn't using it in anyway that would argue for legal redistribution, and pretty much defined the distinction between commutative and distributive as the former being things it is justifiable to punish people over and the latter isn't. The state cannot mandate distributive justice points precisely because they cannot be clearly defined or agreed upon. Modern welfare talk of "distributive justice" would be more closely defined as "a becoming use of what is someone else's" and even that might be being too charitable :D
I can see some sort of parallel if you see the "state" as "the king", and then say ok, a king ought to use his resources to take care of his people. A becoming use of what is his own might be argued to apply to using the royal treasury to buy food for the people in case of famine, for example, but how much and what kind of food etc. still seems to put it in the realm of opinion and out of grammatical, punishable behavior.
Not enough moderns read Smith. Even Rawls had only the Reader's Digest condensed version of Theory of Moral Sentiments to work from, unfortunately. At least he had that, I suppose, but he might have had an easier time with the full work. Alas, it was out of print for most of the 20th century.
Sorry, I feel I wasn't clear. I meant to say that distributive justice in Aristotle and other pre-moderns isn't retroactively putting the words back in his mouth, but rather recently changing the term to mean something other than what it meant back then. Sort of like how "liberal" means something VERY different in the USA post 1870 than it meant in 1775 when Wealth of Nations was written with phrases like "liberal system."
As opposed to how translators always use "pike" instead of "spear", and so change Caesar's legion to having 16-20' weapons they throw around. That shit makes me crazy.
Absolutely. I'm disappointed to say this is probably one of the worst pieces Scott has written in a while. Like, it's just nitpicking about something which is just exposing an absence of familiarity with a really non-obscure, non-ingroup core aspect of political philosophy.
It really reads as a parody:
"I can’t find clear evidence on Google Trends that use of these terms is increasing - I just feel like I’ve been hearing them more and more often."
Does nobody see any issues with starting a *rationalist* piece like this?
Scott then spends a paragraph doing... what exactly?
"What is “climate justice”? Was the Little Ice Age unjust? What if it killed millions? Is it unjust for Mali to have a less pleasant climate than California? What if I said that there’s a really high correlation between temperature and GDP, and Mali’s awful climate is a big part of why it’s so poor? Climate justice couldn’t care less about any of this. Why not? Hard to say. Maybe because there’s no violation and no villain."
This is such a shallow pass at a topic which ought to be a great topic of discussion. Discussing whether justice/fairness are concepts which apply in the absence of human intention is pol phil 101- see here for example https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/#JustAgen
I think Scott is fully aware of all this and has just gone on a bashing of climate/"woke" justice because it gets used by an out group. Even the wikipedia article he links to explains the concept relatively simply.
By all means, there are really interesting discussions to be had around the scope of justice, the impact of justice as a tool of analysis etc. But the piece as a whole is just shallow and ungenerous, with lots of strawmanning and feigned incredulity. Disappointed.
The general point that Scott seems to have abandoned the premise of steelmanning is pretty sad. I get that he is trying to churn out more and more content, but it really detracts from anything he isn't already pre-disposed to engage with on an equal level with.
I concur, and this is one of the few posts of Scott's that I simply think is flat wrong--or, at least, he should have stopped at noting that the language exists in order to create a moral duty, not to punish. I don't really identify with the XXXXX justice groups, but they are a huge proportion of my wing of the labor movement, and I can say with some confidence that even if they do believe in retribution of the rich, that's simply not how they're understanding "justice" in the phrase "social justice."
I applaud you for referencing Aristotle, but deduct significant points for assuming more people are familiar with the index of justices than have seen >1 ep of 'Law & Order'.
An amazing amount of weight is carried by the "mostly" in "mostly without taking from those who have." I have the uncharitable suspicion that "mostly" doesn't have its usual meaning in this particular sentence.
“the guy who’s more sensitive to violations and more efficient and punishment than anyone else“ —> not sure what was intended but I think the “punishment” line is truncated
Very Online or sufficiently young... I don't know if you've visited a college campus recently, but I can attest that the term "climate justice" is very common there.
Similarly, people on campus may not use the word "woke", but only in the sense that fish don't frequently use the word "water."
I visited my alma mater a bit ago, and every other light pole had an official university banner with the phrase “stay woke” on it. And it’s not even a particularly “woke” campus. So I think it’s safe to say that the younger generations are actually using the term on a regular basis, or at least regularly interact with it.
And an even smaller percentage of the population is at elite schools most in the thrall of this BS rhetoric. Nonetheless, that small group of people tends to end up establishing standards for journalists and other elite tastemakers, so their linguistic and ideological quirks are important to examine.
Both? I think both. The propaganda most influential on our elite is probably important to study. And yes, this is that.
Also, I think the NYT's audience doesn't substantially consist of the Very Online. Even if there's minor overlap, the Very Online probably go to trendier, angrier sites and consume news through podcasts neither of us have ever heard of.
A related TLP-esque theory: the move away from virtue, away from agency, is *precisely the point.* By placing all of these domains outside of individual control, they're removed from your power, and you're absolved of any real responsibility or personal failing.
Currently, many are powerless and frustrated in their individual lives. They start out convinced that nothing they do can help the world because of their own deep-seated insecurities and inadequacies. But recognizing, confronting, and overcoming your insecurity is hard. Reframing everything as "justice" scratches the same itch, allowing people to express their sense of powerlessness, but doesn't make them feel like it's an individual failing of theirs, since "justice" is systemic, broad, administered by the state and beyond any individual's control.
Interesting - I think I've more often seen it used as a call to "caring" or "awareness", which has motivated the wallowing-in-powerlessness theory for me. But that could be motivated reasoning on my part.
Once we move beyond the object, we tend to see what we want to see. Is the word "justice" a call to action or an excuse to not act? Is 50 stars and 13 stripes a symbol of freedom and opportunity, or imperialism and racism, or decadence and degeneracy?
The correct answers are "It's a word" and "it's a flag".
This seems too skeptical. Yes, different words can mean different things to different people, and ultimately they are just words. But if we can't "move beyond the object" and look at its use(s) and meaning(s), we'll hamstring our ability to understand society.
Oh, there is meaning beyond the object, but it's impossible to get to that meaning by talking and talking and talking and talking, which is the only thing that you can actually do in a comments section. You're trying to get water from a well using a colander and then wondering why it keeps coming back empty. Meaning exists beyond language- the only thing words can do is gesture at an illusion of a shadow of the real world. Hieroglyphics and art are better at actually communicating meaning than words.
For what it’s worth this hews very close to what I perceive to be the truth for many young/collegiate/woke-adjacent communities who discuss things in terms of _____ justice. It is almost verboten to have a discussion about climate change, for instance, with those who frame it in terms of climate justice, in which individual choices people make are acknowledged as important. I.e. suggesting to a group of organized college Dems that they might drive less, take shorter showers, or participate less in fast fashion or frequent consumerism is considered hostile and beside the point. They would argue that they couldn’t possibly make a difference through individual choices, only large scale corporate/systemic change, and distractions like the above suggestions would be coded as neoliberal, vaguely un-hip, or insensitive; at least this is true in my experience. Try ruminating about individual changes we can make to flight climate change on a forum such as r/Politics and you might be surprised to find yourself decried.
It is besides the point, though. The "individual choices" narration is a red herring kept in the memesphere by corporate interests. The idea of personal carbon footprint was championed by... BP.
To be fair, unless you have a personal jet, individual choice is probably irrelevant. I wouldn't say that about most moral issues--individually helping a poor person is quite relevant. But climate change, in as much as it is a cataclysmic problem, isn't going to care about a single person's impact.
Being a "convenient excuse" doesn't make it wrong. Nothing you individually do will ever effect the climate in a measurable way. Coordinated action is required for that.
However, making personal sacrifices might help demonstrate the sincerity of your belief and be more persuasive.
I think you're right, and that Scott missed an important point there: It's hard to divorce "helping the poor" from actually, you know, helping the poor. Pursuing economic justice, on the other hand, doesn't have to involve helping anyone.
This theory seems very similar to the ideas expressed in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tooiNm9WmkM. It explains the problem and tries to arrive at a possible solution. I liked it.
henry george wrote very movingly about how this framing contests with hypocrisy around charity, without being so foolish as to say good things aren't good.
Sometimes the zeitgeist swings too far and perhaps it gets annoying when people talk about justice as a buzzword instead of the result of reflection. I think what you identify is use of justice as a buzzword, and yeah the internet rotates through them aggressively. At best it does have the function-in my opinion- of not letting rich liberals off the hook for some of the harms they've driven in this country (particularly around housing), where helping and being nice is contrasted with legitimate support of some of the greatest drivers of huge economic problems.
But then people say "housing justice" and oppose supply increases anyways. So I shrug and stop listening to the word justice until I trust the speaker to actually be able to argue why something is just.
To summarize the strong parts of what Henry George said:
1. We need to think about the systemic root causes of bad outcomes, and reform the system to prevent those systematically. In the same vein as "giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, but teaching a man to fish feeds him for a lifetime".
2. handouts strip away dignity and the poor could provide for themselves a lot more if the system stopped actively screwing them.
There's also a lot of confused stuff about theology and about the rich being thieves and fallacious arguments about how no good will come of constructing public works.
It's less that no good comes of constructing works, but that public works raise land value, which means they won't solve systemic inequalities deriving from land. This is basically the most rudimentary form of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem Henry George Theorem, which posits that the maximum revenue a government can generate without deadweight loss is, exactly, the land value within its borders.
But I do think he is right to point out that people can tell the difference between 'just redistribution' and 'handouts', and that building a system on the unjust redistribution will lead to frustration from the taxed and the recipients.
"... the Buddha never tried to impose his ideas of justice on the world at large. And this was very wise and perceptive on his part. It’s easy enough to see how imposed standards of justice can be a menace to well-being when those standards are somebody else’s. It’s much harder to see the menace when the standards are your own."
Ring the right bell for the right cause - scratch the right itch with the right term - and the guilt ridden tend to come running, wallets in hand. It's pavlovian. Righteousness is very marketable, especially when people are eager to show off their progressive bona fides and what have you.
Turning everything into "justice" supports moral absolutism and attempts to eliminate the possibility of debate. If you disagree with justice, you're just evil.
Denying anything can be "unjust" supports moral relativism, and eliminates any possibility of debate. If you think something is unjust, you are a a moral absolutist and should be ignored.
I mean I think this is basically all coming out of the SJ community; they have their own idiosyncratic meaning of "justice" and are applying it to lots of things. I don't think it's some distinct phenomenon that's broader than SJ. And indeed many of the things you say here apply to SJ more generally.
Slight disagree. Wikipedia says that eg spatial justice "is promoted by the scholarly tradition of critical geography, which arose in the 1970s." While it's a pretty obscure justice, this suggests they already had a tradition of doing this kind of thing back then. I agree that 1970s critical geography is lefty, but I feel like it's a broader type of lefty than just "the SJ community".
Interesing! Huh. Still, as you say, I think it's basically a feature of that social justice/critical theory/leftism cluster (I realize these are not the same thing but I typically group them together because their ways of thinking seem essentially similar to me).
"Critical X" reads to me as "woke X" (edit: and therefore "SJ X"), at least as far back as the 70s. E.g., "critical legal theory" is the foundational underpinnings of a lot of modern woke stuff, even though it was also that far back.
spatial justice I found kind of interesting. One thought is that it’s just a fancy name for land management. I think of a river that serves thousands of people over thousands of miles and somebody screwing around with the headwaters oblivious to the downstream effects. There’s really no excuse for that happening anymore. (Although I’m sure it does.)
do... you think "justice" is just a word that means "moving things around"? That's not what that word means.
"climate justice" could be rephrased more accurately as "climate change response justice". The world has to choose how to respond to climate change, with mitigation, adaptation, etc. The "climate justice" movement is a movement that attempts to ensure that the response results in outcomes that are "just", according to their definition of "just", which corresponds to left wing values such as fairness. So for example, they would want to ensure that coal workers are compensated and reskilled when their coal plant shuts down, so the poor are not impacted by the energy transition.
> The world has to choose how to respond to climate change, with mitigation, adaptation, etc.
In my view the world doesn’t have to choose anything. A very large cohort of communities geographical locations and nation states will have to decide either alone or amongst themselves how to manage any crisis that occurs such as climate change. India does not have the same problem as northern Canada for instance.
I don’t see how the word justice factors into this.
> So for example, they would want to ensure that coal workers are compensated and reskilled when their coal plant shuts down, so the poor are not impacted by the energy transition.
We might want to start a fund for the benefit of the descendants of the cotton gin debacle While we’re at it;
I know I sound rather Hobbesian, but there is a fundamental truth in that worldview that should not be ignored. When the reach of justice exceeds its grasp it turns pretty quickly into either tyranny or anarchy.
I also think that what justice means is very contigent on context; There are conflicting goals. Is the decision to be made in the context of the greater good? That means that certain marginal influences will not be treated well almost by definition. If marginal interests are what is paramount in any discussion of justice then there is a cost associated with that for others. Pretty quickly boils down to either collective or individual notions of justice . in the collective sense I think the word becomes for too vague to be of any use.
I think that the mentality behind Gall-Peters & similar pretty clearly lines up with SJ types. If anything it's just a very early precursor that ideologically matches the current SJ.
I think the line of causation runs in the other direction. I think social justice largely descends from, or at least draws much of its framework from critical theory. My impression is that this was more visible 10-20 years ago, but that might be more due to a change in my own circles. Critical theory and the social justice movement have for at least a few decades (since before "woke" was a term in popular consciousness, ) essentially existed as a feedback loop with each other.
Thanks for the note, also things to consider: the four dystopias (Darren Allen), X types of leadership, Lewis Model of Culture. The social structure/topology has surely changed.
Seems like a good way of putting it. Justice focuses on outcomes of rule/norm violations, virtue focuses on devising and applying those preventative norms.
This may be a variation of Crotchety Crank's point: acting in the name of 'justice' is acting in the name of a greater good, a higher principle. Whereas 'helping others' can easily be construed as condescending (which it often is) and even self-serving (which it often is). Any whiff of self-serving condescension creates dissonance for those who like to think of themselves and others as being altruistically motivated. They may feel on safer ground as the Keepers of The Obviously Unimpeachable Justice Faith.
It's interesting that Christianity (and any other established tradition that has an element of charity) has some pretty strong memetic defences against this, and many Christians still fail at not being condescending assholes. Now if you introduce a new ideology completely devoid of all these failsafes...
I was thinking this same thing. The New Testament doesn't care that much about "justice" (fairness, maybe?) in the real world. But the Bible (as a whole) VERY MUCH cares about taking care of the poor, the widows, the orphans, the sick. And it very much says that we as individuals should be honest, fair, merciful, etc. Society will do what it does: this is a fallen world. But each one should do what one can for one's neighbors.
And you're right, if you're a proper Christian, you should be aware how bad you suck at being a Christian, and keep on trying in all humility. And I'm worried too about the "successor" religion. Christianity, I think, is probably the least bad religion, so when you toss it out, I wouldn't expect something better, and I don't think "no religion" is an option for most people.
Agree. That is kind of my point - but I think the concept of justice might be considered my many to be a cause beyond reproach. Personally, I think it is a red herring and a pretty suspect concept altogether but in doing so, I feel I am teetering on the edge of a destructive cynicism. Who is bold enough to deny that justice is good?
When you don't know a word, but don't have a dictionary, you can often determine the meaning from how people use the word. The pitfall of this is that it may result in one thinking that "criminal justice" means "making bad people suffer".
Maybe the people you’re thinking of who use “climate justice” and “economic justice” and “X justice” don’t realize how these phrases land with others. But this not a motte and bailey. They are quite sincere in also thinking that “criminal justice” is not justice and is not a model for what they want.
Again, maybe these phrases are poorly chosen give their goals and beliefs. But they very much don’t come out of an attempt to ride the coattails of criminal justice.
It's been interesting to see my friend group evolve on criminal justice tbh. Maybe 2014/2015 they all clearly thought that retribution was a bad criminal justice goal and that it should all be about rehabilitation.
Now they still believe the criminal justice system is broken, but not because retributive justice is bad - it's just that the wrong people are getting punished.
This is just a survey of my Facebook friends, I don't have data about the broader culture. But I worked in criminal defense for a while, have an interest in this, and had noticed this trend before this article.
I don't doubt that the internet is full of hypocrites, but I'll also point out that "the justice system gives nice rehabilitative treatment to some groups and harsh retribution to others, due to factors like racism and classism" can be a systemic criticism, not just a complaint about the wrong people getting punished.
I mean I agree with that and don't even think that this is hypocrisy. It's more like a frame change from "why does a black man caught with cocaine do ten years in prison when tax evaders go free" to "why do tax evaders go free when a black man with cocaine does 10 years in prison."
That's a nitpick but the post *is* about semantics. The former framing emphasizes the injustice of the harsh sentence, the latter the injustice of a lack of sentence for a bad guy. Because of my background I see the harsh sentence as the greater evil and would prefer to address that. I do not believe putting more tax evaders in jail will do that.
My suspicion is that we talk about "helping" when the pie is big enough i.e. the economy is growing, and the average person sees a chance at advancement. When it becomes more of a zero-sum game due to low economic growth or stratified classes, then "justice" comes more into vogue.
Even if inequality is growing, I am also not convinced that the public's perception of that as being a problem, which is informed by the media, will have any meaningful connection to base reality. Public perception of the frequency and magnitude of mass shootings, school shootings, and police violence have all shot up dramatically in recent years despite all of those things becoming less frequent and less severe.
On issues like this, the media mostly operates on Simulacra Level 3.
If anything, it's the other way around - obsession with inequality leads to economic policies that prevent the pie from growing or even cause it to shrink, creating zero-sum conditions.
I think the pie is growing, but at the same time from what I read, the gap between rich and poor is getting larger (at least in the USA). So from the viewpoint of the majority, the pie may not be growing much.
Having said that, you could be right that the pie is actually growing and the idea that it is not is politically slanted, but what I'm getting at is that if people perceive the pie to have stopped growing then they are more likely to demand "justice".
I don't remember encountering the "helping" rhetoric that often, but the difference makes intuitive sense. There also seems to be a directional aspect; "helping" implies voluntary initiative from above, whereas "justice" implies conceding to demands from below, the human motive of economic redistribution shifting from generosity in good times to fears of social unrest and political instability in hard times.
It's simple: it's all "justice" because justice implies the existence of both victims and perpetrators. Unfairness and disparities in outcomes between people, rather than bad things that can be improved in absolute terms. It's a justification for attacking a person, rather than helping a person. It's just more of the same political stuff.
"Justice" also connotes someone somewhere intending to do harm where there isn't always intent. Justice can be demanded, there's moral certainty, whereas anyone can just shrug off platitudes. The term's connotations are satisfying simple and simply satisfying, which is perfect for the social media age.
That's a cool way of looking at it. What I want to know is whether people using [X] justice are actually more concerned with exacting justice against someone instead of helping the original group. I don't think Stalin called it "Economic Justice", but did he call it "helping the poor"?
From the wiki article on economic justice, it doesn't really sound that bad. "Economic justice aims to create opportunities for every person to have a dignified, productive and creative life that extends beyond simple economics." Isn't that a good goal?
I agree that it sounds annoying, but mostly because it sounds like the latest term in a long line of saying things without really helping. I don't really see how [X] justice is any more pernicious than committing yourself to War on [X].
This sounds very motte-and-bailey. "We just want to create opportunities for every person," the motte; "let's punish the 'oppressors' we hate," the bailey.
But it's not a strawman if it's actual behavior. One claims "help the poor" but then defines that as "overthrow the bourgeoisie." The true goal is often the actions taken, not the intentions stated.
The people I know who are interested in economic justice helped get ballot initiatives passed to expand minimum wage, expand medicaid, and overturn right to work in my state. We also respect picket lines and boycotts. Speaking only personally because I don't know for sure about anyone else, my family also almost always tips 20+% and gives a decent (thought sub 10%) amount to charity.
At no point have I guillotined anyone in the bourgeoisie. Hell, I think I might be the bourgeoisie. (I've always been fuzzy on this.) I quite agree that actions matter, but I think if you look at our actions the economic justice crowd comes off pretty well.
Look. Most human attainment is on a bell curve, and half the people are going to be on the left of that curve for whatever metric you care to investigate. For the ones that we look at in the modern world, I'm well placed on the right and it's pretty easy for me to make my way. That's privilege and I'm very glad to have been so blessed. But I can do what my part to make the economy more fair to people who are less fortunate than I am, and I think that's what most people who aren't using economic justice as a sneer mean when we say it.
>> What I want to know is whether people using [X] justice are actually more concerned with exacting justice against someone instead of helping the original group
Giving a buck to someone who gets robbed every night isn't much different than just giving money straight to the criminals.
If the opportunities are expensive to create, and the "we" who want them to be created have a plan that involves them not doing the paying because they've found someone else who can be made to pay, then either A: they're going to *ask* the someone else to pay and be willing to take "no" for an answer, or B: they're going to heap apologies and respect on the someone else whose wealth they are seizing, or C: they're seeing the someone else as a villain due for a dose of good old-fashioned retributive justice.
There's a few other meanings of "justice" which I think are more relevant for some of these justices. There's fairness, which fits best with the "justice" in "economic justice". There's also restitution, which fits with "racial justice".
I've been scrolling down looking to see if anyone else had said this first. Thank you.
I really think a lot of this post is basically Scott strawmanning people he doesn't like. He could have run this idea that woke people like the idea of X justice because it maps to criminal justice and they get to punish people by literally any woke person he knows to find out that they/we don't think of it that way. Instead he constructed a straw woke person and then ruminated about their villainy.
I recall hearing in childhood religious school back in the early 90s that the English word "charity" comes from the Latin "caritas" meaning compassion, and it's about a feeling of caring deep in your heart. But the Hebrew "tzedakah", often translated as "charity" comes from the root "tzedek" meaning justice.
So if they're smelly and obnoxious and ungrateful and no one could blame you for not feeling compassion, you still need to give because justice calls for them to receive. Similarly if they are so numerous that you can only relate to them abstractly.
I never saw this as rejecting utopianism. It's just that in the Jewish vision of an ideal economy, there are still some people who can't take care of themselves and everyone else just steps up and takes care of them.
That's correct. But not only is it not caritas, the CRT-inflected understanding of justice is not tzedakah in support of the inevitably unfortunate (who might be any of us--a Job, for example). Rather, it is retribution on behalf of the "victims" of sin, the sin being advantage itself (styled as "privilege").
I agree. This reminds me of the eternal debate on philanthropy vs taxation. As long as we are talking about charity, giving more is better - but it is perfectly alright if people choose not to give. If we frame it as justice, nobody should be allowed to prevent justice from running its course. The powerful should not have the right to withhold justice.
So if one wants charity for the poor they would organise a fundraiser. But if they want economic distributive justice they would try to Tax the Rich.
So it makes perfect sense to me that a movement that uses the term justice inflationary also devolves into cancel culture and a general jungle of formal and informal norms.
Yes, but also we have a question about legitimacy. The donor/taxpayer wants to be assured of the merit of what they're paying for. (Is it really needed? If it is needed, is it needed more than morally equivalent priorities? Will it do any good?)
As long as we are thinking in these terms, we are acknowledging the donor/taxpayer's implicit moral agency and right to judgment (even if the taxpayer's ability to exert judgment is limited to evading taxes, redirecting them through donor activity and casting votes for preferred political candidates).
But the CRT perspective assumes universal reluctance or refusal to donate/pay for justice strictly on account of racism and/or hoarding of privilege.
From this standpoint, there is no point in organizing a fundraiser (the rich are racists and won't give) and there can be no hope of redistribution (privilege hoarders will never relinquish their position at the top of the social pyramid). The justice of the cause having been established and defined already by fiat, seizing the levers of power becomes the obvious and only means of obtaining justice.
Good points. I think that the question of 'who gets to hold the lever' and decide which cause is worthy is absolutely central to understanding all this language about justice and privilege and empowerment. These terms directly speak to the envisaged shift in power from the hitherto powerful and privileged to the disenfranchised and underpriviledged who shall be empowered as right-holders.
Irrespective if one agrees with this view I think its a pretty straight-forward idea.
"So if one wants charity for the poor they would organise a fundraiser. But if they want economic distributive justice they would try to Tax the Rich."
Which supports the theory that "____ justice" is just about retribution. The debt is what, 30 trillion? The government spent 7 trillion last year alone? The last few years have shown that the government will spend whatever it wants, whenever it wants, regardless of the tax revenue it brings in. So "Tax the Rich" could only be about resentment.
I think there has been a general shift towards villifying our social/political opponents. “I believe in helping women” leaves open a discussion of “how”. “I support justice for women” implies that all persons who disagree with my beliefs are evil. Similarly we use words like “misogynistic” and “racist” with ever widening meaning because those words label our social opponents as evil.
I talked with a Unitarian minister recently about the difference between moral issues and political issues. She asserted with certainty that there was no difference whatsoever. Apparently those who disagree with her notion of “justice” are simply evil.
I'm not sure how her stance as you've described it implies that people who disagree with you are evil. Just because you consider something to be a moral issue doesn't mean that you necessarily have total certainty that you are right, and even if so, those who disagree with you could easily be mistaken rather than evil.
In addition to conflict theory maximization, once you define things as unjust you stop doing cost benefit analysis on them. I noticed this when I talked about raising minimum wage with people. To me, it's a matter of whether the higher pay outweighs job loss. To some other people, paying less than $X/hour is just immoral like slavery or something. You can't make good policy that way, especially on complex stuff like economics or climate.
Another great thing about the "justice" framing for the disingenuous political actor is that it doesn't actually require you to commit to any specific end point or set of policies.
If you say "Everybody should get paid exactly the same" then you have to defend that particular proposition. If you just say "Economic justice!" then you can just point in a general direction without committing to anything in particular.
I think whether increasing minimum wages will in practice cause job losses is one of those partisan arguments that makes people assume their opponent is from the other tribe and therefore pointless to argue with.
I note that I don't consider people with different moral beliefs than mine 'evil'. My wife thinks praying to God and apologizing for sin is importantly moral. I think God doesn't exist, and that all moral rules involving him are incorrect. But I don't think she's EVIL. I just think she's wrong.
In the same sense, I think there's room for a *tolerant* form of moral-politics. If you're tolerant of people with a different moral code than yours (presumably within some range of moral codes), you could see politics as an extension of morality and still not vilify those who disagree with your politics. No idea if the minister you were speaking to was tolerant, but I know Unitarians are generally noted for it.
That's not quite Pete's point, though. Yes, there is room to disagree while only considering someone to be wrong, rather than evil. When someone is pro-life, a person who is pro-choice can think that they are wrong (factually wrong, morally wrong, whatever) and not necessarily think them evil. By calling them a "misogynist" that seems to be very directly saying "and therefore evil." It's hard to hear the terms racist, misogynist, white supremacist, etc., without understanding the meaning as "and therefore evil." That's distinct from the ambiguity of disagreement, and seems to be exactly Pete's (and I believe Scott's) whole point.
Byrel, you are correct that I was not describing the Venn diagram correctly. There is a possibility that the minister would accept some persons as being immoral but simply wrong as opposed to “evil”. However, I have never heard her suggest that such is the case. And she feels that her moral beliefs are a sound basis for political action.
Does this imply that an optimum for her would be for the political tribes to sort themselves on the morality axis, thus having a moral tribe and an immoral (or maybe amoral) tribe?
Short of this, it would seem that she'd be sort of stuck choosing the more moral of the two tribes (and then maybe trying to improve it).
Am I missing something here? It seems like a weird axis to optimize along, since it means that when the preferred team loses, it's dark times indeed (morally speaking). Seems like you'd want both tribes to value morality.
Hi Matt … I’ve been thinking more about this. Despite my earlier equivocation, I think that the term “moral” really does imply that “moral people are good” and “immoral people are bad”. (Though the word “evil” was probably too strong) Using the term “moral” is fundamentally different from talking about a utilitarian morality axis. Ethics and social theory and personal preference can encompass many concepts and shades of meaning, but “moral” seems absolute.
In the case of the person I mentioned, I think she has a personal vision of how the world should be ordered and is willing to use any weapon in order to produce that resolution. Equating morality with politics simply is another means to that end and I think it is done with little consideration for the implications. Your discussion of a moral axis is a very rational approach but it is not the way her mind works.
I was taken aback recently when an otherwise intelligent person said "TV show X has bad politics". Bad, of course, being any option other than their own.
I welcome the pendulum swinging in the other direction, it's about time.
To add to your point, to me it seems like we have a huge uptick in “essentialist” language. We don’t say someone did a racist thing, we say that person is a racist.
Think of the context of idiotic 14yr old behavior, and you see the different implications in this language…
I mean, on the neoconservative right everything is war: war against terror, war against drugs, spiritual warfare. I think the framing resonates depending on your moral framework.
Left wing liberals are focused on a notion of equality and fairness as justice (I think Haidt's moral foundations theory is really helpful here). So the idea that wealthy nations create the most CO2 and cause the most global warming, where poorer nations (mostly already hot) will disproportionately experience the worst effects, is inherently unjust.
Has anyone used the term "war on drugs" in the last sixty years without being opposed to it? As far as I can figure out it was a short-lived Nixon-era slogan.
The US, of course, never had a meaningful war on drugs, and certainly doesn't today. The Philippines has a war on drugs. The US has a half-assed enforcement with no hope of taking a meaningful bite out of the problem.
Meanwhile the "War on Terror" was an actual war, and "Spiritual Warfare" is a term that I am willing to believe exists but I've never seen it used.
> Meanwhile the "War on Terror" was an actual war, and "Spiritual Warfare" is a term that I am willing to believe exists but I've never seen it used.
I can promise you, as someone who grew up in the American South going to Church every Sunday, the idea that you have *never* seen the words "spiritual warfare" used (or similar phrases, like "Lord's Army" or "Armor of God") is wild to me.
Yeah I grew up evangelical. "Spiritual warfare" was all over the place in the 90s, and as far as I can tell is still a dominant paradigm in evangelical circles.
I don't think the war on terror was an actual war. It was the framing for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (and other involvements), true. And these were wars. But it covered a lot of other legal, domestic security, and international policy shifts.
My point being, it's a framing that a certain segment of the political right commonly uses to frame policy and moral goals. And it brings with it a set of normative assumptions and methodological practices.
War on X, like X Justice, or like Free X, is the same kind of moral framing that everyone does.
The "War on Poverty" was a well known phrase in the 1960s associated with the Johnson administration, so this is not exclusively the domain of neo-cons.
It seems to me that we have made great progress in the war on poverty, and that this progress is mostly unrelated to any Great Society programs.
So about the "311,000" hits for "climate villains": this estimate is completely wrong.
I don't mean that it's not what Google says on page one of the search results. That part is true. But if you click through to page 15 of the results for this search, you find that the estimate reduces from 311,000 to 149 results. Google has decided that want to always provide an estimate of the total number of results for every search, but they have neither precomputed accurate estimates for all possible searches, nor do they wish to spend the compute to calculate good estimates on the fly for every search, when most people never go past page one. Their estimates can be ok for searches on common words (where they most likely do have cached in a database somewhere the current number of web pages associated with that term), but for compound phrases, they take each of the component words, and do some kind of math to estimate the value. So here, they would look at both "climate" hits (4,470,000,000 results), and "villains" hits (2,190,000,000 results), and maybe a few other parameters, and make a guess as to how often these appear together. Unfortunately, these guesses have almost no relationship to reality.
I often see these number cited as evidence for how prevalent something is. Given Google's reputation and prevalence, I find it pretty irresponsible that they still list these estimates despite knowing how wrong they are. But presumably some product manager likes showing users a lot of zeros to give an inflated impression of how comprehensive Google's web crawling is.
Here's a longer analysis. It's five years old, but not much has changed in that time:
I'm less sure the estimates (of the number of search results) is wrong and think it's more likely that Google decided to more aggressively limit the number of results you can see. (And that makes sense – keeping some kind of 'paginated results' data, with thousands (or more) of results in some server's memory is expensive at their scale.)
I personally miss the days when there were (or could be) literally hundreds or thousands of pages of results for a search, but I think Google noticed (a while ago) that almost no one bothers looking beyond the first or maybe second page anyways.
I defy the data that there are only ~150 results for "climate villains"! That seems way too low to be plausible.
I second this theory. I don't know how accurate their estimates are, but I know that their total results are truncated enormously. Everything returns about 15-20 pages before "repeat with omitted" and returns about 30-50 pages once you "repeat with omitted." Searching for the two words 'climate' and 'villain' returns only 30 more results before or after searching again with omitted results included, than the respective search (omitted/non-omitted) for the quoted phrase '"climate villain"' even though most of the results for the two words don't include the phrase "climate villain" and many don't include either word (e.g. they highlight the phrase "bad guy" as why they matched it with "villain" or they highlight the word "environment" as why they matched it with "climate.") Similar numbers occur when searching for other random phrases. (I searched for "colossal regret" and "American dream" for reference. After repeating the search with omitted results, "American dream" still only gave 41 pages with 405 total results. The 44 million estimated results seems much more plausible of a total count for that phrase than the 405 it returned -- or the 21 pages before repeating with omitted results included.)
The “American dream” example is excellent, and handily convinces me that clicking through the paginated results is not a good representation of the total number of Cleve pages cataloged by Google which logically match the search input. However, I still maintain that the first-page estimate is also an inaccurate measure of the same.
While it does give the “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 149 already displayed.” message, repeating with the omitted results returns only 290 results, at least 3 of which point to this blog post. Keep in mind, this is not a claim that only 290 such results exist on the internet, but that Google has only cataloged this number of pages matching the result. There’s lots of parts of the web Google’s crawlers can’t get to (private Facebook threads, etc.)
The intrinsic lack of justice in the world (as it is) is disturbing, to say the least. Arguably human beings have been in a struggle to make the world more just for a long time, but at its heart, the world is not just. How could it be? For the same reason it’s not unjust either.
It seems to me a lot of people aren’t really able to come to terms with that truth in a fundamental way, and they start looking for someone to blame.
There's definitely a lot of signaling going on with the phrase. Maybe more so signaling allegiance with SJ causes more generally, rather than college specifically. Of course, many people learn these terms in college and the affiliation is probably pretty strong.
Arm the poor and watch them cut your throat for your wallet. Once you've told them "everyone richer than you is The Enemy" (and this is what "Hang the rich" boils down to), it'll take them about 5 seconds to work out that hey, that guy with the nice haircut and college education and all those lovely books on Theory is richer than us!
Not to mention that lots of those "poor" are already armed- and probably have worldviews you'd find horribly reactionary.
All of this, of course, comes with the counterpoint that collective bargaining and unions (actually productive use of labor instead of Theory-laden myopia about a Revolution, Permanent or otherwise) actually gets good results for the poor and the working man- which is why most would-be revolutionaries are as anti-union as any arch-capitalist. If the working class can genuinely improve their position, after all, that might mean the Revolution might not happen!
Not at all. I am strongly in favor of Second Amendment rights for the poor. Nobody needs a gun more than some struggling single mom in a drug-infested neighborhood. She should be able to wear some honking big .45 on her hip when she goes to the store for baby formula. I would offer her state-subsidized training at the local range every Saturday, too, so she knows how to use it.
So... as someone who actually does use "___" Justice, quite frequently, I'd like to say that I think it's a good thing to reframe "helping the poor" or "saving the poor" as "pursuing economic justice." I don't think it's a good thing for people to think of themselves as saviors, to me that's a really unhealthy and unhelpful mindset which results in people who aren't themselves poor thinking they can be the experts and the decision-makers, and that there is something wrong with poor people, that they need to be "saved" or "fixed." We live in a world where there is enough food to feed everyone, yet people go hungry; enough shelter to keep everyone warm, yet people go cold. To me, that says there is something wrong with our system of resource distribution, not with the people who ended up, for one reason or another, being left out of it.
Does that result in a sense of responsibility to fix the system? Yes! Does it imply that we don't live in Utopia? Yes! Because we don't. And I don't think we should pretend to. But it also implies that we *could* live in utopia. It demonstrates a real hope about the possibility of utopia. It says, "if we could figure out how to live together better, we could all have enough to eat and be warm."
Several more points:
-I agree with James Grimmelmann that what is meant by all these forms of "_____ Justice" is very much restorative justice, not retributive justice. Which I encourage you to look up if you haven't heard of that "_____ Justice" before :)
-Climate Justice means responding to climate change in an equitable way, recognizing that its impact is greater on some groups of people than others, and thus that as we plan how to mitigate the impact of climate change, we need to do it in such a way that historically marginalized people don't continue to bear the brunt of the impact.
-Now don't get too made at me for attempting to give this community the opportunity to learn to better steelman SJAs. To an SJA like myself, your article screams that you need to check your privilege because your white fragility is getting triggered (would love to explain those terms more if requested). It sounds like you want to cling to the sense that you still live in a utopia, want to feel good about being a generous, saintly person, and want these so much that you don't want to recognize the systems that oppress people with historically marginalized identities and instead would like to rationalize their situation being their own, individual fault.
Oh, and might it have pictures? 'Cos you know, us redneck -ists and -phobes en't too smart, readin' is hard for us what with all the big words and hard concepts.
The rhetorical shift to e.g. "environmental justice" is, I think, genuinely puzzling to people outside a very narrow sphere of hypersensitive life. I don't think we need to appeal to uncharitable notions of white fragility to explain why people might find them confusing. (I fully get what it means, you don't need to explain, but it also seems like bulverism which avoids engaging with the subject matter at hand.)
With that said, I absolutely think more woke perspectives are a necessary addition to a conversation like this, so thanks for chiming in even if I disagree.
Thank you for chiming in as well. I'm listening. I think the white fragility vibe I got was less from the puzzlement over the rhetorical shift and more from the complaint that the result of the rhetorical shift was comparable to the shift from utopian to dystopian fiction.
I think that there is another view on the whole "shift" issue, if we look at it not as a progress from utopia to dystopia, but just as progress.
Taking the setting from a somewhat similar line of thought in https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/05/dont-be-an-asch-hole/, an antebellum Southerner in the early 1800s who speaks out against slavery, or even just isn't racist, might be a praiseworthy person. On the other hand, someone who isn't pro-slavery today doesn't seem to deserve any praise; they just meet the minimal criteria of being an OK person.
In this context, a shift from talking about "help" or even "saving" to using "justice" might be either a reflection of shifting societal norms, or an attempt to influence these norms (whether conscious or unconscious).
I think that talking in the context of social systems and the outcomes they provide is illustrative of the difference between the contexts.
Let's assume system that has unequal outcomes that are bad for some group and an alternative system that has very different outcomes which are more equal. A discussion in terms of "justice" presumes that the former system needs to be dismantled and the latter system is inherently better. A discussion in terms of helping people implies a burden of proof to show that the suffering group will actually be better off given the proposed changes - since you can easily have a system which is simply equally bad for everyone, or you can have a failure in building the hypothetical new system after dismantling the old one which makes it worse for everyone. And this is not hypothetical, there are all kinds of naive proposals with the intent to increase justice which would make poor people even worse off.
Also, do note your phrasing, for example, with respect to climate justice, that you directly go from recognizing certain facts, which is reasonable, to recognizing a certain duty, which is very different. The fact that impact of something is greater on some groups of people than others does *not* automatically imply a duty to ensure that this does not continue. Your phrasing assumes this as axiomatic, which I fundamentally refuse - you can *debate and convince* me of the notion that in this particular case for particular reasons one particular group should be forced to sacrifice something to ensure that historically marginalized people don't continue to bear the brunt of the impact; there are all kinds of arguments for this situation that make sense; but if you start with an assertion that this simply needs to be "recognized", presuming that the debate must end with that conclusion, then that's not a debate I'm going to get involved in, it's something like another commenter pointed out (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/justice-creep/comment/5562310?s=r), that this use of "climate justice" starts with the presumption that your proposed intervention is just and appropriate, while it very much needs to be debated.
Or perhaps that's the key difference that's hidden by the different, incompatible interpretations of the very loaded word "justice" ? Because for me, even restorative justice starts to apply only when there is actual guilt involved and does not involve redistribution of resources from someone who is in a privileged position unless they actually *personally did* something unjust and abusive to get there; and my inherent understanding of justice is that I consider group punishment as fundamentally unfair, so implying collective guilt for something their countrymen or ancestors did can't possibly facilitate justice in my mind.
For climate justice in particular, there is in my opinion a clear duty for better-off countries/people/groups to help those that are worse off. However, the duty does not arise because there are unequal *outcomes*. The duty arises because climate change is caused by carbon in the atmosphere, and different groups have very unequally contributed to this carbon.
With that in mind, the USA cannot just say "we don't care about the disappearance of the Marshall Islands, it's their problem". Because the USA, being the country with the world's highest carbon footprint, is also the country in the world that is most responsible for the rising oceans. The Marshall Islanders on the other hand have contributed ~zero to the climate crisis.
Traditionally, people did not have to pay for some negative externalities of their actions. For example, everyone could pollute clean air or put carbon in the atmosphere without a cost. This was clearly unjust, because some people (the rich ones who could afford fossil fuels) used a disproportionate share of a common good, without any cost to them. In my opinion, this leads to a clear moral duty to help those who now suffer from a carbonated atmosphere.
"Traditionally, people did not have to pay for some negative externalities of their actions. For example, everyone could pollute clean air or put carbon in the atmosphere without a cost.This was clearly unjust, because some people (the rich ones who could afford fossil fuels) used a disproportionate share of a common good"
Unless the rich already contribute a disproportionate enough share to the common good that it compensates for climate stuff. If they have to pay for negative externalities, they should also get paid for positive externalities.
Or to put it another way: If westerners had not started using fossil fuels to drive the industrial revolution, would the third world be better off today? Maybe they owe us?
I'm sure that all my Amazon purchases have made him 200$ richer already :)
Seriously though: the link between fossile fuel consumption of the rich and negative outcomes on the poor is scientifically undisputed, whereas it is much harder to establish such causal links for positive externalities.
Ar-Pharamazon owes me way more than that with what he's doing with "The Rings of Power" and his showrunners running amok with "hardened warrior piss-and-vinegar Galadriel" and "political operator Elrond"; I didn't spend time and money in my twenties acquiring every last volume of HoME to put up with this kind of glib rebooting!
I've got to say, the line "If they have to pay for negative externalities, they should also get paid for positive externalities" did make me stop and think. I will note that in practice, humans seem to not think that these are symmetrical. Pretty much every legal system lets you recover damages from someone who harmed you (in at least some contexts), while I don't know of anywhere that lets you sue someone you saved to recover a portion of the utility you provided them. And similarly you don't get a pass on assault charges if you also were the surgeon who cured your victim's cancer.
To be fair, we do offer subsidies for some things with positive externalities, such as green energy, food, and education. You might debate how well those are targetted, but an attempt is at least made
It would be an interesting system. Take that kid in China who got ran over by a car and nobody helped. What if a bystander knew he could get big bux for saving the kid? But then people would start faking near-deaths to make money, so maybe not so good.
"And similarly you don't get a pass on assault charges if you also were the surgeon who cured your victim's cancer."
Copyright law and patent laws are entire sections of the lawcode of every country in the world that are about suing people for utility you provided them.
Thanks to @Guy and @Theme Arrow. I hadn't thought about positive externalities in this way before - very interesting, although I think I agree with Theme Arrow that they probably shouldn't be symmetric.
I think you're right that using the term "justice" presumes that there's something that needs to be done about the situation, and I agree that simply the existence of a difference in impact is not an argument for why something should be done about it. Thanks for your comment.
But is there a way to conclude for all or most members of the set "poor people" that there is never something wrong that requires fixing? If there is ever something wrong that needs fixing, and it is something immanent in the individual, does the need to fix it require that the poor person be at fault?
Incidentally, I would love to see some non-tautological evidence for the existence of "white fragility." Is it like phlogiston?
White fragility is more like presumed guilt, since the more you argue against an accusation of it, the more fragile you display yourself to be. It's inarguable and therefore unhelpful to bring into just about any discussion. And, of course, it's hopelessly racist.
Yes. I feel like there should be a term for this particular style of float-burn presumed guilt, but if there is I am insufficiently caffeinated to recall it.
I don't immediately have a great answer for you about white fragility except to say that I am a white person and I notice the experience of it in myself. I don't think in individual instances outside observers can say with certainty what the internal experience of another person is. However, it does make a good deal of sense to me that people would tend to be sort of defensive about a topic that tends to make them feel guilt and shame, which race does at times for me and for many other white people I have talked to about it. I don't know if anyone has done a good scientific study about it, but people who talk with white people about race a lot tend to have some interesting anecdotes about it. My comment about it was more just to share my knee-jerk response from a SJA lens, not to posit that Scott is actually definitely experiencing white fragility in this instance.
Glad to read this understanding of failures of our resource distribution systems, and what justice could be ie an absence of marginalised and oppressed people denied access to fundamental requirements for a decent existence.
And how many of you glibly finger-wagging *are* "marginalised and oppressed people"? I see a lot of talking on their behalf by precisely the well-meaning white saviours which is decried by the 'justice for X" talk.
Oh, comes it to that, I can tally up a nice little list of marginalisation and oppression myself, but it's as artificial an exercise as the antipodal one of telling me I have more privilege and status than a famous wealthy African-American man, for instance, based purely on "you're white".
Not too short, however, for someone to trot out the "white fragility" accusation. The problem is one of definitions, and as someone has mentioned, definitions creep. "Racism" had a particular meaning, however limited or non-comprehensive it was, but now "racism, racist" just means "If you disagree with me you are a bad person".
" To an SJA like myself, your article screams that you need to check your privilege because your white fragility is getting triggered"
And this is why I argue above that "X, Y or Z Justice" is a way of having your cake and eating it - you're certainly not clothing any naked or feeding any hungry by these buzzwords but my oh my, the bright comforting warm glow of virtue by scolding the naughty!
Now *you* can be the saviour swooping in to rescue us, mired in our ignorance and complacence, fixing us with your expertise on all the talking-points of social justice. Doesn't it feel just *yummy*?
You encapsulate precisely what I said about "saviours and saints" being regarded with suspicion, and about how being the Morality Police is the way of abrogating that virtue for yourself but in line with the new directives about not putting yourself up as a leader. It's different when you do it to outsiders, though, because it is recognised and agreed that *those* people (the fragile triggered whites) *do* have "something wrong with [them], that they need to be "saved" or "fixed."
Can you tell us what "people go hungry" means, in explicit detail? I assume you don't mean it literally, because most people are hungry sometimes. I was really hungry yesterday. Does it just mean "people don't have everything to eat that they'd like to eat"?
About a third of the world's population will die younger than they should due to complications of inadequate macronutrient consumption during some period of their life (permanently weakened immune systems and gallbladder failure are common complication of even brief periods of starvation; 100-200 million people in India alone suffer sufficiently inadequate access to macronutrients to cause permanent side effects in most years, with the affected people not necessarily being the same one year to the next), and approximately 6-10 million people directly starve to death every year. To be fair to your point though, most of the people I hear using phrases like "economic justice" tend to be talking about domestic inequality in countries where obesity is a bigger problem than malnourishment; rather than global inequality which actually kills people through hunger. Though there is also an argument to be made that even in the first world, many people lack access to adequate nutrition through food -- though multivitamins may in principle give most of them alternative access if multivitamins can actually replace vegetables -- if we are considering micronutrients and not just macronutrients.
I knew that malnutrition caused many deaths by weakening the immune system, but did not knew that temporary starvation regularly causes permanent immunosuppression.
I'm surprised to read that so many people directly starve to death, as oppose to dying from the effects of chronic malnutrition. Are they living in regions afflicted by famine, or do people directly starve even apart from famines?
The dystopian comparison is not applicable, as there is Orwell and Huxley (and if you insist, Kafka and Phil K Dick). Orwell (or Kafka) deals with force and redistribution of power as "justice", Huxley (and likely PKD) deals with subverted utopias as "freedom". People are starting to forget about Huxley, whilst overly obsessing over Orwell. https://expressiveegg.org/2017/01/03/ur-kinds-dystopia/
Social justice, the first one of these I heard 20+ years ago, still doesn’t make sense to me. I read about it and it still sounds like white noise or laundered ideas passing as an excuse. What the professor said here: https://youtu.be/YQ-Upb4Szms
[Attempting to create a steelman definition] 'Social justice' is the subset of justice regarding harms caused by societal causes, just as "criminal justice" is the subset of justice regarding harms caused by criminal causes. Criminal harms are easily covered under the law by definition, as the law is what makes something a crime; the law will specify some combination of restitution to the victim and punishment to the offender that constitutes 'justice'. Social harms are not as easily covered, often because society, and not an individual, is responsible for the harm.
As someone on the right, I don't like 'social justice' and its derivatives because the harms are often subjective and their causation is often indirect. When the cause of 'harm' is 'society', it's impossible to end up with a 'fair' result.
Not claiming to be an expert, but my impression was always that 'social' justice calls attention to the fact that our social fabric and hierarchy (and norms that support it) produce unfair outcomes. Whereas, 'justice' by itself seems to have a more narrow criminal/deontological connotation (punishment for wrongdoers)
Alasdair MacIntyre, call your office. By which I mean: we can only frame ethics as justice because (as MacIntyre points out), we in the modern West lack a common vocabulary of virtues and values, which would (in his view) derive from a notion of the telos (purpose) of a human life. In the great religious traditions, justice is balanced with mercy (at least theoretically), but justice as SJW's use the term isn't the justice that Aristotle thought of as one of the virtues: it's a demand for intervention by some authority, not the practice of fairness towards another person. Mercy, on the other hand- at least, as I see it- can only be an individual virtue, but woke/Successor Ideology/SJW theory doesn't have any room for individual virtues, so all we have is justice without its necessary counterbalance.
I could be wrong about all of this, but I think MacIntyre has a lot to say about where things went off the rails.
I agree with the thrust of your point, especially regarding the "demand for intervention by some authority". But I disagree that we've really "lost the vocabulary" to discuss or promote these ideas. Not many study Ancient Greek, true, but I think we can express "τέλος" just about as effectively by talking about "the meaning of life", and we don't need to deeply understand Greek "ἀρετή" to communicate the idea of "virtue". There must be other reasons why those memes have lost their force, relative to "justice"-focused versions.
Indeed, the vocabulary still exists, but the concepts it refers to are devoid of shared meaning. Nobody agrees these days what the "meaning of life" or "virtues" are supposed to be, which is exactly the point.
Dear Crotchety: First, all props to you, awesome internet name, one that I wish I had thought of first.
Second, it's almost certain I am not doing, er, justice to MacIntyre's argument (in After Virtue) which is a big long and learned argument. But I think MacIntyre has insights as to why our conversations about ethics in the modern world are so unsatisfying and fruitless. I am endlessly fascinated by the complete lack of mercy, compassion, forgiveness, or even redemption narratives in so much call-out/cancel culture. Once you're a racist/sexist/transphobic whatever, you're done, cooked, outta here. . I think this shift to justice as appeal to authority has something to do with it.
Ha, thanks, I chose the name as self-parody but I worry a bit that I've leaned into it too far.
I'll have to reread After Virtue, since I don't think was in the right frame of mind to understand it charitably the first time around. I was (and suspect I still am) very sympathetic to his argument; my quibble is fairly narrow. I think people still have an intuitive understanding of what a word like "sin" or "virtue" means, they (we?) just don't treat it as important and use it as a guide in living lives and treating with others.
And while I suppose I can see how this cashes out into cancel culture, I think there are more profound consequences in other domains. For example, a figurative lack of charity might pale in the face of a literal lack of charity.
Nitpicking here - justice is balanced with charity, mercy is the mingling of justice and charity. Mercy springs from charity and justice. However, charity is more than mercy and justice is more than law. Charity and justice are cardinal virtues, mercy is a secondary virtue. We nowadays tend to translate “faith, hope and charity” as “faith, hope and love”, and love is a better way to think of charity, especially in relation to God.
Charity is first and primarily love of God which then conduces to love of our neighbour, justice is equality and equity between people as individuals and as members of society, and mercy is the principle which derives from both, spurred to love our neighbour as ourselves by charity and to repair deficiencies by justice.
Deiseach, thank you, I think you're offering a beautiful and classically Christian framework to these ideas. On the other hand, I'm Jewish. So we think about God, for example, as having two "thrones," (we're in metaphor-land here people), the throne of strict justice (din) and the throne of mercy (rachamim.) Din is justice as judgement, rachamim (mercy) is letting go of the need to extend the fullness of law/judgment, because people are fallible and without mercy the world could not stand. (This is a big theme of the metaphors of the liturgy of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.)
In classical Jewish thought, judgement/justice (good vs evil, etc) and mercy/compassion are always balanced and the ideal person always holds them both as ideals and guides to action. But getting back to Scott's posting, in the contemporary world, we have justice everywhere, but mercy nowhere, especially for the "sinners" who say or do something perceived (or cynically twisted into) as racially or genderly or culturally offensive. Justice is great! But it's not the only thing that makes human life better. I think we'd agree on that.
Like many semantic shifts, I suspect this is because using the justice framing is more successful in arguments. People need to fulfill justice/obligations but want to be saviors.
Also, the idea of being any kind of hero has become seriously fraught. Most of us still dream of being praiseworthy paragons on some level, but even if you’re actually a selfless saint, once you’re recognized you can look forward to being scrutinized and torn apart for myriad reasons. Just wanting to feel like a good person is pathological now. You can never get goodness or virtue quite right on the front end, because all you really have are intentions, and any negative impact might be deemed to outweigh the good by someone somewhere.
As others have pointed out, we’ve lost a common language of morality such that no person or action can really be good. Instead, thinking you’re a good person is basically the root of all evil. This idea has been in the water supply a long time. No one wants to feel like their motive is to boost their ego, assuage their guilt, or serve some kind of savior complex. So we’ve had to find a way to rebrand our basic desire to be moral and pro-social beings with something that doesn’t feel like self-indictment.
Thanks for this comment. I will think on it. I agree that there is a tendency in our culture (and I see it in my own post) to imply that "wanting to feel like a good person is pathological", and I agree that is a problem. I think part of where the suspicion comes from for me is that historically, there have been a lot of people (especially westerners) who have claimed that they were helping, even saving people, when they were obviously doing them great harm (i.e. putting African people in generational slavery based on a new concept called "race" and claiming it was good for them because it allowed them to learn about Christianity and thereby save their immortal souls).
The way "justice" is being used in this post implies something systemic, so beyond the level of an individual. When I think about "helping," I think about what I can do. It's neither justice nor being a savior. It's just the right thing to do.
And to most people these days, you saying this means you MUST have some kind of sinister, scheming ulterior motive, like FEELING GOOD about the fact you did something good when you're supposed to instead feel constant scrupulous guilt at every waking moment over all the evils in the world and how you aren't doing enough to stop them.
I instead subscribe to the radical philosophy that it feels good to be good.
I agree! And your comment reminds me of the Talmudic maxim that while we as individuals are not responsible for healing the world, we are not free to desist from the task.
It seems like Marketing 101. Define the name of your movement in a way that makes it very difficult for your opponent to argue against it.
If I support more foobars and you support less foobars, we can have a sensible discussion about whether foobars are good or bad. Or, I could label the pro-foobar position as "Foobar Justice" and hold a big "Foobar Justice" rally. Now, in order to make the opposite case you need to either come out and say "I oppose Foobar Justice" or else attempt to make the case that "actually it's the less-Foobar position that's Foobar Justice".
But of course this is an asymmetric weapon, it only works for the sorts of people who have the sort of social power that allows you to redefine words; if you don't have all the journalists on your side then you're not going to be successful.
See also: "-phobe". You don't have to win an argument that bazqux is good, if you can simply label anyone opposed to is as a bazquxphobe, clearly motivated by an irrational fear of bazqux.
This vaguely grasps the vibe but not the essence. You can't just call whatever you want justice and expect people to accept it without a justification (pun intended). The reason why this "justice creep" is so memetically successful is becase there are indeed valid resons and arguments to look at some issues from this point of view. Same with -phobes. It doesn't replace the argumentation, it works as a link to it.
What happens when you actually try to replicate such vibe without having a propper justification can be very well seen in modern Russian propaganda. They keep talking about russiaphobes everywhere, keep claiming to be on the Right side of history, how current war in Ukrane is just, because they are fighting literal nazis brainwashing poor ukranians into hating Russia. How democracy and liberal values is just an ephemism for USA zone of influence and the West is just brainwashed by their own propaganda to notice it. And even people in Russia don't buy this crap. Well, some do but much less then in a counterfactual world where such claims standed to the scrutiny and russian media had any credence at all.
But what is the standard for whether “justice” or “phobe” makes sense, other than “I agree with the position”? The “valid reasons” appear to be entirely in the eye of the beholder.
You say “Russophobic” doesn’t make sense as a label for people who oppose the Ukrainian invasion, and I agree. But I feel the same way about applying “transphobic” to someone who thinks more honest research is needed on the long term effects and efficacy of puberty blockers.
You read the arguments, counter arguments and counter counter arguments, check multiple sources, listen to the experts in the field and people whose rationality and intelligence proved to be high, try to account for your own biases, use heuristics which proved to be successful in producing valid knowledge - you know, do the usual epistemology stuff.
Ironically, your comment proves it's incorrectness.
> The reason why this "justice creep" is so memetically successful is becase there are indeed valid resons and arguments to look at some issues from this point of view.
No, the reason it's so successful is that all major relevant institutions in the West (academia, entertainment, news outlets) are overwhelmingly left-wing. Sure, there a red bubbles of media, but I'm sure many here be the first to say OANN and Fox News are not good news outlets. (I think the same, incidentally)
> What happens when you actually try to replicate such vibe without having a propper justification can be very well seen in modern Russian propaganda. They keep talking about russiaphobes everywhere, keep claiming to be on the Right side of history, how current war in Ukrane is just, because they are fighting literal nazis brainwashing poor ukranians into hating Russia.
Reporting in the NYT or NPR or some random university's statements on relevant topics reads exactly the same to a conservative.
> No, the reason it's so successful is that all major relevant institutions in the West (academia, entertainment, news outlets) are overwhelmingly left-wing.
You are mistaking cause and effect here. Academia wasn't always left-wing. It wasn't somehow coerced to be left wing through violence. It became left-wing naturally due to the fact that leftist arguments were more persuasive.
The existence of valid reasons for something doesn't necessarily imply that it's wrong. My point was that there is no dissenting voices in the mainstream, and therefore claims of e.g. "islamophobia" are not absurd to you (and many here) as "russophobia" or "christophobia". Whether that arose due to the arguments actually being better than counterarguments has not been established.
Interesting, what evidence do you have that the Marxist takeover of universities is related to the persuasiveness of Marxism? Is it the 50 million+ dead, or just the grandiose language?
No, but seriously, wouldn't it be weird if a coordinated infiltration and indoctrination program just happened to coincide with the Marxist takeover of universities, and that *suddenly* Marxism just got way more persuasive at that exact moment, despite its genocidal history?
Well, the first hint is that there is no coordinated marxist indoctrination program, nor there was a marxist takeover of universities in the West, unless you stretch the words so much that they loose all their meaning.
It's an obvious null hypothesis. If X becomes popular among intellectuals then we assume that it has something to do with truthfulness, persuasiveness and other intellectual virtues of X. Unless there was actual enforcement of X to begin with. Like in USSR, during actual Marxist takeover. Feel free to present your case though.
I'm not sure what does these millions of dead people have to do with your point. Do you claim that academics in the West became so frightened by the communists, that they decided to become cryptocommunists themselves in order to be safe after the inevitable communist world revolution?
Or... and stop me if you've heard this before: Since membership in the Academy, or bureaucracies, or the media has nothing to do with popular opinion and everything to do with existing members choosing who gets let through the gate; such organizations become philosophically/socially purer/more isolated over time.
Lets assume that it's true. How did a new ideology take over such institution? Were the existent members bribed? Or coerced through violence? Or did the ideas just spread naturally?
Since gatekeeping is a social process, undoubtedly by hiring/accepting people that they considered "like" them, coupled with cliqueshneshness and exclusion/shunning, then using the institution to broadcast which views were acceptable and pre-screen out the ideologically undesirable?
The academy was a training ground for priests. The civil service was a way of rewarding political allies. Ideological conformation has been baked into them from their very founding. To claim it's not there now you'd have to demonstrate that it's been expunged..
One consequence of the excessive justice-speak is that it has, along with my predisposition towards contrarianism, made me skeptical of the concept of "justice" at all. Someone asked me about a year ago, why "justice" is an important virtue, and I realized it was a question I had never considered.
Surely it's important for a governing body's legitimacy: a government which does not uphold the commonfolk's expectation of justice will face social unrest. But among utilitarians, is there a reason to pursue justice as a first-order virtue? I can't summon an argument for it.
Well, if we're working with the standard definitions, your question has a clear answer. Among utilitarians, there's no reason to pursue anything whatsoever except utility as a first-order value.
With that said, most people have very strong primitive intuitions that justice (in some sense) is important. That's probably why thought experiments like Nozick's "Utility Monster" have been very effective arguments against strict utilitarianism. Motivated in large part by such arguments, many nominally-utilitarian philosophers have developed theories which build in distributive justice (and sometimes other factors like retributive justice) alongside utility, trading them off against each other in a way which doesn't result in those unpleasant conclusions.
Even from a strict numbers game point of view, I would prefer a world wherein all 10 billion people on the planet get 1000 utilons, than one where 9,999,999,999 people get 1200 utilons and one randomly selected poor bastard gets -10,000,000,000 utilons. This, I suggest, is the utilitarian version of justice.
Actually I think this point is the key to the question posed above. Because of human intuitions that justice/fairness are important, I think fairness should increase utility overall. In your hypothetical model, this would be something like everyone getting a 'bonus' 100 utilons just from the system being fair. Note that this is already the higher utility situation in your example, because you prefer it, demonstrating that you'd get extra utility from knowing you were in that world rather than the second world.
There's a fairly hard cap on how much this can help utilitarianism's inequality problem. Do people prefer a fairer world? Yes. Are they willing to give up their own resources to get there? Somewhat - but not usually to a great extent.
People regularly confront this question in the form of "should we pay more taxes so the state can provide more services?" And the most reliable way of getting people to vote "yes" is if you can tell them *other people* will be the ones primarily doing the paying. And virtually no one volunteers to pay more in taxes than they're required to - even though there's a box for that, at least in the US!
In general, most people would love to keep their full paycheck, even at a cost to social equality. I think this speaks to a mild preference for social equality, but a far stronger preference for having more stuff personally.
So, I would prefer the second one personally. But I wouldn’t call it just. I think utilitarianism just doesn’t really care about justice. Also, isn’t this Olemas?
Also it’s worth noting that if you believe Christian lore, Jesus was unjustly killed so that we could go to heaven. Which is basically all of us getting extra utilitons for one person suffering horribly in some undeserved way
(2) Why do you not call it just? What is your view, upon which you base the decision, that it is unjust for that one person to suffer such massive injustice? I think you have a point there, and that is a question that utilitarians need to answer, but I think it is a lot to assume that the philosophy doesn't care about justice - I imagine the very reason for it is that they believe it is the most just system by comparison with what we already have
(3) Theology of the Atonement is one version of the substitionary death of Jesus. In His own right, He was unjustly condemned, but by becoming human He paid the debt owed by humanity, which could never be paid by ourselves, for the punishment due to our disobedience and fall. By taking on human nature, He as man incurred that debt, and by dying paid it.
There are several different theories of the atonement, not just one, but whichever one is in favour at any particular time is a matter of how thought has developed at that time.
2) Didn’t you just acknowledge in your question that the person suffered a massive injustice? I guess a system in which people suffer injustices isn’t a just system, almost tautologically. To more directly answer the question, I guess it feels not just, so I wouldn’t be confident in my ability to defend a label of “just” if I tried to attach it, and whether or not it has the “just” seal of approval seems a bit beside the point.
3) That’s interesting, I hadn’t heard that perspective. I’d never heard it phrased as him incurring the debt, rather it was always phrased as he chose to take on the debt by becoming human and dying on the cross. I’ll be curious to see what the pastor of my church thinks of that one
I do believe in justice and injustice, but I imagine a utilitarian would ask, in return for "where is justice in your system?", "what makes you think there is such a thing as justice, what do you mean by just and unjust, where do you derive those?"
There's a couple of theories of the atonement and my particular understanding may be shaky, but it's that (1) mankind incurred the just (there's that word again!) penalty for our disobedience, which was separation from God (2) we could never, by our own efforts, pay that penalty (3) Christ assumed humanity to pay it for us as both True God and True Man. As truly man (and not divinity wearing a skin suit) He, a man like us in all things but sin, did not incur the penalty Himself but as part of general human nature which He shared. As perfect man, in perfect obedience to the will of God (see the Garden of Gethsemane), He paid the penalty for us in His own flesh by dying on the cross.
The vicarious satisfaction theory is not a merely judicial one (Christ pays the penalty like someone paying bail for another) but involves sacrifice, and there we get into the higher airs where my wings won't take me.
"But the appearance of St. Anselm's "Cur Deus Homo?" made a new epoch in the theology of the Atonement.
...Anselm's answer to the question is simply the need of satisfaction of sin. No sin, as he views the matter, can be forgiven without satisfaction. A debt to Divine justice has been incurred; and that debt must needs be paid. But man could not make this satisfaction for himself; the debt is something far greater than he can pay; and, moreover, all the service that he can offer to God is already due on other titles. The suggestion that some innocent man, or angel, might possibly pay the debt incurred by sinners is rejected, on the ground that in any case this would put the sinner under obligation to his deliverer, and he would thus become the servant of a mere creature. The only way in which the satisfaction could be made, and men could be set free from sin, was by the coming of a Redeemer who is both God and man. His death makes full satisfaction to the Divine Justice, for it is something greater than all the sins of all mankind.
...Thus the Greek Fathers, who delight in speculating on the Mystical Redemption by the Incarnation, do not omit to speak also of our salvation by the shedding of blood. Origen, who lays most stress on the deliverance by payment of a ransom, does not forget to dwell on the need of a sacrifice for sin. St. Anselm again, in his "Meditations", supplements the teaching set forth in his "Cur Deus Homo?" Abelard, who might seem to make the Atonement consist in nothing more than the constraining example of Divine Love has spoken also of our salvation by the Sacrifice of the Cross, in passages to which his critics do not attach sufficient importance. And, as we have seen his great opponent, St. Bernard, teaches all that is really true and valuable in the theory which he condemned. Most, if not all, of these theories had perils of their own, if they were isolated and exaggerated. But in the Catholic Church there was ever a safeguard against these dangers of distortion. As Mr. Oxenham says very finely,
'The perpetual priesthood of Christ in heaven, which occupies a prominent place in nearly all the writings we have examined, is even more emphatically insisted upon by Origen. And this deserves to be remembered, because it is a part of the doctrine which has been almost or altogether dropped out of many Protestant expositions of the Atonement, whereas those most inclining among Catholics to a merely juridical view of the subject have never been able to forget the present and living reality of a sacrifice constantly kept before their eyes, as it were, in the worship which reflects on earth the unfailing liturgy of heaven.'
...It will be enough to note here the presence of two mistaken tendencies.
The first is indicated in the above words of Pattison in which the Atonement is specially connected with the thought of the wrath of God. It is true of course that sin incurs the anger of the Just Judge, and that this is averted when the debt due to Divine Justice is paid by satisfaction. But it must not be thought that God is only moved to mercy and reconciled to us as a result of this satisfaction. This false conception of the Reconciliation is expressly rejected by St. Augustine (In Joannem, Tract. cx, section 6). God's merciful love is the cause, not the result of that satisfaction.
The second mistake is the tendency to treat the Passion of Christ as being literally a case of vicarious punishment. This is at best a distorted view of the truth that His Atoning Sacrifice took the place of our punishment, and that He took upon Himself the sufferings and death that were due to our sins."
Of course people will disagree: some will prefer the second option. Winning overall utility just depends on more people preferring system 1 to a great enough degree that the system 2 people are outweighed.
Obviously I don't know that this would definitely be the case, but given that this seems to be a common objection to utilitarianism, it seems likely more people would prefer system 1. But maybe not! 🤷♀️
Maybe it's cynical, but considering that we do live in an unequal world, and the vast majority of us on the top of the system do pretty little to correct it, that suggests to me that most people in Omelas would leave things the way they were.
Actually, I think I got this wrong earlier. Individual self-interested actors within the system should choose system 2, almost by definition (other than the one with ultra-low utility). But that doesn't negate the overall average preference for 'fairness' and the small amount additional benefit that people in the system would get from knowing they live in a fair world. This is true even if this preference/additional satisfaction is very small.
Of course, since the vast majority have a preference for system 2, this becomes impossible to implement. Even though the former might maximize utility, it would be hard to escape the latter.
This is also setting aside the problem that individuals would have to believe that they live in a fair system: it hinges on perception, but this is probably ultimately unknowable. How do you measure utility? How do we know that we don't already live in system 1?
Also, in implementation, we have to balance utility against something like resources. Utilons won't cost the same for each individual, so it will be cheaper to make some individuals happy than others. If we're maximising utility given a fixed supply of resources, an unequal solution probably maximises utility. I'm not sure this would be balanced out by any satisfaction we might get from believing we live in a fair system (if the system appears fair).
Is a world where all people get 1000 utilons better or worse than a world in which the lowest person gets 100 utilons and the mean and median people get close to 1100 utilons? That uneven world is less fair, but is it definitely less just?
Our world isn't Omelas. We have multiple overlapping mechanisms in place to help those at the bottom of society, to the point where those mechanisms are often at cross purposes (for example, we want people to get mental help, but we don't want to force them into institutions to do so). That inefficiency wastes resources; it reduces the overall utilons available for society, if you use that logic. Some waste is unavoidable, but the closer you get to evenly distributed, the more resources you waste on trying to achieve balance and the worse everyone does.
That's very much how I see it. I'm not happy about large groups of people sitting at 100 utilons, and hope for ways to improve that. I am not in favor of a solution that brings the 100 group up to 500 by dropping the mean and median to, say 800. The total loss of utilons far outpaces the increase in that bottom group. Though it depends on specifics, I feel as though many attempts at doing that have actually resulted in that 100 group essentially staying at 100 (or alternately, a different group and that group switching places).
That's how I've seen the attempts at switching to communism. Willing to drop the mean/median to help the bottom, but only succeeding at dropping the mean/median without actually improving the bottom.
Among utilitarians there isn't a good argument against building a supercomputer that experiences functionally infinite utils and allowing it to turn the entire universe into computronium so it can experience more utils. Until Utilitarianism can actually give a good answer to utility monsters beyond desperately praying they can't exist in reality, I don't think it's going to have a future as the replacement for spiritual reasoning about ethics.
>My utility function doesn't assign any positive value to 'computronium experiencing utils'.
This is just another form of praying desperately that utility monsters don't exist by trying to define an AGI's utils as "not really utils" without any grounding. What makes a human's utils qualitatively so much more valuable than an AGI's utils that the AGI has a value of 0?
"St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiae understands the virtue of justice to be founded upon the notion of jus or right because, according to the classical definition of the virtue, it is by justice that one renders to another his due by a perpetual constant will. Justice directs man in his relations to others according to some kind of equality or rightness. This relation of rightness is what is meant by jus. It is a right that is due to other men, and it is this object which specifies the virtue. As such, it is logically prior to the virtue itself which perfects a man so as to render this object swiftly, easily and gladly. Hence Thomas treats the question of jus before he does that of justice.
The notion of jus then is a complex notion. It is a relation that at once incorporates equality and the fact that it is owed, or a debitum. These two poles of what is involved in the notion of jus, i.e. being equal because it is natural and being owed, seem to create an incoherent tension. All men are equal in being owed rights by others, which are their rights by nature as rational beings. By means of the jus, i.e. right, humans are related to each other as equals, since it derives from common human nature."
Even utilitarians have some notion of "actions that increase benefit and reduce harm". Justice means working out how that is decided, how they are apportioned, etc. How do we decide between benefit for A which may cause harm to B? Justice is involved there - does A have a *right* to that benefit? Is the harm to B greater than the benefit to A? Is there a case for permitting harm to B?
I notice this phenomenon basically exclusively in left-wing cause areas, and I think it's because social justice, specifically, is about distribution not output. Outside of hardcore utilitarians, people don't think of the total quantity of a desired resource/welfare as something you can get right or wrong. Whereas whether a distribution is right or wrong is probably the first moral belief a person develops, e.g., try giving just one baby sibling candy. The word we have for what we are trying to achieve when we solve a distribution problem is "justice." People who are predominantly interested in solving distribution problems then overextend that paradigm, and so we end up with weird stuff like "reproductive justice," even though the top priority of its supporters isn't really to correct some distribution but to protect a right.
The Justice trend likely also connects back to Critical Theory / Marcuse / the New Left. These guys were/are busy critiquing every aspect of The West in order to tear down the system. For each identified injustice it was only natural that a corresponding Justice movement be built up to further the cause of Revolution.
And let me add that Critical Theory, which is now pervasive in our culture, has no positive vision to build up, only (by definition) a criticism. So there can be no great deeds to memorialize, only wrongs to call out.
As someone who agrees with many of the critiques I think you're referring to, I definitely don't agree that there is no positive vision to build up. To me, that's like saying that the QA team doesn't care about the final product, only about tearing down the first version of the code. I don't know how we can improve our society without first noticing the things we don't like about how our society is currently structured. But then you have the opportunity to try to make changes to improve it. That's the vision.
Let me clarify - I’m not just being mean when I say Critical Theory has no positive vision. This was explicitly and cleverly the intention from the outset. Critical Theory is “critical” in that it consists of a series of critiques. The positive vision, if you will, is that these critiques (and support from properly-placed elites) would be sufficient to undermine The West as we know it so that the (largely unspecified) Revolutionary Utopia could rise up from its ashes. Theodore Adorno, one of the founding fathers of Critical Theory, wrote his unreadable tome “Negative Dialectics” to justify in Hegelian terms the idea of a dialectic consisting solely of an antithesis. It literally was designed on purpose to not have a positive vision, as a feature. Communism had the problem that its visible structure could itself be critiqued. Neo-Marxist Critical Theory was an improvement over traditional Marxism in that there would be no positive edifice to serve as the focal point for critique. The down-side is that it takes patience to wait for the West to crumble from within. I disagree with its aims, but I am amazed at the clear thinking evil genius behind Critical Theory.
To be clear, I don’t mean to say that you and people like you have no positive vision. I’m sure you do. Just that Critical Theory itself was designed that way.
Yes. Needing justice means that there are “bad guys” preventing justice or promoting injustice. The 21st century is all about splitting the world into good-guy and bad-guy categories, assisted by our preferred sources of media and propaganda. The West is in a very bad spot.
The fun thing about this is that without the criminal justice connotations e.g. “climate justice” just means “the normatively correct policy towards climate” so being in favor of it becomes a tautology.
That's really not it. Climate justice approaches AGW from the perspective that groups with less power are disproportionately harmed not only by climate change itself but also are disproportionately harmed by the solutions. Thus all the job retraining and other benefits for low-wage workers in the Green New Deal, for example.
The standoff in Washington state over the carbon tax--where some supporters wanted a revenue-neutral version (or at least could accept that to get it passed) while others insisted the tax be redistributive or not at all, is a pretty good illustration of plain environmentalism versus climate justice.
This seems to be tied to a shift in worldview that I'm tempted to label "post-Christian": the "Christian" view (though, not exclusively held by Christians) is that we live in a fallen world, and while we should always strive for justice and loving our neighbor, we'll never achieve it on this side of eternity: the world is and always will be fallen. Evil is natural and good is the exception.
But the "justice-oriented mindset" (held by many good Christians) seems to stem from and foster a perspective where "utopia" is the default state and anything keeping us from utopia, is an injustice inflicted by perpetrators. It carries an expectation of perfection, and anything short of that is something to be angry about.
In short, it's a question of whether we live in rotten world where we still have the opportunity to do good, or in a good world that we have the 'opportunity' to mess up.
The first view encourages an admiration of "saints" and an equanimity towards "sinners" who are doing "no more than what you'd expect of them". The latter encourages a righteous anger towards sinners, with an apathy towards everyone else, who are doing "no more than what's expected of them".
(Just to be clear, I'm not trying to disparage Christians who believe in and support "X justice" - again Christians *are* supposed to strive for justice - but I think the frequently associated worldview of "Utopian Expectation" conflicts with a Christian worldview)
Slight correction; while the world is fallen, evil is *not* natural. Matter is not intrinsically evil, the creation was good and only tainted after the Fall. So good *should* be the rule, not the exception. It is the bad effects of the Fall which make us do what we know is wrong, or desire that which we know is not good for us.
> a perspective where "utopia" is the default state and
Justice, to a conservative christian, is defined as "getting what you deserve". Which is death/punishment, because everyone has sinned. Mercy is, then, "getting [a good thing] that you don't deserve." Mercy gets a huge focus these days, not so much the justice.
> anything keeping us from utopia is an injustice inflicted by perpetrators.
If you mean demons/Satan, sure. If you mean people, then no. And it's not an injustice per se, it's an action toward a negative end. Perhaps, if it's preventing someone from getting something good that they've earned it could be, but not generally, no.
> It carries an expectation of perfection, and anything short of that is something to be angry about.
Although perfection is the _goal_, Christians all recognize this as not being achievable. Hence.the mercy.
> whether we live in rotten world where we still have the opportunity to do good
This sounds like every Christian perspective I've experienced, save that you can do both good _and_ evil in the world. Or neither, alternately.
> a good world that we have the 'opportunity' to mess up?
I've never heard this position from conservative christians. Perhaps liberals might?
> first view encourages an admiration of "saints" and an equanimity towards "sinners" who are doing "no more than what you'd expect of them".
This is a fundamental (ha) misunderstanding. Christians generally are "saints" in the sense that our sins have (and are continually) being forgiven. Some branches have formal Saints, which is a different thing.
Sinners are not some class of people who always do evil, but rather are _everyone_. We are _all_ sinners in need of forgiveness. As such, one's _actions_ are good/bad/neither depending on some nebulous categorization. And one can be a "sinner" in that one consciously chooses the evil option. But you can still ask for forgiveness and be saved (yes, even Putin, but God would have strong words with him, especially if he continues choosing evil afterwards.)
"Love.the sinner, hate the sin" is not homophobic propaganda, but a fundamental outlook on how one is to treat people. You can -- and _should_ -- oppose evil _actions_, but still recognize that the person performing the action is also a child of God in need of forgiveness. Just like we all are.
It seems my comment wasn't clear - you're replying to parts of my description of the justice-focused "Utopian Expectation" worldview as if I were describing Christian theology, when I wasn't. ("A good world we have the opportunity to mess up" was a contrast to Christian theology, not a description of it)
And, yes, I was using "saint" and "sinner" in a colloquial sense to mean someone who does conspicuous good or evil (similar to the sense in which Scott referred to "saints" in the article), not the Christian theological sense in which we're all sinners saved by grace.
Justice is indeed getting our deserts, and what people tend to forget is that sometimes that means getting punished. We have a modern notion of justice as "for the victims/redressing wrongs/making things fair' but sometimes yes, you do deserve to be censured or have things taken away, as much as you do deserve to have things restored.
This is why justice and charity must be balancing parts of what we do: mercy is the union of both, where we give the dues (both rewards and punishments) from justice, but we forgive debts from charity.
Mercy can be perceived as weakness and softness and be abused, see the Coen Brothers' film "Miller's Crossing" and the character of Bernie Bernbaum, who survives a first execution attempt by begging for mercy, but is then contemptuous in a second attempt by the same guy by saying all he needs to do is beg again and he'll be spared again (he isn't).
Sam Gamgee makes something of the same mistake about Frodo's forebearance towards Gollum; that being kind in that degree means some measure of naivety or foolishess softness:
"Sam looked at his master with approval, but also with surprise: there was a look in his face and a tone in his voice that he had not known before. It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. Of course, he also firmly held the incompatible belief that Mr. Frodo was the wisest person in the world (with the possible exception of Old Mr. Bilbo and of Gandalf). Gollum in his own way, and with much more excuse as his acquaintance was much briefer, may have made a similar mistake, confusing kindness and blindness. At any rate this speech abashed and terrified him. He grovelled on the ground and could speak no clear words but nice master."
But in the much-quoted dialogue between Frodo and Gandalf, it is true that the mercy (or pity, as it is phrased here) of Bilbo did rule the fate of many; if Bilbo had killed Gollum when he had the chance, then when Frodo ultimately failed, the whole quest of the destruction of the Ring would have come to nothing:
"`Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses? We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious. And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.'
`Well, what's to be done with it? ' said Sam. `Tie it up, so as it can't come sneaking after us no more, I say.'
`But that would kill us, kill us,' whimpered Gollum. `Cruel little hobbitses. Tie us up in the cold hard lands and leave us, gollum, gollum.' Sobs welled up in his gobbling throat.
`No,' said Frodo. `If we kill him, we must kill him outright. But we can't do that, not as things are. Poor wretch! He has done us no harm.'
`Oh hasn't he! ' said Sam rubbing his shoulder. `Anyway he meant to, and he means to, I'll warrant. Throttle us in our sleep, that's his plan.'
'I daresay,' said Frodo. `But what he means to do is another matter.' He paused for a while in thought. Gollum lay still, but stopped whimpering. Sam stood glowering over him.
It seemed to Frodo then that he heard, quite plainly but far off, voices out of the past:
What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!
Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.
I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.
Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.
`Very well,' he answered aloud, lowering his sword. 'But still I am afraid. And yet, as you see, I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him.'"
Young philosopher who teaches Political Phil here (though doesn’t publish, so not an expert).
Here’s the usual train of thought. First, the difference between Morality and is Justice is that the latter is thought to be about ‘the basic structure of society’ with ensuing debate about what the boundaries of this are. But as a first pass, getting cheated on by your partner is thought to be not unjust, but being robbed by the government is, even if you feel the former immoral treatment would be worse.
One thing Rawls took a theory of distributive justice (a theory about how benefits and burdens should be allocated by the basic structure) to be concerned with was ‘the social bases of self-respect’ – some minimal standard of respect with which you can interact with others and pursue your conception of the good life. SJW's have taken this and run with it.
70s/80s philosophers focused on structures and institutions like the law and courts, over time expanding to consider e.g. marriage and the family, and took these to be the main things we’d need to think about to ensure people could live minimally decent lives, see e.g. unfavourable attitudes towards the unemployed. But the modern argument is that our self respect depends a lot on things like culture and norms and stereotypes, so IF you think that the social bases of self respect are very important (such that we should be willing to make tradeoffs against e.g. economic freedom), and IF you think that self respect is strongly affected by cultural ideas, then you’re going to see all cultural ideas and discourse as a domain relevant to achieving justice – hence the kerfuffle over implicit bias, stereotypes, representation in media.
(Of course the causal sociological story actually runs from society to these arguments; philosophers don’t have enough of an impact. Parts of society get certain ideologies, become philosophers and then come up with the justifications. Of course many people also get the social bases direction wrong too – solve the economic inequalities and you’ll probably fix the stereotypes, which we know don’t have all that much power to explain current gaps).
Regarding Mali’s climate being a big part of why it’s poor, though this is true, the dominant line of thought would be that this is not relevant (to justice). Since capitalism has produced such a large surplus, it’s possible to arrange society in such a way that more of that surplus is distributed so everyone meets some minimal standard of living, and our failure to do this means Mali has a claim against richer nations. Even though it’s true that ‘the climate’ is a big part of our causal explanation, which part of a multi-factor causal explanation you pick as being relevant depends on normative assumptions, including how it’s legitimate for people to behave. When a driver crashes their car, the actual speed plays a very large part in the causal story. But assumptions about how drivers, council, and bosses ought to behave is going to determine whether we think the cause is the driver being reckless, council not having the appropriate signage or speed limit, or his boss putting unrealistic demands on the driver, or the wider economy making him poor so that he needs to drive quickly to make a buck in the first place. The speed might not be relevant to us.
We theoretically have enough causal levers that we could have helped Mali without causing climate change at all, despite its climate, and that’s what matters, no analysis of variance or (conveniently) knowledge about economics needed - it’s enough that a just outcome is possible and we collectively have failed to provide it. (This also is why ‘economic justice’ comes up less in discussions than ‘social justice’ – the perception is ‘redistribution’ can be a one-size-fits-most for various economic problems).
The counter argument of course is ‘planned arrangements of societies according to some ideal hasn’t gone well in the past, maybe we should study what things actually work and be concerned with what’s effective given how humans and systems tend to behave’. But of course how humans tend to behave is also a product of culture (more evidence of injustice!) and this kind of reply is less appealing in other domains e.g. if government officials keep being corrupt, you don’t say ‘well maybe instead of calling this state of affairs unjust we should remember what human nature is like, and design systems around it, think about what’s more effective, have a positive narrative’ – most of us would say that though what’s effective matters, this nevertheless seems to be an unjust state of affairs and we should label it as such.
So in general, it seems that there’s a tension between two roles we what the ‘justice’ concept to have. On the one hand, we want to use it to identify things that ought to be changed. On the other hand, we want to be able to create *effective* change, and these goals can trade off against each other. SJWs are identifying parts of the basic structure of society they think we are collectively obliged to change. Scott is drawing attention to the effects this usage has on actually creating progress. In the background are a lot of unstated assumptions / conceptual holes about what kinds of explanations count as relevant, and what causal levers we have or don’t have available.
> But as a first pass, getting cheated on by your partner is thought to be not unjust, but being robbed by the government is, even if you feel the former immoral treatment would be worse.
Is this really the case? I personally think getting cheated on by your partner is unjust if you didn't cheat yourself. There are probably other things that would make it more just (being an awful person, refusing sex, etc), but I think it's possible to concieve it as unjust.
I mean, AJPio's description of justice being just about structuring society would imply it doesn't bear on the main thing we point our "justice system" at, individual criminality.
If you think the mugging is the fault of a lone individual not caring about you, that's morality as they're doing the wrong thing. If you think regular muggings are also the result of e.g. inexcusably not having a functioning police force, then you might also have a claim of injustice against the police / gov.
My usage of 'justice' includes much of what falls under morality, but not the superogatory things like charity/mercy or personal holiness. It relates to giving what is deserved. Merriam-Webster, for example, doesn't include any indicator of requiring collective action in any relevant definitions. Dictionary.com does in 1 out of 5 definitions.
"‘well maybe instead of calling this state of affairs unjust we should remember what human nature is like, and design systems around it, think about what’s more effective,"--literally the core organizing idea behind the US system of government. Modern democratic and quasi-democratic governance systems are very much based on Federalist 51's idea that,
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
This was a powerful post for me perhaps because I hadn't thought about it. My mentor used to say to me that language isn't just semantics; it is everything. It is everything because language is how we know the world and make distinctions, she would say. Thank you for reminding me of that fundamental truth.
"A narrative of justice allows, at best, non-criminals - people who haven’t broken any of the rules yet"
No, a narrative of justice allows for victims - persons with absolute moral authority, who cannot be blamed or held responsible for their plight. People who can demand restitution - and retribution - from those who they identify as perpetuating injustice.
Victimhood grants status, and "justice framing" identifies victims. This is not to say that "being victimized" is good, but remember we're talking about how we label reality, not what reality is. So, all else being equal, it's better to be a "victim of injustice" than to merely be "unfortunate".
As lawyers we will do well to be on our guard against any suggestion that, through law, our society can be reformed, purified, or saved ...
Law reflects, but in no sense determines, the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In Heaven there will be no law, and the lion will lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.
Grant Gilmore, The Ages of American Law 109–11 (1977)
This is a great quote. I was a lawyer for a decade and I was probably exceptionally bad at it. But the best case scenario for someone speaking to me was that their life was only going to get a little worse. And that includes my clients.
Forcing other people to do stuff will never fix a problem the way you really want it fixed. It's always a kludge you throw at the wall when you're out of civilized options.
I've always found it useful to think of the law as only a mechanism for reducing injustice in the interests of forestalling violence. If you go to court and think "I will very probably not experience gross injustice here, and there's a very good chance some gross injustice happening elsewhere in my life will be reduced" then you will probably leave satisfied. But if you go in thinking "I'm about to experience justice!" then you will not be very happy at all.
Something's off here. What Scott describes as "justice creep" sounds in many ways like a classically Christian understanding of justice. For instance, what is St. John Chrysostom invoking when he says "the coat rotting in your closet belongs by rights to man who has no coat" if not some version of economic justice? And yet, Christianity manages to also talk about many other virtues, and revere many people as saints (including, uh, Chrysostom). So, at least within the worldview from which the concept of saints derives, there is room for both widespread injustice crying out for remedy and genuinely heroic examples of virtue. And why shouldn't there be? The fact we have many injustices to right does not cancel out opportunities to cultivate virtues like patience, fortitude, and temperance.
The point I am trying to make is that it is possible to think someone is praiseworthy for bringing about justice, and not just that they are blameworthy for failing to bring it about.
But Justice always requires harm. If you commit a crime, Justice requires that you be fined, or locked in a cage, or executed. If you have an unfair amount of stuff, "Justice" requires that your "excess" stuff be seized and you involuntarily made poorer.
What's off about this and "justice creep" is something I've struggled with as a Catholic: the word 'your' in St. John Chrysostom's sentence is very important.
'Turning the other cheek' to offenses is something Christians are asked to do. If someone slaps me, it's good for me to bear the offense, even turning the other cheek to grant them another blow, even if the result is not justice. On the other hand, if I see someone slapping someone else, it's not right or good for me to go over and turn THEIR cheek; I'm not being virtuous by doing so, and I'm certainly not making them virtuous.
'Economic Justice' in modern parlance isn't encouraging people to go through their closets, it's going through their closets for them (and that's before dealing with the group identity politics that always creep in).
Perhaps framing things as an issue of "Justice" justifies coercion to solve the problem? "Let's help the poor" might encourage people to donate money. Seeking "Economic Justice" permits taking *other* people's money to solve the problem.
IME most people who think about all things in terms of justice are transparently in pursuit of retribution, which includes punitive redistribution and/or collective reparations.
Are you the parent of a bright child? Your desire to provide her access to academic options suitable to her interests/intellect = hoarding resources. (The pie cannot expand.) Justice requires that you strip your child of the privilege she inherits from you. (Privilege cannot be extended to all, it must be taken away from some.)
Do you enjoy the climate in California? Justice requires that you welcome as many immigrants from Mali, or Honduras, or Syria, as want to come to CA, since your privileged use of the environment in CA contributes to global warming which drives apocalyptically bad weather elsewhere. It's only just that California be shared with the victims of your privilege.
I keep waiting for some of the well-off justice warriors I know to hand the keys to their homes to Native American families who could really use them, but for some reason, that never happens.
Per John McWhorter, the current brand of social justice reflects a religious impulse. Embracing radical equity is way to get clean, as we are all polluted by the (original) sin of racism and its concomitant stain of privilege. All of us, that is, except for the designated non-privileged.
What strikes me as interesting is that among true believers, certain categories of people who used to be considered non-privileged have fallen from grace. These include women, who are now only conditionally non-privileged (they should be non-white or at least bisexual, but in any case their general status has been overtaken by transwomen, justice for whom takes priority); Jews, who we now should understand are white, both currently and historically, except for those who aren't and therefore are eligible for sympathy (for microaggressions related to being non-white, not for getting beaten in the streets for being Jews); and Asians, who hoard educational resources and are successful like Jews, so are filthy privileged, a.k.a. white-adjacent.
I'm probably more anti-woke than I thought. Your comment itself encapsulates the essence of anti-woke understanding, and I agree with pretty much all of it. Thanks!
This comes very close to articulating my problem with the social justice movement, at least as it applies to my friend group.
I've got a lot of small complaints but the bigger issue is that the current take assumes people go without because of people.
In this model, a state of nature just provides everything, and the only reason there are haves and have not is that human-built systems get in the way. There's no allowance for the idea that maybe those systems provide valuable services, and trying to point out that they often do is either a sign of privilege or bootlicking.
The underlying request appears to be, "Everyone! Stop doing things! If we all stop doing things then poor folks will finally have free internet!"
I think what you've just described is not social justice, but its exact opposite, which for lack of more precise term I'll refer to as libertarianism. "Everyone! Stop doing society!"
I get what you mean by "libertarianism" here, but just want to note that *actual* libertarianism would not be a solution to the problem because if left to their own devices, somebody might do a society anyway. This worldview actually requires a strong central government to ensure nobody does anything societyesque.
At this point I'm being ungenerous, tbh. There are genuine goals that these folks want accomplished, but in my admittedly ad hoc opinion they are all redistribution of existing resources followed by the abolition of the systems that create new resources.
> If I were in Terra Ignota, my fondest wish would be to excel in some way the same way Sniper, Apollo Mojave, and the other utopian characters excel, bringing glory to my Hive and giving its already-brilliant shine extra luster.
I interpreted it as being from the POV of a person in that world, i.e. someone who isn't privy to the details we can read in the books themselves. (And also maybe the POV is _before_ the events depicted in the books!)
"I can’t find clear evidence on Google Trends that use of these terms is increasing."
I checked Google n-grams for just "justice", 1630-2019. (Don't try terms like "climate justice" there, because I think what you get is mostly "climate. Justice".) While "justice" peaked in 1971, hit bottom in 1984, and has now risen significantly higher than its 1971 peak, it's still only one-third as common as it was from 1762-1865. But inspecting a few dozen of the books the phrase was found in, it seems the apparent massive decline in interest in justice was due to a decline in interest in the duties of a Justice of the Peace, and in divine Justice.
OTOH, the 1798 book /Enquiry Concerning Political Justice And Its Influence on Morals and Happiness · Volume 1/ by William Godwin, written at the peak of the use of "justice", suggests that "we assume the term justice as a general appellation for all moral duty." If that was a common belief, that could explain the explosion of usage of "justice". In any case, this seems to be what's happening now.
That use of the term "justice" to mean all-purpose morality probably originated with Plato's Republic. The history of the Greek word δικαιοσύνην is too complex to get into here; but basically Plato wrote this huge book that said "justice justice justice justice" over and over again while slowly twisting the word to connotatively mean "absolute good" and to literally mean "systemic oppression in the pursuit of the attainment of absolute power and spiritual perfection by an elite few".
So the entire Platonist tradition has been stuck with presuming both that "justice" is always synonymous with "the absolute good", and that its meaning is at the same time infinitely malleable via dialectic. (They don't see it as being malleable; they see dialectic as infallible, so any apparent changes in the meaning of "justice" under dialectic exegesis merely expose our previous understanding as flawed.) The Social Justice movement is part of that tradition.
So we shouldn't expect their interpretation of "justice" to stay logically consistent over time. It would make sense to also try interpreting them as doing what Plato did, and what they claim everyone else is doing: using language to socially construct oppressive structures, in the pursuit of power.
On the one hand the courts act as supervisors and enforcers for the US administrative state, now at least as powerful as the increasingly ceremonial democratic elected state. So it's sensible for someone who wants administrators to do something to use the rhetoric of justice still popular in the courts.
On the other hand, this 'whatiwant justice' reeks of low-IQ academia and Clement Greenberg's point that everything in academia is kitsch.
A riff on this is that “we should help the poor” implies (or at least leaves open the idea that) charity is a supererogatory action: morally praiseworthy but not required. Charity is a gift, its recipients should be grateful, and the givers can feel magnanimous.
Justice is morally obligatory. Charity is not a gift but restitution for a wrong; givers aren't magnanimous but are merely returning what might as well be stolen property, and should still feel residually guilty for the period of time that they held it; recipients don't feel grateful, because they are just receiving what they were morally owed, and indeed might feel bitter for the period of time in which they hadn't yet received it.
If you think of "criminal justice" when you think "justice", aren't you already partly in dystopia? Otherwise, "justice" evokes people getting what they deserve, as opposed to their getting crumbs out of the munificence of moral saints who are also the better-off.
“ people getting what they deserve” usually means giving good things to good people, but also punishing bad people. The need to take positive action to achieve “justice” implies injustice is being perpetrated.
Who, other than society at large, determines what people deserve?
Criminal justice generally deals with the most obvious clear cases of people not getting what they deserve that most people will encounter, because law is where society defines and codifies what people deserve. More specifically, the law defines what is clearly unjust to the point of requiring society to intervene, what restitution to the victim constitutes justice for the victim, and what punishment for the offender balances justice for society and the offender (ie, 'cruel and unusual punishment' is unjust for the offender).
That's the problem, and I think why Scott wrote the post. Some of these ideas have reasonable clear purposes and just use the "justice" framing. Some of these ideas also use the "justice" framing but are less clear on how to operationalize it, such as "rationality justice."
When you recognize the problem of "wellness justice" you come to realize that all of the "justice" framing is inherently flawed (or sneaking in a different perspective that most people would not otherwise agree with). That flaw/perspective is an expectation of equality of outcome. If different outcomes is considered unjust, then only equal outcomes can be just. Not equal opportunity, which is what most people would say, but actual outcomes.
We can talk about climate change with or without a "justice" framework. Adding the framework sneaks in the idea of equality of outcome.
Definitely. To be generous, the remedies I’ve seen for justice usually revolve around fairer structural access to solutions, as in “every one should have fairer access to wellness or good doctors or clean air.” But, like you said, the devil is in the details, and the metric of fairness, and what to do with the inevitable distribution of outcomes say 10,20+ years down the line. If it is always based on whether outcomes are equal… then there are much more serious discussions that are sorely lacking right now. Namely, how much variation are we willing to accept, and on what scales? Where do we draw the operational boundaries that we use to judge fairness?
Let me see if I remember the Thomas Aquinas I've just been reading. Justice consists in rendering to each his due. Justice is concerned with equality; equality can be arithmetic, as in everyone receives the same amount absolutely, or geometric, as in everyone receives the same amount in proportion to something.
As applied to the post: pretty much everyone is "for" justice. Including social justice; since justice is a property of human relations, justice cannot be asocial. Pretty much everyone is for equality. And we usually agree that the relevant equality is geometric. We disagree about how to implement geometric equality: which qualities are the measure of proportionate punishments and rewards, to what extent they are present in particular cases, and whether certain trait-rewards pairs constitute equal proportion or not.
We argue about to what extent economic desert is in proportion to hard work vs. exchange value. We argue about whether the executive or the janitor is really the one who works harder. We concede some desert to the work of creating and organizing a useful enterprise, but argue about whether the founder's reward for this kind of work is proportionate to his employee's reward for her work. But importantly these are all economic justice arguments. Including the rightist ones. In fact "Welfare Queens" is probably one of the biggest economic justice movements in recent politics. It just didn't call itself that.
Are there any cases where justice is not zero-sum?
That's the big semantic shift here. "------- justice" implies that the only way to proceed is to take something away from one party and give it to another. It denies the possibility of positive-sum outcomes.
I have trouble distinguishing cause from effect here, but a lot of this seems to correlate well with the rising popular sentiment that anything that discomfits rich people is worthwhile, even if it winds up discomfiting non-rich people as well.
That kinda sounds like a PR problem to me. Where's noblesse oblige when you need it?
Capitalism is generally seen as positive sum, but many who would use a social justice framework are also anti-capitalist because a larger percent of that gain goes to a smaller percent of the people. Even if everyone gains something, they seem offended by the disproportionate distribution.
To me that's a larger issue of the "justice" framework. Even in a positive sum environment, so say nothing of zero-sum, it still says that we should take away from those with more to give to those with less. This implies that they would be willing to invoke a *negative sum* solution if the end result were more equally distributed.
We don't have nobility any more, why would you expect noblesse oblige?
A combination of wealth *and respect* can I think substitute for literal titles of nobility in this context. If the wealthy are granted respect in proportion to their wealth, or more properly in proportion to the qualities and achievements that we presume earned them that wealth even though we don't have time to look up their bio right now, then they might feel a reciprocal obligation to use that wealth in the service of the less fortunate. Or at least be pressured into it without too much effort. But we're now at a place where, at least among the people calling for "[X] Justice", wealth incurs *disrespect* by default, the presumption that you're a scoundrel who plundered that wealth from the less fortunate.
Noblesse oblige requires reciprocal oblige. "You're rich, therefore you're a villain *and* we're going to take away your wealth", isn't a persuasive argument.
It's certainly a vicious circle with disrespect breeding callousness, and vice versa. But it's also the case that one side of that circle is in a much better position to break it.
This is very interesting, given that many of the same people who use lots of terms like 'social justice' and 'climate justice' are also for the shift towards 'restorative justice', where the idea is to move away from the punishment model in the actual justice system.
I got a two-month ban for a one-sentence version of this post :(
Edit: That aside, it seems to me that classical conceptions of justice revolve around the minimization of externalities. Harm should be compensated and/or punished, while doing good should be rewarded. As you reap, so should you sow.
Social justice strikes me as at best orthogonal to this, and often directly opposed, in that it seeks to weaken the connection between reaping and sowing. That's not necessarily always a bad thing, but it's very different from justice justice.
> If I were in Terra Ignota, my fondest wish would be to excel in some way the same way Sniper, Apollo Mojave, and the other utopian characters excel, bringing glory to my Hive and giving its already-brilliant shine extra luster. But if I were in 1984, my fondest wish would be to bring O’Brien and the others to justice; to watch them suffer, to undo the wound in the world caused by their scheming.
I think you have this entirely backwards, which may explain the disconnect here.
Think about low-hanging fruit, here.
If you're already in a utopia where everyone is very industrious and excellent, there is very little opportunity to actually improve things by trying to excel yourself; your society is already at the limits of what can be achieved by excelling, the marginal gains from the next marginal individual of average ability trying to excel even harder are slim to none. However, if your utopia is very focused on individual excellence and maybe doesn't spend much time looking at structural factors or inefficient distributions, one person looking for 'injustice' of these types might be able to find quite a lot of overlooked ways to improve things for people, and have a large positive impact.
Similarly, if you're in a 1984 dystopia, where everyone is constantly being brought low and made to suffer... it might feel nice to have your particular tormentors brought low and made to suffer, but it's unlikely to change much of anything or do much good. Even getting rid of the criminals and villains at the top of the foodchain will accomplish little, because there's no one good in your society to replace them. In this world, trying to excel an be personally virtuous may actually have a bigger impact than adding to the pile of persecutions; there may be a lot of people you can easily save and situations you can easily improve, just by caring and working hard, because no one else is doing that.
I think the move towards justice may be *because* we are in some sense a high-industriousness near-utopia; increasing productivity isn't actually going to help because it's already so high that we could instantly solve all of our problems if we directed that productivity towards doing so. Individual excellence can't save us because that excellence has as its best projected outcome becoming a tech billionaire and making a website a lot of people use to share misinformation and cat videos. In this world, the low-hanging fruit really *is* about how resources get directed and distributed, which goals are prioritized, how people are treated, how power is structurally represented and utilized - ie, 'justice' issues.
This is a great point I hadn't thought about before!
Marx thought the same way: only the unprecedented increase in production brought about by industrialization made improving society through redistribution possible.
I usually come down on the side of "we should increase productivity" rather than "we should improve distribution" but your argument really makes sense to me. Thank you.
There is one aspect of the justice language that wasn't mentioned in this post and that is quite important to me: I think the justice language is a lot kinder to the people who suffer most from the problem at hand.
Consider economic justice: if we "help the poor", this implies that the people being helped are poor, in need of help, etc., probably due to their own fault. But it's not their own fault, on the contrary! Much of that poverty can be traced to unjust events in the past, for example exploitation by richer countries.
Same for the climate: people who bear most of the consequences have to do that because better-off people have a lifestyle that leads to a much too high carbon footprint. It is important to understand just how unjust this is, and that the people who "help poor victims of climate change" are in fact co-responsible for the problem.
On the other hand, why couldn’t it be their own fault? Why must it be someone else’s fault? Calling it “justice” removes the possibility that the “victims” had any agency in reaching their current situation and no agency (or at least responsibility) to take an active role in improving that situation.
I agree that it could be their own fault. Or it could be somebody else's fault, or it could be nobody's fault. My impression is that those who seek to help the poor often treat poverty as a fact of nature rather than as something that is somebody's fault.
E.g. currently a lot of people are poor because Ukraine got invaded and they had to leave in a hurry and maybe they even got robbed on the way out. I see a lot of people wanting to help them in various ways, and I don't see many people faulting them for not having prepared better or whatever.
I suppose part of this is that "helping others" feels like a nice thing you get bonus points for doing, but "X justice" sounds like a basic thing you have an obligation to enforce. So maybe there's just some memetic selection going on, where justice memes are just intrinsically fitter -- in which case there's little hope here, unless a fitter meme shows up or society/language changes significantly?
The steelman for Justice is of course that in a justice framework the downtrodden have a right to things (like resources, legal equality etc.) and it's legitimate for them to demand them and organize to get them, while in a charity framework the subaltern should be grateful for whatever scraps they get while those handing out the charity get to feel saintly for what they do.
I'm very frustrated by how strawmanned this account of justice has been. Not to mention its seeming complete unawareness of the Catholic economically-focused social justice tradition, with its concepts like the universal destination of goods.
It's really making me feel the loss of the great left-wing commentators Slate Star Codex used to have. I would love to read what Multiheaded, Oligopsony, or Deponysum (the last of whom still comments here IIRC) would say about this.
Don't overthink it. It's just that most classic American tradition: the rebrand. The idea that you can change the way people feel about things by changing the words they use to talk about them is surprisingly well grounded, at least when it comes to consumer goods. Its track record in activism is not nearly as good, but that's not likely to stop people from trying.
Systematic problems exist and will most likely require systematic solutions. Slavery was an issue that was evil to many individuals, and there was moral value in being kind to individual slaves, but what saved the most *individuals* was not individual niceness, but laws being changed and navys stopping ships.
Justice (or 'fairness' if that's a less freighted term) is inherently about how people relate to each other, so problems in that space will naturally tend towards the systematic.
It's odd to read this view on a blog that often talks about effective altruism. Individual niceness is rarely optimal or most effective. Effective altruism is an unintuitively systematic approach to the problem of suffering in the world.
If anything I would perhaps put this trend down to increasing utilitarianism in the world. Utilitarianism is an unintuitively systematic approach to morality. Perhaps it's precisely because Utilitarianism is winning out over virtue ethics that the utopian view of individuals excelling at virtues no longer resonates quite so well.
But aren't you just saying that coercive, society wide (or systematic like you say) action achieves bigger impact than individual free will? like Mao was more effective at killing people than Jack the Ripper (see how I dodged Godwin's law here hehe). So if the ultimate aim is noble then more good is achieved if you enforce it system wide, and if the ultimate aim is evil then more evil is done. Don't think it establishes that one approach is superior, especially when we seem to routinely disagree or get wrong what we should do.
I'm picking up on a theme in the post (and previous comment sections) that to me seems to be saying that we should focus on helping individuals and not groups. I think it's important to help individuals, and that's what saints do, but helping groups is important and necessary too, and it's strange to see a community that typically thinks systematically and strategically argue against it.
So, I agree that systematic action can achieve bigger impact, but I think it isn't just that, sometimes the right problems to solve are systematic and no amount of individual goodness will sort them out short of the whole society becoming saints.
Assuming all the coercion lies on the 'systematic goodness' side of the debate is odd too. If a current system is itself coercive, fixing it requires changing the system, and some people who like the current coercive system might be sad about that, but it's ultimately a less coercive world once it's fixed. Was it coercive to change the laws to make slavery illegal?
if a big civil war was fought over it I think we can agree it was coercive, and yes in hindsight / according to our current values that price was worth paying. I sense one difference between us is that I don't feel as certain as you seem to that just because there is a problem that there is also a solution. Being born in a communist utopia tends to breed that type of skepticism maybe.
not strictly related but since you mentioned slavery, here's a topic I think often about: most people (incl. me) are meat eaters today, and we all know that animals are treated horrendously in the meat industry, much worse than human slaves were ever treated (and if you object to comparing people with animals, remember that back in the day folks also looked at black people as less than human etc. quite possible I think that in the future this human/animal distinction will look specious and undefensible). How harshly will we be judged in 200 years by future humans when all food will be grown in labs (conveniently removing for them the need to have to make the moral vs. taste trade off) and animal rights will have taken quantum leaps forward? I don't feel particularly confident that we'd still pass muster.
You do realize that you've provided an example that demonstrates kyb's point better than his own?
The current system is inherently coercive (animal imprisonment and slaughter), saintly (vegan) behavior has very limited effect, helping individuals cannot solve the problem at all (no matter how many of them you rescue, the industry will just breed new ones), only systemic change (developing lab-grown meat) can. And there's nothing inherently coercive about the systemic solution (though I'm sure it'll be met with some resistance, and some amount of coercion will be required to implement it).
Also, it's one thing to be skeptical of any particular proposed solution, or of its proponents' honesty and/or ability to implement it. It's another to be "skeptical" that a solution, any solution, is possible at all. The latter is a very strong, counterintuitive claim, perhaps applicable to hard constraints set by physical laws, but not to the kind of man-made society outside of which the concept of justice isn't even meaningful.
I was more thinking about it in terms of it's much easier ex-post to see what's right or wrong (or at least see what aligns with new moral standards once those standards have decisively shifted), but harder in the moment / within the moral system of past times. As I said I still eat meat, somewhat queasily but not convinced enough that abandoning it is justified. I am NOT absolutely convinced that a change is necessary (after all most animal suffering in absolute terms still happens out in the wild etc. etc. if one wants to rationalize things it's not that hard). I'm just saying I can see the possibility that future generations will judge me to be in the wrong.
Separately if there is a change on this particular topic I would say 99% pct likely that it's induced by technological changes (synthetic meat) that renders old ways of meat production obsolete/disposable, rather than some systemic political solution involving forcing people to abandon eating meat, which seems like an incredibly remote possibility even in 2022. You could draw parallels to slavery abolition - if all of the US was a giant cotton plantation dependent on uncompensated labor I doubt 1863 would've happened at all - only because the north didn't need slave labor (any more), industrialization made it affordable to compensate workers in cash etc. did it become affordable for them to see the moral light. In same vein i could see how the path to defeat say poverty doesn't go through systematic political coercion or reforming human instincts (The New Man) but through robotic/ai/energy revolution removing any access limits to material wealth.
To your other point about existence of solutions you misread me a bit, I don't believe that no possible solution exists, it's more a probabilistic view about things often going wrong / having unintended consequences etc. and also that no matter how bad the current situation is it can still get much worse if we don't pay attention. Was Syria pre-arab spring pretty bad? yep. But are things there much much worse today? you bet. Just because there is a problem doesn't mean you want to force through change because it can still move against you. In the case of Syria the bad result was brought about by adverse malevolent human intervention that counteracted the well-intentioned initial movement, but sadly you often don't even need that for things to go completely off the rails.
I have very similar feelings about the word "fairness". So much so, that I would treat them as synyonymous. If somebody uses either word to argue for a position, I will immediately discount it heavily. Life is neither fair nor just.
People just use the fuzzy words "fair" and "just" to imbue their subjective preferences with unearned moral weight. I find that fundamentally dishonest and always in bad faith.
"Of course, every society is somewhere in between Utopia and Dystopia, and needs values relevant to both. Justice is a useful lens that I’m not at all trying to get rid of."
Is it useful, though? When I find myself using it instinctively (like when I perceive myself being mistreated), I can usually reframe it and get a much clearer picture.
That's the thing. It cannot be. But fairness and justice exist on a continuum, no?
The relevant questions for me, then, are:
1. How much unfairness can/should/must be tolerated in a given system that is bounded yet interacts with other systems?
2. Is it possible that some degree of injustice is for some reason necessary in an otherwise well-functioning system? (W/apologies to Dostoevsky & Ursula LeGuin)
"That's the thing. It cannot be. But fairness and justice exist on a continuum, no?"
Those concepts are too nebuluous and ill-defined.
You can project any opinion you want onto them and it will feel like righteous justice when you scream at someone or fight for something. And they will feel the same, when they scream right back at you or fight for the exact opposite.
It is a visccerally appealing way to see the world, but not a constructive one.
Once you concede that it cannot be fair and will not be fair, it becomes a matter of competing interests. Is a Syrian immigrant in Europe's desire to get a good paying job a "fair" goal, or should wealth be redistributed from Europe to Africa to be more "fair" to the Africans even while eliminating the possibility of that immigrant becoming more financially secure?
There are several layers of injustice involved here, and outside of personal preference, I don't see a great way to distinguish between them.
Personally, I like the positive sum benefits of capitalism with a decent social safety net that isn't strong enough to defeat the positive sum aspects of the capitalist system. I am against the negative sum alternatives (hard redistribution) that make the average go down, even if it makes the lives better for the small number at the bottom. As I mentioned on another reply, I think the attempts at that hard redistribution have typically failed badly, and resulted in a reduction in average wealth without a corresponding increase in the wealth of those at the bottom.
Read Jonathan Sumption (e.g. his Reith Lectures); former UK supreme court judge -- very much in the direction this post is heading, but from a different (more legal and historical, also institutional) perspective, crisp and clear.
I think its mostly about marketing. Most of the issues to which "justice" is added are extremely complex and not easily amenable to improvement. They are also morally complex too (e.g. carbon emission limits in developing countries). Describing an issue as extremely complicated and not easily improved does not motivate advocacy or fundraising. Neither does acknowledging moral nuance.
Justice flattens and simplifies all that. Either you care about justice or not. Nobody will admit the latter, so people are herded to support activist stances on issues for fear of being ostracized as unjust, and ultimately on the wrong side of history. The details of the issue, both technical and moral, become secondary. They can be addressed after the support and money are raised, presumably.
In Hebrew tzedek (צדק) means justice and tzedaka (צדקה) means charity, although I'm not actually sure when the latter came into common use with that meaning. There's also mishpat (משפט) which is more unambiguously legalistic/criminal justice. Sometimes mishpat will be contrasted with tzedaka, in which case mishpat means law and tzedaka means charity, but sometimes tzedek will be contrasted with hessed (חסד), which is usually translated as "kindness", in which case tzedek is the more legalistic term.
There's also Tzadik (צדיק), a righteous person, which derives from the same word, and usually a Tzadik is someone who is unusually virtuous (e.g. Noah in the flood story was a Tzadik). Although even there it's a question whether this was just that he was better than his peers or he was objectively unusually virtuous despite his surroundings.
> Here’s a crazy theory: the moral transition from other virtues to Justice mirrors the literary transition from utopian fiction to dystopian
That isn't really my understanding of how literary 'topias have progressed. Which pre-dystopian era utopias are you thinking of? _Utopia_ by More is the only one I can think of and is only ambiguously utopian at that, and perhaps you could argue some works of political philosophy sketch the outlines of what a utopia might look like if only we listened to the Wise and Correct author of the piece. At a huge stretch you could see _Brave New World_ as a kind of utopian vision, and I'd only suggest that because it was written prior to the period usually regarded as the 'dystopian era' so is less obviously a deliberate take on the 'dystopia' genre.
Other than that though I can't think of any others that would qualify until after the atomic-age dystopian period, where you do see some genuine attempts at writing utopias (e.g. Heinlein if your idea of utopia is right-libertarian or Banks if your idea of utopia is left-libertarian) - utopias in general are not well explored in fiction because almost by definition a society free of conflict will be free of narratively interesting conflict, so my impression is not that 'utopia' are a reaction to 'dystopia' but rather that if you have a point about what you think society should look like it is easier to write a dystopia without that quality rather than a utopia with that quality.
The difference is that help requires a patron and someone willing to be patronised. Justice requires power (typically, the controlled application of violence). Calls for justice are really demands for power to be applied against your perceived enemies.
while mentioning climate justice you missed the single thing that would let you understand what it is, did you know that there are carbon budgets and climate justice is about the distribution of those budgets ?
Which is exactly why it sounds like a scam to me. Others have pointed out that this sounds like the notion of indulgences, and 'budgets' where poor country A gets the same allowance as rich country B sound great in principle, but in practice?
Either poor country A on its way to development happily goes the same way of pollution as developed countries did in their path of industrialisation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China), thus adding to the problem instead of solving it, or they can't/don't have the capacity to use all their allotment.
That leaves open the possibility of A raising revenue by selling or transferring the unused portion of its budget to B, who now don't incur fines or other punishments for exceeding their quota. End result: same amount of original problem but we've invented a way of making it sound as though we've done something about it.
That doesn't seem quite right to me? I'm not as familiar with the carbon budgets concept, but rich countries did all get rich by going through a period of dirty fossil fuel-based industrialization. Now, we're realizing that climate change is a big problem and that the world collectively needs to reduce its carbon emissions. given that setting, it seems like the fair options would be (A) rich countries decarbonizing very quickly, so that poorer countries can have access to the same growth opportunities by emitting some CO2 without blowing through overall climate change targets or (B) rich countries decarbonizing slower and not giving poorer countries the same opportunities for fossil fuel-based growth as they had, but paying the poorer countries for their loss.
indeed, it can be so easily explained, it isn't the vague and undefined, or worst undefinable concept that Scott describes, it is a clear case of distributive justice and the whole thing looks very strawman-ish to me
That still doesn't solve the problem of climate threat, though. We are being told carbon emissions must be reduced absolutely, so letting Germany reduce its emissions by 3% and then pass that 3% allowance on to Third World Country so its people can shift from bicycles to motorbikes belching diesel fumes is still causing warming/cooling/flooding/storms.
Poor countries *can't*, under this model, access growth opportunities that involve emitting carbon dioxide because that horse has left the stable. It doesn't matter if the smokestacks are in the USA rustbelt or the Yangtze River Delta, the emissions are still damaging.
So carbon budgets that play pass the parcel are more window-dressing than tackling the problem, because there are interlocking problems here: one is environmental damage, which mandates undeveloped countries should and must remain undeveloped industrially because of the strains on the environment which is already fragile and damaged, the second is poverty which requires those countries to exploit resources and you can't climb up to 'Western standard of living' by weaving baskets out of bamboo, no matter how green, sustainable, or ecologically balanced that production is.
"There" "are" carbon budgets? Can you explain what you mean? I'm aware of the concept of a carbon budget, but no discussion of climate justice I've heard (and I've heard many) has ever mentioned them. They seem like a useful tool/way of thinking about global warming which is currently not really used, either in real life or in justice-related demands.
One plain climate justice definition could be "everyone gets a fair share of the budget" which Oxfam translates into: top 10% should reduce emissions by 95% to allow bottom 50% to treble their emissions, this is the current distribution of emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region.
The rigid budget also implies the longer we take to start reducing emissions the deepest cuts we will have to endure, check the "ski slope" diagram which really should prompt everybody into action now https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-mitigation-15c
There is no way the top 10% are going to reduce emissions by 95% because that would mean such a huge impact in how we live, work and create the machinery that supports our society. If the bottom 50% are going to live by green energy powering their homes instead of burning wood and coal, for example, they still need to mine the minerals for solar panels and use industrial processes to manufacture these, which are the bad old polluting type of processes no matter how much work is done to reduce emissions.
We are talking, in effect, about a brutal "you can't evolve to our lifestyle because it is too expensive for the environment" message to the bottom half.
if the top 10% manage to reduce emissions by 95% (netzero 2050 would work toward ) the bottom 50% can treble, triple, 3x emissions. If advanced economies are really going netzero by 2050 we would have a lot of new clean technologies that would ease the constraint on poorer nations, for example solar energy might leapfrog other forms of energy generation, like Africa went from decades of no telephone to high mobile phone penetration and ubiquitous internet access in 20 years. Really, the world can change faster than we can envision
The dig at "climate itself isn't just" feels cheap, like it deliberately tries to misunderstand what is meantby climate justice.
To me, climate justice clearly does not imply that we should all have a right to live at a temperate climate zone. It implies that there is a part of climate that is man-made, that disfavours some more than others, and that is caused more by some then by others.
Like murder: It is man-made (we do not call earthquakes murder), it disfavours some (the victims) and is caudes by some (the murderer/s).
It would feel wrong to react to murder with a call for non-murder progress, to call on murderers and non-murderers alike to maybe strife to murder less, so we may live in a better world.
Likewise, murderers trying to frame the murder debate with things like "Doesn't nature murder too, so non-murder is unrealistic anyway" are not accepted as an equal alternative point of view.
Because this is not a neutral subject where everyone can have any point of view, and those doing good are padded on the back. It is a question of a moral dimension, where a sense of justice kicks in, and a sense is emotional and doesn't hold all piints of view as equal.
That is what framing something as justice is about: It assumes people have natural rights to something, and ignoring them is unjust.
"Climate justice" implies that polluting or not is not like giving alms or not (where you are not a bad person if you do not give a beggar money), but instead like stealing/murdering or not.
I find that this framing makes sense to me when it comes to climate or pollution.
I think this is right, and an appropriately charitable approach to the term.
Overall, despite my agreement with de Boer on the excesses of our surveillance society, and sympathy with the view that a problem with contemporary leftism views the 'state of nature' too optimistically (if we weren't actively being bad, then things would be fine), I wasn't impressed with this essay on a structural level. It has the feel of a hot take rather than an attempt to take the argument on its own terms (or to 'steelman' it), building the argument piece by piece.
This is a textbook illustration of what Thomas Sowell (also picked up by Pinker in his "Blank Slate" book) has called "the utopian vision" (as contrasted with "the tragic vision").
What is meant by those terms is a secular formulation of "the problem of evil": "why does evil exist and how to solve it?".
The "tragic vision" asserts that "evil" is the default state of things, demanding no explanation, and requiring positive intervention (by "saints" and "heroes") in order to bring about the "good".
The "utopian vision" asserts that no, the default state of things is a "good" one: humanity is naturally peaceful and prosperous, and when it isn't, this demands an explanation in the form of identifying who is to blame for disturbing that "good" state (a class, a race, an economic system, an ideology).
The intervention to bring about the "good" and restoring "justice" is a negative one: the elimination or at least the punishment of that class, race, economic system, or ideology.
It is simply assumed that once the obstacles are removed, the whole of humanity will naturally recognize 21st century Western urban progressive values.
In the "utopian" vision there is no room for "saints" and "heroes" because everyone is a "saint" and a "hero" unless prevented by the the evil classes and races, ideologically defending their privileges in the form of "unjust" economic and political systems.
On the other hand, someone like Sowell and Pinker would argue that even to speak of "injustice" makes no sense, because everything labelled "unjust" by the "utopians" is simply a continuation of behaviors inherited from our historical and evolutionary past, that are still very much a reality throughout the animal kingdom.
When the vegan activist asks "what gives you the right to milk the cow and take away the hen's eggs?", they are clearly starting from the position that humans wouldn't "naturally" be doing any of that. So naturally they conclude, humans who consume animal products are guilty of an "injustice".
Once you understand this dichotomy, everything in the language of the culture wars, and even the culture wars themselves, start to make perfect sense according to their own premises.
The 'justice' framing is an attempt to cut down on out of context people coming in and doing something that's mostly for themselves, and to instead make them think about who the injured party is and how to support their volition rather than just imposing your own solutions.
It also encourages not dumping the costs on the injured parties - the difference between environmental activism and climate justice is the attempt to make sure the people who are suffering the most from climate change don't end up having to bear the greatest costs for fixing it (which is generally an easier way to fix the environmental problem).
The justice framing is 'fix this, but not at the expense of the people affected, ideally at the expense of the perpetrators or beneficiaries of the broken situation' rather than just 'fix this'.
>You can’t “help the economy” or “save the poor” merely by harming rich people. Can you get “economic justice” this way? Depends who you ask, but I notice that “getting justice” for a murder involves punishing a suspect a lot more often than it involves resurrecting the victim.
Speaking of punishment and murder, here is a little talked about aspect of Stalin's policies. Stalinist/leninist policy was big on the retributive social and economic justice. The policies that resulted in the Holodomor were all justified as a way to bring justice. They were intended to punish the rich, landowning kulaks for being rich, landowning kulaks (peasant who owned more than 8 acres of farmland) and the punishment was "liquidation".
I’d suggest it’s because pursuing economic justice is easier than helping the poor. To pursue economic justice asks us to tell a story about the specifics of a particular situation and why it is intuitively bad. Telling stories is fun and easy. It focuses on individuals and requires verbal skills. Most people can do it. To help the poor requires us to figure out which practical policies will provide a net benefit to the poor in their practical implementation. This requires a lot of detailed analysis of tradeoffs, ideally quantitative. It focuses on systems and institutions and requires mathematical skills. Very few people can do it.
This is why, in my view, there has long been a trend in law towards preferring a rights based approach over balancing interests approach. As Eric Posner has pointed out in The Twilight of Human Rights Law, there are literally hundreds of human rights that have been recognized in international treaties. They cannot all be satisfied simultaneously—the right to freedom of expression can be restricted in the interests of social order. If couched in terms of rights, this gives rise to a clash of rights, where lawyers can tell stories about which right should prevail in a particular context. If couched in terms of balancing, this requires an empirical investigation of exactly how much a particular rule advances social order. Most lawyers are verbally adept, but are bad at math (which is why they went into law). Couching the debate in terms of rights privileges lawyers over economists, so of course lawyers prefer a rights based approach to a balancing approach. Rights based approaches are easy to sell to the public for the same reason.
I think the people who are the main progenitors and promoters of this framing (progressive thought leaders) are actually pretty explicit about why they think the justice framing is preferable. You hit on many of the reasons e.g. they believe and want to emphasise that they think action is obligatory, because owed, because they think someone (possibly 'the system' as a whole) has caused some harm, and they think action would therefore be a necessary correction, rather than something supererogatory we could do to improve a merely natural state of affairs and feel good about.
I think the thing that is somewhat obscured in your account is that these are, to a large extent, explicit reasons why people are arguing for a justice framing, not just something that people have unconsciously fallen into. If you just google 'justice not charity' you'll see innumerable examples of people explicitly arguing along these lines and, as an explicit slogan, "social justice not charity" goes back as the 1920s (https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-52477587).
I would agree though that some of the tendency to think or speak in these terms (particularly more recently, as the meme has become more popular and mainstream), is more unthinking and unconscious, and is downstream of these earlier more explicit arguments. i.e. progressive thinkers explicitly make these arguments, this filters down into other engaged progressives/journalists, and now other people broadly aligned with them pick it up as a tic, without much explicit reflection (in the same way that people start referring to "white supremacy", rather than simply "racism" because they grasp it's the done thing and sounds a bit stronger, but without a clear idea why).
"Justice not charity" is precisely the crux of the matter, why such nomenclature was adopted in the first place.
Chesterton quote coming up!
“It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.”
Giving to the deserving what is theirs is, as pointed out, justice not charity. So instead of dividing people into deserving and undeserving, instead of being the agents of charity who are superior in their virtue, we should/must be agents of justice who work to restore the balance of equality. The rich don't own their money or deserve it because (in this paradigm) they have unfairly appropriated resources which should be held in common. Economic justice is correcting this imbalance.
People like justice. It has connotations of fairness and correcting wrongs. So it's a great term to adopt, particularly for those who aspire to the academic critical theories of race/gender/class/whatever you're having yourself. It makes it sound respectable, well-thought-out, based on reason and the laws of the universe (just like science and we all know science is the most good!). 'Reproductive justice' is fighting for our rights to control our fertility, a right which has been usurped by tyrannical forces of social control. (Doesn't that sound a lot nicer than 'we want the right to prevent life'?)
Climate justice, economic justice, racial justice, this justice, that justice - they all have a common tap-root.
As a Catholic and an admirer of Chesterton, do you not think that Catholic social teaching fully *agrees* with early-20th-c. leftists that society's obligation to ensure an adequate standard of living for the poor is a matter of justice, not charity?
The universal destination of goods would seem to imply this.
I have the exact opposite interpretation. Helping the poor isn't utopian. It sure is the nice thing to do, and sometimes people do it even now - but it implies that there are poor people. That's the status quo and thus not utopian.
Going for economic justice on the other hand means attempting to abolish poverty (to me at least) - that's utopian.
But that's why we should embed justice within the rules of social systems themselves. I just want to do work I'm good at and have some of the value produced taken to eliminate poverty without me ever having to think about it. Moral anxiety comes from the knowledge that society is unjust and I can't just live my life if I want to do good.
Yippee, time for me to play a theologian on the Internet!
And make no mistake, what we are talking about here *is* theology. The language of justice is a theological concept, and the social justice movement in its beginnings was influenced by Catholic religious thought:
"While concepts of social justice can be found in classical and Christian philosophical sources, from Plato and Aristotle to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the term social justice finds its earliest uses in the late 18th century, albeit with unclear theoretical or practical meanings. The use of the term was early on subject to accusations of redundancy and of rhetorical flourish, perhaps but not necessarily related to amplifying one view of distributive justice. In the coining and definition of the term in the natural law social scientific treatise of Luigi Taparelli, SJ, in the early 1840s, Taparelli established the natural law principle that corresponded to the evangelical principle of brotherly love—i.e. social justice reflects the duty one has to one’s other self in the interdependent abstract unity of the human person in society."
Yes, once again, Blame The Jesuits.
But what we are more concerned with here is Liberation Theology and its intersections with Marxism, which brings us to South America.
I don't know how many of you have ever heard of a book called "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed" but boy howdy was/is it influential in social sciences.
"Dedicated to the oppressed and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis in his exploration of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. In the book, Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model of education" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. He argues that pedagogy should instead treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge."
Sounding familiar, that "co-creator" bit? And so it should sound. This is the language adopted by Social Justice activists; we've laughed at "feminist glaciology" but this is where the theoretical underpinnings come from.
In the 70s, Marxism was very trendy. Especialy in South America, which it is stereotyping but not completely inaccurate to say had a long tradition of revolutions and new oppressions needing new revolutions. At this time, you could take your pick of dictatorships right *and* left wing in various South American countries, hence for the intelligentsia Marxism was the cool fix-it solution to all problems.
This intertwined with Catholic social justice, and once again, Let's Blame The Jesuits! (As an aside, if anyone is wondering about Pope Francis' economic and political views, kindly remember he's a South American Jesuit so this influences him, though he is also considered right-wing because of his views on tradtional topics).
Liberation Theology - if you've ever heard the expression "the preferential option for the poor" (and if you're Catholic no matter what stripe, you certainly have), this is where it comes from.
I'm going to be jumping around timelines a bit, so forgive that. Okay, anyone else on here old enough to remember things like the American nuns killed in El Salvador?
This was a whole tangled mess of politics, with the situation in El Salvador being one of left-wing revolutionaries fighting a civil war against a right-wing military junta, and pretty much everyone being caught in the cross-fire. St. Óscar Romero had been murdered while saying Mass by someone considered to be acting on the orders of a right-wing political party because of his criticism of both sides, but particularly the government, for what they were doing.
The American nuns were also seen not alone as missionaries but as political activists, including by the Reagan Administration which was supportive of the El Salvadoran regime (remember, the USA was and is very concerned about Communist governments to its south):
"Unlike President Carter, succeeding U.S. President Ronald Reagan favored the Salvadoran military regime; he authorized increased military aid and sent more U.S. military advisers to the country to aid the government in quelling the civil/guerrilla war. His foreign policy advisor Jean Kirkpatrick declared her 'unequivocal' belief that the Salvadorean army was not responsible, adding that "the nuns were not just nuns. They were political activists. We ought to be a little more clear about this than we actually are."
Okay, let's get back on track. So given the general tenor of the times, with revolutions here there and everywhere and the displaced/in power governments fighting back just as brutally, the pressures on theology to respond saw the formation of Liberation Theology, which quickly started branching off into off-shoots which became more about Marxism and less about Catholic dogma, and then sub-dividing into things like Black Liberation Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Mujerist Theology, and the likes, and the descendants of these dropping the theology and going full-fledged secular social justice but retaining much of the language and the concepts underpinning the same.
"Liberation theology is a Christian theological approach emphasizing the liberation of the oppressed. In certain contexts, it engages socio-economic analyses, with "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples." In other contexts, it addresses other forms of inequality, such as race or caste.
Liberation theology is best known in the Latin American context, especially within Catholicism in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, where it became the political praxis of theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor". This expression was used first by Jesuit Fr. General Pedro Arrupe in 1968 and soon after the World Synod of Catholic Bishops in 1971 chose as its theme "Justice in the World".
The Latin American context also produced evangelical advocates of liberation theology, such as Rubem Alves, José Míguez Bonino, and C. René Padilla, who in the 1970s called for integral mission, emphasizing evangelism and social responsibility.
Theologies of liberation have also developed in other parts of the world such as black theology in the United States and South Africa, Palestinian liberation theology, Dalit theology in India, and Minjung theology in South Korea."
"One of the most radical and influential aspects of liberation theology was the social organization, or reorganization, of church practice through the model of Christian base communities, also called basic ecclesial communities. Liberation theology strove to be a bottom-up movement in practice, with Biblical interpretation and liturgical practice designed by lay practitioners themselves, rather than by the Church hierarchy. In this context, sacred text interpretation is understood as "praxis".
The priest Camilo Torres (a leader of the Colombian guerrilla group ELN) celebrated the Eucharist only among those engaged in armed struggle against the army of the Colombian state. He also fought for the ELN.
Liberation theology seeks to interpret the actions of the Catholic Church and the teachings of Jesus Christ from the perspective of the poor and disadvantaged. In Latin America, liberation theologians specifically target the severe disparities between rich and poor in the existing social and economic orders within the state's political and corporate structures. It is a strong critique of the economic and social structures, such as an oppressive government supported by a conservative Church hierarchy and by First World economic interests, that allow some to be extremely rich while others are unable even to have safe drinking water.
Contemporaneously, Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti, the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil, and Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa are three organizations that make use of liberation theology."
Whew. Let's catch our breath before diving into the theology of justice, okay?
So why do I claim that the "Justice" movements described above, coming out of Social Justice broadly as they do, are in fact theologically-based (even if they may not realise this)?
Because about a decade ago, I wrote up something on Catholic views on mercy and justice, and a lot of the language is familiar if you go back far enough.
But let me develop my point first. It is not at all surprising that the concept and language of "justice" has replaced that of "heroes and saints and helpers and saviours". "Saints and saviours" are disreputable in society today, we mistrust and suspect them. "White Saviour" is a term of criticism, not of praise. Justice, however, is something we can do. It changes the equation from "Lady Bountiful descending upon the cottages of the poor tenantry to patronise them with lectures and hand-outs" to one of "there are Goodies and Baddies, and here is how you can be a Goodie". The poor, the oppressed, those denied their just rights in this view are not objects of pity or charity, they are equals and indeed leaders. We, the privileged, should shut up and sit down and listen and learn from them.
The theological virtue of Justice is, in this way, easily converted or even degraded, if you like, into the civil society legal version of Justice: the cops and robbers where punishment is more the focus than restoration of the victim, much less rehabilitation of the offender.
And it's seductive precisely because it puts the oppressed, the minorities, those under the heel of the law into the roles now of the cops, the ones with (moral) authority to punish the bad guys. It's even more seductive for the people in power: the academics, the 'white liberal guilt' writers and opinion-formers in the media, the 'just a few kids on college campuses', the mass movements which go out and protest on the streets.
Maybe they can't change society, short of burning it all down and starting over, but they can certainly punish the offenders. That kind of power is now in their grasp and it's a heady sensation that flatters your own sense of who you are: now you are fighting for justice, so any means may be justified by that end.
"X, Y or Z justice" co-opts that idea; there are clear rules, there are clear bad guys and good guys, and here is how you show you are a good guy, and even better - here is how you punish the bad guys. Do you actually *achieve* anything? That's not the point, the point is you are able to count up micro-aggressions or get plastic straws banned or any of the myriad ways of tallying the sins of others, venial and mortal. It's great to be an Inquisitor or a Witch-finder General.
The theology of justice, that concept which lies under all this far, far back.
First, we have to disentangle justice from law, which I think helps explain what Scott is saying above about the 'vulgar criminal sense of criminal justice connotations'. To quote St. Thomas Aquinas, law is the object not of *justice* but of *prudence*.
Justice is a cardinal virtue. More gobbets of Aquinas from the "Summa" on the definition of justice:
- Now the essential character of justice consists in rendering to another his due according to equality
- It is proper to justice, as compared with the other virtues, to direct man in his relations with others: because it denotes a kind of equality, as its very name implies; indeed we are wont to say that things are adjusted when they are made equal, for equality is in reference of one thing to some other.
- Justice, as stated above (Article 2) directs man in his relations with other men. Now this may happen in two ways: first as regards his relation with individuals, secondly as regards his relations with others in general, in so far as a man who serves a community, serves all those who are included in that community.
- The common good is the end of each individual member of a community, just as the good of the whole is the end of each part. On the other hand the good of one individual is not the end of another individual: wherefore legal justice which is directed to the common good, is more capable of extending to the internal passions whereby man is disposed in some way or other in himself, than particular justice which is directed to the good of another individual.
So justice has to do with equity (hey, is that word sounding familiar to you as well from modern discourse?), with equality and equity between people as individuals and as members of society. Charity is love of God which conduces to love of our neighbour Mercy is the actions or active principle which derives from both, spurred to love our neighbour as ourselves by charity and to repair deficiencies by justice.
Quoting the Church Fathers, you can see how liberation theology got itself, in some instances, entangled with Marxism because the radical views of what is justice have deep roots:
- (As quoted by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa):
“Hence Basil says [Hom. super Luc. xii, 18]: “If you acknowledge them,” viz. your temporal goods, “as coming from God, is He unjust because He apportions them unequally? Why are you rich while another is poor, unless it be that you may have the merit of a good stewardship, and he the reward of patience? It is the hungry man's bread that you withhold, the naked man's cloak that you have stored away, the shoe of the barefoot that you have left to rot, the money of the needy that you have buried underground: and so you injure as many as you might help.” Ambrose expresses himself in the same way.”
“It is written 1 John 3:17: “He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shall put up his bowels from him, how doth the charity of God abide in him?”
- “You never give to the poor what is yours; you merely return to them what belongs to them. For what you have appropriated was given for the common use of everybody. The land was given for everybody, not just the rich.” St. Ambrose, 4th century bishop of Milan
- “The bread that is in your box belongs to the hungry; the coat in your closet belongs to the naked; the shoes you do not wear belong to the barefoot; the money in your vault belongs to the destitute.” St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, c. A.D. 370
- “Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to the one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.” St Gregory Naziansen, Bishop of Constantinople, late fourth century
- “Nothing is your own. You are a slave and what is yours belongs to the Lord. For a slave has no property that is truly his own; naked you were brought into this life.” Asterius, Bishop of Amasea, from “The Unjust Steward,” c. A.D. 400
So the *language* of justice trickles down and is disseminated amongst all the new movements, which are looking for respectability and latch onto the academic theories which allegedly drive them, the critiques of society on a theoretical and philosophical basis, and which have derived this concept of "justice" ultimately from theology, though they have divorced it from all religious overtones.
It's easier to quote dogma than actively change things, society has massive inertia. "Fighting for X, Y or Z justice" feels good, you're the goddamn Batman, you're out there marching and protesting and writing cancellation tweets and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the oppressed, you've unpacked your backpack, you are one of the Good Guys.
The helper/saviour role is much too suspicious to be donned today, because that will drag you down in immediate accusations of privilege and superiority and not stepping back, but being a justice fighter means you can have that cake and eat it too.
To end with what passes for a joke by St. Thomas Aquinas, this last quote on philosophy versus concrete action:
“(A)s [Aristotle] observes, for a needy man “money is better than philosophy,” although the latter is better simply.”
I don't think the Catholics (or any kind of Christians) have earned the monopoly on justice. The concept of codified laws had been in place almost since the beginning of humanity. The Code of Hammurabi is the obvious example here, but there are others all throughout history, all of which predate Catholicism. And, while most of them had been tied up with the notion of personal gods (e.g. Shamash or Jesus), others have been secular or quasi-secular (e.g. the Dharma or the Viking Althing). There's no denying that Christianity had introduced a lot of refinements to the legal system, from both the administrative and the theological points of view; but they did not by any means invent the concept of "justice". Rather, they built up on an existing idea; and, being the godless atheist that I am, I'd personally argue that the concept of "justice" derives naturally from a society of semi-independent agents, which we humans happen to be.
I'm not claiming Christians have a monopoly on justice, indeed justice as a cardinal virtue means it is equally a pagan as a religious virtue.
I am saying that the social justice movement has its roots in a philosophy shaped by Catholic thinkers during the discussion in the 18th and 19th century about the formulation of "social justice" as a distinct and particular thing, and that this religious underpinning still remains even when the secularised form split off and started fissioning into the various X, Y and Z Justices Scott mentions.
1. I question the assumption that "justice" naturally implies "criminal justice" (punishments). The first definition on M-W is "the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by [1] the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of [2] merited rewards or [3] punishments." The broader sense is impartially doing what is required and giving people what they are owed, which could be good or bad.
2. As an example of what "most" people naturally think of when they hear the word "justice," consider one of the most famous line in the most famous book in the world: Deut. 17:20 "Justice, justice shall you pursue." The immediately preceding verse (17:19) is "You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just." That isn't about criminal punishment; it's about fairness.
3. I think you have a point about economic "justice" suggesting "We have some kind of obligation to pursue it." In Hebrew, the word translated to English as "charity" is "tzedakah," which derives from "tzedek" - justice. In contrast, "charity" derives from Latin "caritas" - affection. Etymology is not destiny, but a standard Hebrew school lesson (which may carry some truth) is that "charity" suggests something that you might feel like doing when you're feeling ... charitable (or like a helper or savior). Because you care. But if you don't care, or don't feel charitable, you don't do it. Vs. giving tzedakah (justice) is something you must do because you are *obligated*, whether you feel like it or not.
4. And I think that's the broader reason for the shift to "justice." It's not about being cops meting out punishments, but rather emphasizing a framework of obligation to give people what they deserve, rather than a framework of voluntarily helping people because you happen to feel like it. A good secular example is Peter Unger's "Living High and Letting Die." I can't remember if he uses the word "justice," but the idea that you *must* do this (rather than "you'll feel good about yourself if you do this") is pervasive in it.
You say we are a "weird superposition of criminals and cops" but I think those who insist on the manifold flavors of justice you mention see themselves as self-appointed judges who condemn the unworthy, the morally superior men or women who bring the miscreants and rule-breakers to heel, true warriors for justice who confront the evildoers and thus have something to feel good about.
Being censorious is both easier and more satisfying than just being good.
Have no data and this is just a gut feeling, but it seems like a response to the death of traditional religion. Something’s got to fill that void. Using a single word as a rallying cry seems like a kind of shibboleth. “Justice as religion” seems to do the trick nicely. A new religion whose icon is a woman wearing a blindfold, attempting to promote equality (holding a scale) via the sword.
> You can’t “help the economy” or “save the poor” merely by harming rich people. Can you get “economic justice” this way? Depends who you ask, but I notice that “getting justice” for a murder involves punishing a suspect a lot more often than it involves resurrecting the victim.
That's a way to see it, but another way to see it would be "saving the lives of potential subsequent victims". I don't know how effective is it in reality, but to me it is an important part of "getting justice".
Planet of Cops is a fun essay. (Cops, though, ≠ justice, necessarily.)
Most commenters here are noting that the justice idea is retribution-based, that is, ideologically driven ideas of what justice is. The planet of cops/drive toward justice—in whatever form—may be just 'civilization' at work. Norman O Brown always said that since we have to repress our animalistic nature to remain civil to one another, have a civilized society, and that Freud noted that repression results in insanity, all of being a civilized society results in insanity. Dwelling on justice, being a planet of cops, well, those are just symptoms of civilized society's insanity. As is the Planet of Cops essay.
The terms seem confusing to me. At a personal level if you make a mess, you should clean it up. But if you don't and there are enough people around who start to insist on the behavior they might use shame, create incentives or fines. As it scales up to things like the global climate we see a desire to get corporations to do something similar. We use fines and penalties as sticks and tout things like ESG money as a carrot. Universal Basic Income has been kicking around in no small part to the almost incomprehensible wealth and income gap in many parts of the US. But it is it really about justice? Or the money? There are lots of people who don't have the tools to "succeed" in a way that would provide them a decent life - home, food, healthcare. What do you want to do about that? Nothing? Move them? House them in little sheds in a Walmart parking lot? Draft them into public service so they can have a home, food and healthcare?
"Justice" conjures up aspects of "right" and "wrong" for many people and it complicates the question. Is it "just" for "hardworking folks like me" to have to give money to "provide for people who are just sitting around?" Then everyone gets angry.
This piece starts off strong, but I think Scott (uncharacteristically) loses the plot once he goes into the "climate justice" example and talks about how justice = criminal justice = retribution.
Scott's observation is true that "we should help the poor" implies something nice that you can do that is not obligatory, while "we need to pursue economic justice" implies that things are unjust, hence there is a moral obligation to fix the situation and moral culpability in letting it continue. So far, so good. But the obvious next question isn't "why the rhetorical shift", but "is the rhetorical shift correct". IS there economic/racial/social/environmental/climate/intergenerational injustice worth speaking of that we are obligated to resolve?
Let's stick with the "climate justice" example. The weird oversight in this paragraph is that "climate justice" is, rather obviously, a shorthand for "climate CHANGE justice". Talking about the Little Ice Age or pleasant climates is missing the point, which is that the downsides of climate change (sea level rise, dangerously high wet bulb temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, etc), are disproportionately felt by one group, while the behaviors causing it (energy-intensive behaviors) are disproportionately enjoyed by another. If you accept the standard models of anthropogenic climate change, we're basically saying "high energy consumers are taking future utils from people living in low-lying areas and hot climates, without consent or remuneration". Under almost any moral framework that sounds like an "injustice".
Each of the other examples should be thought of the same way: the thesis of the "X Justice Warrior" is "the current system is unjust in ways that impact X", and the job of the skeptical blogger is not to say "why are you saying 'justice'", but to formulate an argument on whether that thesis is true or false.
I certainly don't doubt that people misapply the concept of justice, as it is a powerful call to action. The important thing to note, though, is that the correct response is to evaluate whether their claim of an injustice being perpetrated is true or false -- not to cast doubt on the entire idea of X Justice.
It sounds like you agree with me that "I take climate-utils from you so I can gain energy-utils" (i.e., "I burn fossil fuels and you feel the consequences) is in fact unjust. And I agree with you that "I was born somewhere unpleasant and you were born somewhere pleasant" is not unjust. So it's really a case-by-case line-drawing exercise: imagine your minimally-tolerably just world and figure out where the real world doesn't measure up. For me, "people are forced to leave their homes because of aggregate consequences of other people consuming luxury goods" in fact DOES meet my definition of injustice, but I'm always happy to engage with people who disagree. The important thing is we are disagreeing over the facts and ethics of the case, not the very concept of climate justice.
This gets into a very tricky real world dilemma. It's a serious question, but one rife with complications and unintended consequences. Are people morally culpable for unintentional consequences of their actions? We could formulate that question a few other ways, such as changing "morally culpable" to "financially obligated" without losing the important framework of the question.
I'm sure there are people reading this right now that are thinking - "well yes, obviously people are morally/financially responsible for their actions" and are thinking about climate change or systemic racism or whatever. But is that a really generalizable position? What if it turns out that climate change is less negative (or even broadly positive) - would people trying to slow it down be "morally culpable" for the costs imposed in switching to green energy? Put more directly, should people be held morally and financially responsible for actions genuinely taken with the intention of improving the world? If that answer is yes, which is implied by a lot of the "X Justice" language, then I fear that generalizing the language will result in people being unwilling to support unpopular opinions even if they are correct. I also fear that incorrect opinions will continue to proliferate due to a lack of people willing to counter the claims. Then, when the mountain of evidence becomes overwhelming, the sea change shifts and those previously espousing incorrect views (honestly and with good intentions) will suddenly be subject to "justice" and held responsible for being wrong.
This dilemma is "solved" in the sphere of criminal/civil justice by the act of "drawing reasonable lines". What if a surgeon hits you with their car on their way to the OR to save somebody? Should they be held accountable for the damage they did despite their genuine desire to help people? What if they were driving 60MPH in a school zone in order to do so? What if the injury they caused you led you to reexamine your life and discover philosophy and actually led you to a happier life? We invent concepts like "negligence" and "reasonable person standards" because, while edge cases like these do exist, we believe that the value of solving the 95% case (most negligent drivers are pretty obviously negligent) is worth the cost and struggle involved in figuring out the ambiguity of the 5% case (and risk of getting it wrong).
Applying that same concept to "climate justice", you don't need to do anything so radical as punishing the high energy consumers, especially not retroactively. You can get 95% of the value of "climate justice" by doing a thorough, good faith, best effort analysis of the externalities per unit behavior, applying these (as a tax or cap-and-trade or whatever), and periodically coming back to this analysis periodically to update your tax or whatever.
I don't think this is an argument that *can* be true or false. Is it unjust that some people have more money than others? You can come up with facts that are relevant to this question, but overall it seems like you either have the moral intuition or you don't. My impression is that the job of the blogger is to point out that this is, in fact, a non-obvious moral claim and dissect what assumptions are involved in it.
Thanks for your response. I'll concede that whether "X is unjust" has a true or false answer depends on your attitude toward moral realism and is out of scope for this discussion.
I agree that "dissect[ing] what assumptions are involved" in declaring something to be relevant to "justice" sounds like a valuable role for the rational skeptic. However, I think in this case you are strawmanning the X-justice crowd: you define justice narrowly (basically only retributive, with "violations" and "villains", then in the only example you really delve into -- climate justice -- you make no mention of climate _change_, which could reasonably be construed to have "violations", and even, to some ways of thinking, "villains", as it involves disparate groups of people harming one another in disproportionate ways. Given the Wikipedia article for Climate Justice summarizes it as being about "equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens... and responsibilities to deal with _climate change_", I think this is a meaningful gap.
Similarly, when it comes to economic justice, there is a serious case to be made: proponents tend to believe that whatever system they rail against is truly unjust -- say, because it rewards capital owners at the expense of those without, directly or indirectly expropriating the latter with guns in order to enrich the former. If you disagree, the next step is to explain why you think either the facts of the case are different or the moral theory they are using is wrong. But to simply say "no victim, no violation, not a case for justice" misses the facts that many reasonable people DO see victims and violations, and that many reasonable theories of justice do not limit themselves to violations (e.g., pure utilitarianism making no distinction between the acting/failing to act dichotomy).
Uncritically reading this piece, a person would walk away believing that X-justice-warriors are grossly misapplying a concept for political gain. I think that is probably true in some cases, but tarring every application of X-justice with the same brush is misleading and detrimental to the discourse: if your response to an X-justice warrior is "X-justice is an incoherent concept" without tackling the meat of their argument, you will never change their mind (or let them change yours if they are right, as any good rationalist would)
I came too late to comment on this post... fortunately, you said most of what I wanted to say!
I fear I'm getting old: all the people I like reading are becoming more interested in complaining about millennials/students/woke than any other topic. The obvious solution would be to go and find a new generation of writers, but my irrational distaste for young people is just as strong...
Justice stands above democracy. Both in discourse and in law.
The other framings sound like policy choices, subject to things like electoral choice; a Justice framing is a constitutional framing. It implies a bureaucracy above political scrutiny (publicly-funded jobs for wordcels!). On the other hand, if you say something like "we want to solve climate change", this may attract solutionism (which would be jobs for shape rotators).
Your last point is spot on, I would add that the 'justice' movement doesn't just transition from other virtues but no longer makes justice a virtue practiced by the individual toward others but rather refers to justice as something that is due to us by 'right' from the state.
The whole movement is part of the reduction in face-to-face relations and the movement toward helping groups rather than individuals and the authoritarian instinct that originates from that.
Fr. James Schall of Georgetown has very good writings on justice (The Most Terrible of the Virtues).
"The origins of social justice lie in Machiavelli's rejection of the possibility of virtue.... good regime meant not that individuals are just but that the laws are just. Whatever the laws, if citizens obeyed — usually by force — they would be prosperous, happy, and peaceful. Law was will."
Whenever someone uses the word 'justice' for a cause they mean that they want to use the coercive powers of the state to achieve a structural outcome. Very different from the intentions of say a classical charity looking to help individuals directly.
"Whenever someone uses the word 'justice' for a cause they mean that they want to use the coercive powers of the state to achieve a structural outcome."
Didn't know Jesus was talking about the state when he said "Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for justice; you will be satisfied".
"Kingdom of God" is clearly metaphorical, as the eschaton being immanentized is not merely a material transformation, but a metaphysical one- the destruction of Original Sin and all evils to return Creation to the unsullied state it was originally intended to be in, with the Elect washed white in the blood of the Lamb and restored to the primordial state Adam existed in. There are no laws, no borders, no crime nor punishment- these are artificial constructs and crutches that do not and cannot apply to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Justice is a subset of the topic of fairness. The problem with using the word fair is that we have different definitions of fairness. Using the word justice is one way people try to get out of that trap.
It seems like there's some Hegelian is/ought thing going on when you use justice as part of (say) 'economic justice'. There are normative premises that qualify justice/injustice.
Aside: Rawls wasn't the only philosopher to see justice as a crucial atomic term. Plato and Derrida used it as such.
Your use of the word "saints" is very accurate. I think some themes from Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age" are relevant here. He notes the shift in medieval Christianity (driven in part by the Protestant Reformation) from a "two-speed" religious system to an age of reform and "mobilization." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age#Part_I:_The_Work_of_Reform
In medieval Christianity, there was a recognition that ordinary people lived out their faith in a more limited "secular" way, but that some people aspire to a more demanding "religious" life. Not everyone could take on these demands, but everyone should venerate and respect those who do. A similar dynamic exists in Buddhism, especially Theravada Buddhism's distinction between the demands of lay life and monastic life.
The work of Reform, in Taylor's words, was an effort to smash the distinctions between lay and religious life. Reformers recognized that Scripture made no distinction between these two speeds and that all Christians were called equally. They decried both the lax morals and practice tolerated for lay people and the pride and self-righteousness of the clergy.
Taylor doesn't consider this an analogy - he draws a straight line from Protestantism to modern liberalism. It's the ongoing crusade of social reform, just with evolving beliefs about what that means. The language of "charity" you suggest is a "two-speed" system. The average person shouldn't be expected to do anything more than pursue their own interests most of the time, but some exceptional people rise above and are to be celebrated and venerated for it.
Reformers hate this distinction. The transformation of society means that everyone will have to sacrifice their self-interest, so those who do so should not be made into heroes. Instead, everyone has to be brought up to that level as a baseline. This results, just as the Protestant Reformation did, in a shift from a social religion built around venerating saints to one obsessed with justification and salvation.
I don't disagree that a motte-and-bailey exists. "Justice is preferable to *in*justice" is easily defensible; "the criminals must be punished" is more productive, a rallying cry which attempts to reach the Average Law and Order Enjoyer.
This figure is basically meaningless! Doing the suggested search for ourselves we get 1 page of relevant results before Google decides to include articles about American economics and climate politics. How relevant are the following millions?
Using search prevalence as it is here, to estimate vocabulary prevalence, is a better idea--the search term is more focused and results seem to stay on target. Percentage of usage would be more solid. If people are publishing articles using "climate villains" instead of, uh, "climate prisoner's-dilemma-defectors" or "climate degenerates," it probably says more about the alternatives.
Here's a fun experiment: Replace "Justice" with "Envy" and see if any of the proposed actions required to address them actually meaningfully change. They don't, because in the age of envy™ justice means not that people are suffering (this is good, double-plus-good if you're certain flavours of Christian) but that some people have the audacity to not suffer enough. Once no one isn't visibly suffering any less, we've reached justice utopos and can wind down the grand social experiment called society because we've achieved Marxism or something.
For Christianity, suffering is not good in itself. Suffering happens as a result of our fallen state. What is good is if we take control of our suffering, or use suffering to promote virtue. To bear suffering in a cheerful state, if possible, rather than complaining uselessly, or to be moved to have compassion for others and wish to help them if we see them suffering.
There is the separate issue of penance and mortification, which can involve physical suffering or deprivation, and which is seen as beneficial. The notion that Christians want everyone to suffer because suffering in itself is good (and some are not suffering enough) is a mistaken impression.
Christianity's view on suffering was shaped by the pagan societies around them which viewed suffering and were *not* moved to compassion by it; suffering is a natural part of the world, if a slave or a conquered people or an inferior suffers, that is no business of mine and I am certainly not obligated to help them.
I think part of what's going on is that SJAs don't want heroes, they want routinized bureaucratic systems which produce the outcomes they want.
Routinized bureaucratic systems aren't necessarily awful-- it's quite pleasant to be sure that clean water will come out when you turn on the tap. Whether that approach makes sense for as much as SJAs want is another question.
(Yes, I know that not everyone, even in the US, has reliable access to clean drinking water.)
I think erasing the idea of the White Savior is wrapped up in this. Challenging the idea that white people can not be saints that improve racial inequities, because whites are also responsible for those inequities.
I'm sympathetic to that point of view because, when I was a little girl in church, I sometimes felt that church goers almost acted as if poor people existed as an opportunity for normies to prove how good they were, instead of asking why poverty existed in the first place. Sainthood can be very ego driven.
However, I agree that the current moral landscape is entirely too grim.
There are actually mainstream philosophers who've written on the subject of sex and incels from a justice framework. Amia Srinivasan (at Oxford) is probably the best known, and she has a whole book called The Right to Sex. I've listened to her interview with Ezra Klein (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-amia-srinivasan.html), which was interesting.
They already do, and the attitude is generally "you don't actually believe in social justice, you're just co-opting the language to argue for government-assigned sex partners"- the latter is tautologically true, and the former often is as well (the self-identified Incel community skews HEAVILY towards radical right-wing belief)).
1. Yes, those people exist, and the attitude among most leftists by volume (in the sense of number) is "If you have a dick, a lesbian isn't interested in having sex with you, sucks but them's the breaks". Of course online those "cotton ceiling" people have them beat by volume (in the sense of sonic amplitude) but they're about as representative of their identity as incels are of theirs.
2. Incel communities tend to be self-isolating, mostly because the types of opinions you'll see in places like incels.is (note: might have immigrated to a new address by now, but this is what they used when I was an antisocial weirdo who was into e-drama) would make the Athenians look like the Society for Cutting Up Men.
Thanks, this is a good example of the way these terms encode assumptions, which comes across more effectively than anything I was trying to say in the post.
What the *leaders* of the activists - which group, I've noticed, often have a foot in two worlds - are feeling, besides the usual yen for power, and a safe sinecure away from dirty commerce or manual labor, is closest to mercy, to the feeling we ascribe, somewhat sourly, to a Lady Bountiful.
(It is easy, if you like, to be more generous than I, and view the impulse very favorably. Indeed, you probably should, a happy life and the benefits flowing to the world therefrom, in some way probably require that you do. To feel as I do about such things, and about people generally, is to inhabit a dark place, the only relief of which is going into nature, and that too is spoiled now ... well, for some of us.)
However, mercy and justice are necessarily opposed. There is no way to reconcile them. What these activists want can never answer to "justice". If you are in sympathy, you should give up the attempt. Your vast intelligence can't help you here.
Definitely have noticed this - justice is woke term which suggests government is needed and 'will be there to help the oppressed', liberty and freedom are antithesis and are my preferred adjectives.
Could declining belief in God be one reason for the popularity of the justice frame? Something like: We still have a Christian sense that we're all sinners (or even that we carry guilt for the actions of our ancestors) but we no longer have a deity to judge and/or forgive us. So we end up becoming the "weird superposition of criminals and cops."
I think that’s definitely the case: lacking transcendent morality, progressives need to root their causes in a secular morality. The concept of “justice” offers a vague but recognizable basis for such.
Claiming that something is "motte-and-bailey" is usually itself a motte-and-bailey fallacy. The motte is someone using one meaning of a phrase to make a provocative claim, then switching to another meaning when challenged. The bailey is a phrase being understood differently by different people (which is going to happen for any remotely complex concept that enters the popular consciousness).
Tell me your substatck deal is making you unfathomably rich without telling me your substatck deal is making you unfathomably rich.
Jokes aside, I think this kind of discussion of justice needs to be grounded in the idea of the social contract, lest you strawman the ongoing discourse with rhetorical questions like 'was the little ice age unjust?'
I don't see these novel uses of the term 'justice' as necessarily concept creep, but rather as earnest discussions regarding e.g. the economic or environmental implications of our stated political and moral values.
The idea of the social contract is vague and controversial, making it shaky as a grounding for just about anything. What is it, where did it come from, why does it apply to me (I didn't sign it!), and what obligations does it impose? Many have tried to answer these questions, perhaps some even successfully! But their answers are all different - and many doubt there is meaningfully such a thing as a "social contract" at all. So I think adding it into the conversation will make things murkier, not clearer.
Well the point isn't that the mere concept of the social contract is an ironclad argument bound to convert Scott to the idea of social justice; however, it does provide a more coherent explanation for those categories of justice than Scott engages with. I think this discourse is sufficiently important to be reflected upon charitably, and sentences like "What if I said that there’s a really high correlation between temperature and GDP" lead me to think Scott isn't approaching these concepts within a helpful frame.
Speaking of the social contract, let me quote from "The Ball and the Cross":
"The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady, monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying something like this:
“You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled.”
“It's no good chattering away, Monsieur,” said Hutton, for the Master was silent. “The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey our orders, and so have you.”
“The machinery is of the most perfect,” assented Durand, somewhat irrelevantly; “worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory.”
“Oh! I dare say,” said Hutton.
Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
...“The place is on fire!” cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror. “Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?”
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. “How did the French Revolution happen?” he asked.
“Oh, how should I know!” wailed the other.
“Then I will tell you,” said Turnbull; “it happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked.”
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract."
Thank you for sharing; it is always a pleasure to read about my countrymen's uncontested excellence when it comes to indignantly setting things on fire (fictional or otherwise).
Who else to cite back at you but George Bernard Shaw:
~~
THE CHIEF. Friends and fellow brigands. I have a proposal to make to this meeting. We have now spent three evenings in discussing the question Have Anarchists or Social-Democrats the most personal courage? We have gone into the principles of Anarchism and Social-Democracy at great length. The cause of Anarchy has been ably represented by our one Anarchist, who doesn't know what Anarchism means [laughter]—
THE ANARCHIST. [rising] A point of order, Mendoza—
MENDOZA. [forcibly] No, by thunder: your last point of order took half an hour. Besides, Anarchists don't believe in order.
THE ANARCHIST. [mild, polite but persistent: he is, in fact, the respectable looking elderly man in the celluloid collar and cuffs] That is a vulgar error. I can prove—
MENDOZA. Order, order.
THE OTHERS [shouting] Order, order. Sit down. Chair! Shut up.
The Anarchist is suppressed.
MENDOZA. On the other hand we have three Social-Democrats among us. They are not on speaking terms; and they have put before us three distinct and incompatible views of Social-Democracy.
THE MAJORITY. [shouting assent] Hear, hear! So we are. Right.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [smarting under oppression] You ain't no Christian. You're a Sheeny, you are.
MENDOZA. [with crushing magnanimity] My friend; I am an exception to all rules. It is true that I have the honor to be a Jew; and, when the Zionists need a leader to reassemble our race on its historic soil of Palestine, Mendoza will not be the last to volunteer [sympathetic applause—hear, hear, etc.]. But I am not a slave to any superstition. I have swallowed all the formulas, even that of Socialism; though, in a sense, once a Socialist, always a Socialist.
THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!
MENDOZA. But I am well aware that the ordinary man—even the ordinary brigand, who can scarcely be called an ordinary man [Hear, hear!]—is not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough for him; and in our business affairs common sense is good enough for me. Well, what is our business here in the Sierra Nevada, chosen by the Moors as the fairest spot in Spain? Is it to discuss abstruse questions of political economy? No: it is to hold up motor cars and secure a more equitable distribution of wealth.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.
MENDOZA. [urbanely] Undoubtedly. All made by labor, and on its way to be squandered by wealthy vagabonds in the dens of vice that disfigure the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. We intercept that wealth. We restore it to circulation among the class that produced it and that chiefly needs it—the working class. We do this at the risk of our lives and liberties, by the exercise of the virtues of courage, endurance, foresight, and abstinence—especially abstinence. I myself have eaten nothing but prickly pears and broiled rabbit for three days.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [Stubbornly] No more ain't we.
MENDOZA. [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [unmoved] Why should you?
THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs: from each according to his means.
THE FRENCHMAN. [shaking his fist at the anarchist] Fumiste!
MENDOZA. [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.
THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo, Mendoza!
MENDOZA. What I say is, let us treat one another as gentlemen, and strive to excel in personal courage only when we take the field.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [derisively] Shikespear.
Not sure how we can even have this conversation, without focusing on the popularizer of the term justice: Father Coughlin. As leader of the National Union for Social Justice political party and the newspaper "Social Justice", today's SJW's truly stand on shoulders of giants. Does this meddlesome radio priest not deserve a steelman or even disclaimer?
Feels like a similar ideas as Laurie Anderson in O Superman- "When love is gone, there's always justice. When justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's only mom.
The imposition of 'justice' is always a net-negative, by definition.
At best one might hope to sort of 'balance' the moral ledger which would be zero-sum, but algorithmic overhead on actually bringing about 'justice' mean it's always negative sum. 'Under-balancing' means justice hasn't been achieved for the victim(s). 'Over-balancing' the ledger is its own kind of injustice.
There's no such thing as 'justice' and there never was. It's a word we use to _avoid_ thinking clearly. As long as we speak in terms of "justice" we're condemning ourselves to unnecessary conflict. The concept of justice isn't even necessary to identify or solve the problems mentioned (those that are actually even problems).
The people that come up with these terms are just manufacturing problems so that they can sell you their solution.
Did you know that people JUDGE YOU for your wrinkly face? No, you're not just getting old, you're the VICTIM of WRINKLEFACE INJUSTICE. Call your congressman today and DEMAND that they use STATE VIOLENCE to COERCE EVERYONE to pay for our anti-wrinkle-ism cream. Patent pending.
One aspect I don't see in the post or its comments is how all the subjustices--climate justice, tech justice, etc., aren't intended to each be a paradigm, but rather a signal of alliance with the broader social justice movement. "Hi, I'm interested in tech issues, approach them from a social justice angle, and want to demonstrate my solidarity with the larger movement, so I'm going to call my program "tech justice."
Recognizing the branding and solidarity aspects also helps us see another aspect of the phenomenon. Remember that one of the axioms of modern SJ is that all oppressions are related and that all oppressed peoples share common interests. By maintaining the brand of "justice," activists reinforce the message that power works to oppress from many angles, and that all people affected must work as one to oppose them.
Where the issue is one I care about - the environment - I can truthfully attest that the introduction of "justice" into the thing - gums up the works very quickly, in addition to muddying the mission. Indeed, a hunan-centric focus has quietly superceded the chartered mission of the national conservation group into whose workings I have a window. It has been, essentially, illegitimate of the "Yankees" as I like to style them, to impose this crap without having the courage to change the founding mission statement of the organization, lest they alienate donors who believe they are contributing to preserving open space and wildlife.
I do not have any evidence for this, but my assumption (as some who does political polling for a living) is that this seems like something that started as poll-tested messaging from politicians and political advocacy groups. "Help the poor" doesn't poll as well as "economic justice." "Help minorities get ahead" is a weaker message than "racial justice." These messages have the dual benefit of being 1) active and 2) vague while seeming concrete.
You can *fight* for economic justice. You can pursue it. These are active words that people like to hear from politicians. And you can put whatever policy or outcome you want into the economic justice box or the climate justice box, even as every policy or outcome also falls short of being "economic justice" or "climate justice." And "justice" splits the world into good and bad, black and white, so even if there's no exact meaning behind "justice" it makes people feel like there's a clear distinction being made between the good guys and the bad guys.
My reaction is to think that framing things in terms of "justice" allows you to do things -- like punishment, expropriation, a general use of force -- that would be morally questionable if it was framed as charity or being good. Mother Theresa can care for the poor, because she's on a mission of mercy, but she can't do it by stealing from the rich at gunpoint, because that's not consistent with being a saintly nurse. Whereas Robin Hood can totally rob a random rich baron at arrowpoint, because he's on a mission of righing wrongs -- of "justice".
So yes I do agree it's a sign of social moral decay that too many things are framed as "justice," because what it really says is that we seek to license violence, compulsion, and force, against people we don't like for reasons perhaps sufficient (they invaded Ukraine) or perhaps not (we're envious because they're rich and we're not). And we're hoping we can achieve the moral license to be violent by arguing it's all in service of some larger moral good. We're enlisting in a Crusade, and murdering innocent infidels is OK because it's necessary to found the City of God.
A community I know was victimized for decades by the polluting discharges of politically powerful hog farming conglomerates. I don't doubt that some people there wanted retribution against the bad actors, but as far as I could tell, most just *wanted it to stop*.
Isn't it fair to frame their struggle as an appeal to 'environmental justice'? Appeals to justice feel perfectly reasonable when individuals are victimized by wanton environmental degradation. To the (admittedly repressed) libertarian in me, this feels like a natural extension of property rights and natural law.
The insistence on framing novel 'justice' concepts strictly through the lens of retributive justice feels like a strawman which frames out-group activism as inherently vindictive and unreasonable.
Why? What's wrong with ordinary justice? If your description of the situation is accurate, then clearly those people were experience a tort -- an infringement on both statutory and traditional rights to the enjoyment of their own property -- and had a excellent civil case against the hog farmers. Why could they not go to court and gain relief? And if they can, then we have no need for any novel definitions of "justice", the old-fashioned definition, which encompasses "A may not infringe on the traditional and statutory rights of B without good reason" does just fine.
Right, environmental justice is justice! It’s about lawmaking and law enforcement; about harms and torts. That is why I find it frustrating to see Scott and others frame it as an incoherent strawman focused on retribution; this post is a sideswipe at the omnipresent Woke Outgroup, not a credible discussion of justice.
I wish it were so, but I disagree with you. I think plenty of people *do* use "X justice" for what they want to achieve that does *not* fit traditional definitions of justice.
For example, let's suppose in your community the hypothetical harm was that the pig farming conglomerate hired a bunch of out-of-towners at wages way higher than the prevailing standard, and these nouveaux riche priced the locals out of the housing market. There are definitely people who would say this is "unjust" by some novel definition of "X justice" -- since of course it's perfectly legal under traditional justice. And what they would want by that reframing is to achieve a moral argument for expropriating the pig farmer collective in order to redress the bad luck (or bad life planning) of the local population. Which by me is dressing up naked envy might-makes-right politics in a moral framework, a serious wrong.
I see what you mean, but Scott isn’t just bringing up some clear instance or mode of the word ‘justice’ being stretched (something which I, too, really dislike!). He’s loosely gesturing across a set of different usages and fields and sneering at them. I don’t think that’s particularly insightful.
I insist that reducing these categories of justice to some retributive instinct does not just lack nuance (which Scott justifies with a vague swipe at some undefined outgroup), but outright misrepresents the basis for these justice movements.
If Scott wants to complain about Woke people doing Woke dumb things and-isn’t-that-so-terrible, I think that’s ok. I would just find him more convincing if he did so plainly, without pretending that he’s writing about justice instead.
This is like if his post on ‘murderism’ was instead a half-baked rant about how racism probably doesn’t exist. I am grateful that he gave us a nuanced and thoughtful essay back then, and I suppose I long for more of *that*, instead.
Well, he's just one guy, and he does have a day job. I thought it was a very useful essay (in the old-fashioned meaning of "essay," which is well short of a treatise). I'm sure it could be made more pointed an detailed, on the one hand, but on the other if it were I dunno if I'd have time to read it.
X Justice is simply an euphemism, or a rhetorical device to implement Normative X for the activist class without concern for empirical realities. It may not help the "victims", but it does help create simple monocausal explanations around which to rally the comrades.
"Justice" here is used to mean "this trumps all other considerations". You're normally not allowed to hurt people, but you are permitted to hurt people for justice. You are normally not allowed to rob people, but if they owe you and it's *justice* to take things from them, well, that's different. I'm permitted to stay neutral on some political issue... but if it's not political, it's a matter of *justice*, I'm obliged to act, and merely staying neutral is a terrible wrong for which I deserve to lose my livelihood and reputation.
That's why people say "justice". It's an unlimited license to ignore the normal rules about being nice to people, and to do so righteously.
I think what this piece is missing is looking at the issue from the perspective of those receiving the help rather than those giving it. Receiving charity is a handout from your betters. Getting justice is just getting what is your right. I think the social justice movement would look at the difference as supporting the existing social hierarchies in the first case, and working toward equality in the second. Whether there is any actual improvement in outcomes for either case, I don't know.
You just called it "help." "Help" is not what you get as a matter of justice, it actually is charity. That's why we use that word and not some other. I don't go to court to sue a company that defrauded me and call the compensation the court awards me "help." I might call it "compensation" or something, but not "help."
So that could be an unfortunate word choice, that doesn't reflect what you're trying to say, but it can also be read as that you're saying some people really do want actual "help" -- charity -- to be rebranded as "justice". And that linguistic fraud, like all newspeak frauds, is a problem.
No, I wouldn't call it fraud. I don't think the word "justice" is used to deceive, but describe what they believe to be right. Justice isn't something we are expected to take for ourselves, right? We don't want vigilante justice... We expect our institutions to provide justice based on our rights as outlined in law. So if one is campaigning for "economic justice," what they want is for our institutions to eliminate poverty, or reduce economic inequality, or whatever, because they believe that to be a human right in some way. They don't want to have to rely on charity. This is just my interpretation, though, and I may be wrong. And I don't fully endorse it, either.
I guess to put it more simply, justice is something you deserve, charity is something you get out of the kindness of another's heart (often with an expectation of thanks). But what people deserve is a question people disagree strongly about. One person's justice is another person's handout.
It's ethical language used to cover a very moralistic and emotional sense of righteousness. Same with 'equality', which in certain circles doesn't even resemble its original meaning.
One trend I've been keeping an eye on is the balance between referring to "rights" and "duties". These are fairly precisely symmetric terms: if one person has a right, that implies a duty of others with respect to that person. Google Trends suggests a better than 50 to 1 ratio in favor of rights.
Perhaps only for so-called "positive" rights (a "right" to free health care). For the traditional rights, e.g. a right to life, liberty, et cetera, it's a bit of a stretch. In principle my right to life imposes a "duty" on other people not to try to murder me, but, with possibly a few exceptions in my immediate family, people don't generally have to restrain themselves from murdering me anyway, so this isn't quite what we mean by imposing a "duty."
When I read about "Latest Thing We Had To Give a Title To" I feel like someone's trying to manipulate me. Exploit and use me, rather than convince or educate me. It's like looking at a news website and seeing every article title is click bait. I'm just moving on.
The detailed semantics of "justice" is a red herring. "Justice" is a tribal identifier for the blue tribe, just as "liberty" is for the red tribe. That's why it's increasingly being attached, more or less arbitrarily, to other blue-tribe causes.
I think a big part of this is a shift in views in entitlement. There is a common view that people now have certain inalienable rights to health, wealth and other opportunities and it’s the states responsibility to provide these - so if you weren’t getting these you are a victim in need of redress, aka justice.
Previously The only area where you did have inalienable rights was if someone broke the law to harm you, requiring the state to act to punish the law breaker and seek justice. Whereas if you were poor and had no healthcare that was just tough luck, not injustice.
This makes it a bit of a mixed bag for me, racial justice - the idea someone is being wronged and deserves redress if they are treated worse purely due to their skin colour is pretty clear cut. But for other examples e.g. inter generational justice who is supposed to be responsible for ensuring everyone gets their entitlement?
Haven’t seen this mentioned (commenting late so might be covered in a thread)
I feel like you're interpreting "justice" as specifically meaning "retributive justice as executed by a state," and that's a very narrow use of the term. And the same people who talk about "food justice" or whatever are generally exactly the same people who point out that the retributive view of justice is in itself a problem.
In the broadest sense, "justice" is simply the sentiment that the world is supposed to be a certain way, but it currently isn't, and some kind of action is necessary to get it back the way it's supposed to be.
In some situations, this isn't particularly theoretically difficult—if, as a moral principle, everyone in the world should have food, but some people currently don't have food, then you can restore a state of justice if you just find those people and give them some food; easy.
The more complicated ones are where there's really no specific action you can take to restore the way the world's supposed to be. If someone's dead when they're supposed to be alive, there's no known means to make them no longer dead. At best, you can figure out why they died and fix that problem so that no more people die unjustly for the same reason. If they died because someone murdered them, then... well, you have to figure out how you "fix" a murderer. And there are no particularly good answers there, because nothing you do to the murderer is ever going to achieve actual justice (which, again, would be for the murder-ee to be no longer murdered).
It's that lack of any truly just resolution to a problem like murder that leads people into some of the goofy ideas that tend to get mistaken for justice. Like, instead of thinking that murder is unjust because there's a person who is no longer alive, they come up with some variation on the idea that murder is unjust because it shifts the Ultimate Cosmic Balance towards the Green Team by 10 points, and that you can fix it by murdering the murderer back, thereby shifting it back 10 points towards the Red Team. (The really nutty variations on this idea will try to accumulate extra Red Team points by murdering other people on the Green Team, like maybe the murderer's family, or maybe people who look or act vaguely like the murderer, or...)
And that kind of thing should not actually be mistaken for justice. It's an error that arises out of the effort to fill the cosmic void left by the impossibility of real justice, but it is not, in itself, justice.
"In the broadest sense, "justice" is simply the sentiment that the world is supposed to be a certain way, but it currently isn't, and some kind of action is necessary to get it back the way it's supposed to be."
I do not think that is correct. Consider the case of someone researching cures for a disease. The world would be better if fewer people died of the disease and his research is necessary for that. But I cannot imagine the researcher describing his objective as justice. Similarly for most other activities designed to improve the world not by changing what other people do but by increasing the total resources available.
This is a limitation of the conceptualization of "justice". The word "justice" should not mean "the wheels of law"- it should be a precise synonym of "righteousness"- After all, "jus" means both "that which is legal" and "that which is right".
The humanists seek to shine: Sniper is a humanist. Utopians are cogs in the machine of progress, each devoting to put every waking moment to that goal. And yes, I would take the oath.
The justice frame has one advantage. In ethics, a fundamental rule is that "ought implies can."
So while we can all agree that donating time or money to a charity is ethically good and laudable, it is not possible for every single person to do this. Therefore we cannot e.g., pass a law that requires everyone to do these things.
This is why our criminal law system does what Scott describes — if you comply, you are merely not a criminal. This approach obeys "ought implies can" because no matter what your life situation is, you can always *not* do things.
And so many important moral duties are phrased as negative obligations. If we can think creatively about ways to improve society by *not harming it* then that should be doable.
I am very late to the comments, but I have heard this problem described as the
"Lenin-to-Stalin Transition"
--When the original ideals and idealists are gone or fading, and the focus of the movement is increasingly on maintainin and extending its' (their, for the leaders/oligarchs) power.
The best and most absurd pure example of "mission creep" I have heard is the March of Dimes. Yes, even them.
Perhaps part of the reason for this problem is the increasing dominance of Narrative as a means of political and social discourse. Narrative is a powerful tool for persuasion, but it does impose constraints. In particular, the most effective narratives by far are those with heroes and villains. Habitat for Humanity actually building homes for the homeless may be in some sense a heroic tale, but that's not enough. A story about greedy capitalist landlords throwing sympathetic victims out on the street has a *villain*, and that sells the narrative.
"Justice", is a term that in common usage implies a villain due their just deserts. So if a problem can be reframed as one of mumble-something Justice, the narrative is improved even if the identity of the villain is discretely unmentioned. The audience can usually find one easily enough.
Unfortunately, while there are forms of discourse which favor truth over falsehood, in cases where the root cause of a problem isn't human villainy, Narrative favors falsehood.
I'm a big fan of punitive justice: I just think that it often leads us to bypass the court systems in a way that impedes the presentation of evidence. Revenge is a basic human need. For example, when I've been wronged, I can't feel happy until I've obtained revenge. Until I get redress of my wrong (in the form of a harsh and vindictive punishment for the offender), the wrong eats away at me like a great big throbbing wound, making me angrier and angrier with each passing day.
Some people might say that this is unhealthy, but I would argue that the people who tell me this are evil selfish hypocrites. Who are THEY to know how I feel or what would make me feel better? Imagine the presumption, the utter arrogance, to think somebody else knows better than ME about the state of MY feelings. Only the person who has been wronged has the right to decide whether they want punitive justice or restorative justice. I'm not judging the people who want restorative justice - it makes very little sense to me, but to each their own. As the wronged party, it's their prerogative to decide upon the proper punishment for their offender. However, they have no right to push THEIR values upon people who prefer punitive justice, like me. When I've been wronged, *I* get to choose what form of justice I prefer.
Ultimately, I think that the biggest moral divide between liberals and conservatives is the preference between restorative vs punitive justice. But to suggest that one kind of justice is inherently better or worse is evil and arrogant. Ultimately, both restorative and punitive justice have their uses, and it's up to the injured party to decide which flavor they prefer.
You might also feel that shooting heroin is better for you than actually improving the material circumstances in your life and that anyone who refuses you heroin is evil for daring to tell you that heroin is bad for you, but that doesn't make it true.
Yes, yes, I'm an evil selfish hypocrite for expecting you to be an adult and learn how to control your feelings instead of lashing out in a destructive fit (or more accurately fantasizing about the government lashing out in a destructive fit on your behalf). I thought you identified as a conservative instead of as an SJW: isn't this what the right loves to accuse their politics as essentially boiling down to?
I think the reason is a shift in strategy by progressives. Since they realized that political battles are difficult to be won and take a long time, phrasing demands not as political, but as "legal" seems an easier argument. In my homecountry of Germany I observe this a lot: instead of arguing for an increase in child allowance of X€ because children deserve it and we as a society should be able to take care of our children etc. it is often framed as a legal issue: The constitution guarantees everyone dignified living conditions, with the current amounts children cannot live "dignified", hence it is a matter of justice, not politics, to take care of children better.
It thus becomes no longer about convincing or at least co-opting the political opponent, but about proving something legally, which then can seemingly not be contradicted anymore. Needless to say, this strategy does not seem more effective necessarily.
I have the feeling that Scott's post have become much more strawman-y recently. "The very laws of space and time are subject to spatial justice and temporal justice" seems either flat out wrong (the linked articles are in no way about the laws of space and time), or just humor I don't get and which turns into a motte-and-bailey. The same holds for the whole "What is climate justice" section. (Those are two examples that jumped out at me, without actively researching any of the topics.) It's a pity, because I always considered that taking others seriously was a key strength of the blog.
Funny =/= accurate- you can laugh and chuckle your way into whatever position you want, but the result is that your ideology itself becomes a joke.
EDIT: in fact, the point of a strawman IS that it's funny: you reduce the other perspective into an absurd figure of fun, so that THEY are a bunch of stupid, laughable scarecrows in contrast to YOU, the cool, collected, witty, intelligent, very attractive Right Opinion Haver. See: every political cartoon post-1992, virtually any meme comparing literally any two positions.
There are hyperlinks, so you can verify that "spatial justice" and "temporal justice" are a thing, i.e. Scott didn't make it up. Before reading that text, you probably did not expect them to be a thing, and the first impression is silly -- which makes the joke funny. Then you realize that okay, there is probably a non-silly interpretation of each of them... but the main point of the article (proliferation of all kinds of "<adjective> justice") still remains valid.
The only misleading part is that the juxtaposition of "spatial justice" and "temporal justice", prefixed by words "the very laws of space and time", created a silly picture for a moment. But there are links you can click, which make it clear what it actually means.
I would be happy to live in a world where political memes contained hyperlinks to the pages of opponents where they explain the terms using their own words. In my experience, this is typically avoided on purpose.
Including the hyperlinks undercuts the joke, which rather makes my point that you can EITHER engage in actual, serious discussion of someone's ideas OR go "ha ha, look at how stupid Other Tribe is!" Given that this essay also includes "Climate Justice isn't real because there's just a really high correlation between temperatures and GDP", this article is pretty clearly the latter. What annoys me is that SA wrote this while pretending it's the former.
"A narrative of helpers and saviors allows saints. It allows people who are genuinely good, above and beyond expectations, who rightly serve as ideals and role models for others."
I think the problem here is that, if you think that western pollution is now badly harming poor countries, those "helpers" are just the nicest muggers in the gang. They're above expectations because they're not breaking the nose of the poor quite as hard as the rest of the droogs; but the idea that they should be ideals and role models is a bit crazy.
"A narrative of justice allows, at best, non-criminals - people who haven’t broken any of the rules yet, who don’t suck quite as much as everyone else."
Having a good world seems to me to be largely about everyone agreeing to follow rules. I'd much rather have a society where everyone knows the basic rules (like don't steal, don't kill, and don't fuck up another guy's weather) than a society where they don't know those rules, and as compensation I get a Mother Theresa and a Princess Diana to help me out when my legs get blown off by a climate landmine.
If the choice you're presenting is saints vs justice, I'll take justice any day of the week.
It feels like maybe a year ago that everything was "equity" instead of "justice" and that the George Floyd protests kicked off the big transition.
I'm not sure that there is great meaning to what positive word is in vogue to describe the various movements, but there may be meaning in the fact that they tend to change in sync. A large part of the current progressive philosophy is that all these disparate causes are unified and inseparable. Racial justice is reproductive justice is health justice is environmental justice. As part of that all the movements will share the same terminology to emphasize their shared ideological battle.
In this analysis justice takes over because it is particularly apt for the most salient of the progressive causes (BLM in June 2020) and then persists until a new cause catches the limelight and its preferred adjective takes over.
"which I think is the most important. A narrative of helpers and saviors allows saints. It allows people who are genuinely good, above and beyond expectations, who rightly serve as ideals and role models for others."
a narrative allows? what about real life? what do real life "expectations" allow?
think of discussions around "bootstrapping" and underemployed PhDs and rising requirements (AKA "expectations") for entry-level jobs and such. there is at least a perception that normal levels of effort are just worthless shit, that you need to exert saint-like superhuman efforts to even *hope* to achieve a minimum success (and then you fail anyways).
you say the "We are not helpers"/"no sainthood to aspire to" stuff is an effect (rather than a cause) of the justice framing. I think it might begin the other way around, right?
same for climate. people tried to help by doing their saintly recycling and whatever for years and years. but the climate is getting worse and worse. so they see their efforts as worthless, and themselves as demonstrably powerless.
discussions about racism and sexism might go the same way... though I won't argue these perceptions are always accurate. but i don't think some kind of framing about "justice" is the cause. if anything, i'd guess the explanation for any seeming disproportionality these days is more similar to the cliche: "the news" (which is now social media) always focuses on the negative, no matter how much crime rates are falling, etc (and social media virality etc. seems relevant here).
you can, of course, go full-relative: "well, climate might be worse than it was decades ago, but it would be even worse if it wasn't for our nice saints!". same for people's employment situations. this is good and important to keep in mind...but the non-relative absolute measure (or: time relative, compared to the past, rather than an alternative present) can indicate things are still not ideal, and in some cases getting worse. and if human activity is making something worse for other humans...that's kinda where the whole idea of justice comes in, pretty unavoidably i think?
proposing some kind of relativistic hero framing doesn't even undo the justice metaphor. because you could speak in both metaphors simultaneously: "the villains would have stolen even more than they did if you hadn't exerted saint-like effort to rescue as much as humanly possible".
"I do think that’s potentially a sign of a sick society."
maybe, but a sign like that can go different ways. so what does it mean? is society sick just because the "justice" framing is causing problems? or, is there an underlying sickness, and the framing on justice only arises in an attempt to fix it? is the sickness/problem the thing the activists say is a problem? or are the activists the (perhaps psycho-somatic) disease/diseased?
I'm pretty sure that most of these types of justice are just applying social justice to a specific topic, with the use of 'justice' directly borrowing from there. That is, "climate justice" is just the intersection of (social justice)*(climate change), et cetera. Possibly there's a deeper root in in the 1960s for this definition of 'justice', but either way - AIUI it's not any sort of general symptom of societal decline, it's just a signifier that you're talking about a topic from a woke point of view. Also a rhetorical tool, of course. ("Against? How can you be against justice?") But the existence of the social justice movement (or whatever you call it), and the fact that it uses a specific lingo, is not really new, and I don't think 'justice' is being used in that sense by anyone outside it.
You mean law is a poor method of enacting justice? I think equality was achieved pretty well in Harrison's world. The point of the story is moreso "equality is a bad goal" rather than "handicapping people is a bad way to achieve equality."
So maybe you mean that justice is a bad goal? Maybe. I think it's a good theory.
Maybe you mean law is a good way to enact justice? Although I think this guess is probably wrong. I don't think anybody out of context compares proposition X to the villain of a story to claim that proposition X is good.
Or maybe you mean Law achieves justice by giving special dispensations to certain people and refusing them from other people in a way that negatively correlates to their innate ability? I think that's a very apt comparison. Judges are consistently more lenient on people who are statistically predisposed to crime and lack leniency for the sorts of people we don't expect to commit crimes.
It is interesting how a phrase can resonate with someone so differently depending on when they encountered it and what they assume to be its origin.
I'm Catholic. Social justice for me is a Catholic concept. It comes out of Thomism (really the neo-Thomism of the 19th century carried on since at Louvain/Leuven), has been elaborated on by every Pope since Pope Leo in the 1890's, and is enshrined in Canon Law, that "The Christian faithful are ... obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor from their own resources."
Thomistic theologians, Pope John Paul II, Canon lawyers - none of these people are the misguided and squishy-thinking activists Scott associates with the term and movement. Consequently, the negative associations and implications Scott draws from the spread of the term - absolutely none of them occur to me or resonate with me, at all.
As I said, I share Scott's low view of this framing by many of these movements. However, that's simply because I think the framing does not work or obscures more than it illuminates. I see nothing pernicious in it, for those movements or society as a whole.
Indeed, the effort of those movements is not hard for me to decipher and requires none of the speculation of this piece - I always presumed it was an attempt to add legitimacy to claims/pleas for help that the activists (mostly correctly) believe politicians and the electorate won't support on pure charity/sympathy grounds (it's reasonable to try to have an answer to the obvious critique of why should we help those people, who presumably could help themselves?).
The effort mostly fails, but that can be concluded/argued without the logical leaps of this piece, in my view - many of which, given the actual/other origins of these terms and traditions, are as unfounded and unwarranted as the arguments they critique.
I get the irresistible nature of the rhetorical flourish, but want to assure people that unless I’m much more out of touch than I think, the laws of space and time are safe from encroachment by justice warriors.
It is more correct (if less rhetorically compelling) to say that spatial justice and temporal justice respectively *reference* space and time.
(The first concerns allegedly unequal/inequitable distribution of social goods as a function of location. The second, *not* by analogy, concerns unequal/inequitable control over one’s time as experienced by different categories of people (he typed, while waiting forever for A033 to be called out at the local DMV😊))
People have been telling each other of heroes immediately after they figured out they can tell stories.
You are supposed to fall short. If the pursuit is not satisfying and meaningful, something is wrong with the heroes you picked, not the process itself.
my final sentence was my point, which you aren't disagreeing with. sure, you could say "it also applies even long before modern media", and you can try to discuss a positive framing of falling short (which i already mentioned), but all of that is not relevant to my point, and off-topic in this comment section.
Excessive use of the word 'justice' in the naming of a cause should be a sign that the people using it are operating in bad faith. It's basically the same as calling one's views 'progressive', as if by definition their views are "progress" and opposition to "progressive" views is opposition to "progress". Perhaps its became so commonplace its not knowingly used in a bad faith way, but "justice" has not reached that stage and extreme scepticism is an appropriate approach to people who use it.
During the Great Awokening, activists add the word "justice" to phrases to imply "white people must pay."
E.g., "Environmental justice" means race-based environmental compensation. For example, the Biden Administration wants to hand out money to neighborhoods damaged by pollution. But Biden is being criticized for using the term "environmental justice" while taking into account the amount of pollution in a place but _not_ taking into account the race of the people in the place. E.g., from yesterday's Los Angeles Times:
"Op-Ed: How can the White House fix environmental injustice if it won’t take race into account?
"BY ALVARO SANCHEZ AND MANUEL PASTOR
"MARCH 18, 2022 3 AM PT
"In mid-February, when the White House unveiled the beta version of its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, it was met by sharp criticism from environmental justice advocates: A mapping tool designed to identify disadvantaged communities neglected to use race as a criterion.
"The screening tool, when finalized, will govern President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which requires that at least 40% of federal investments in climate-change mitigation and clean energy benefit neighborhoods and communities that are, in the administration’s words, “marginalized, underserved and overburdened by pollution.”
"Working at the census tract level, the Justice40 screener sets vulnerability thresholds in eight categories. In general, if a community scores above an economic and environmental threshold in one or more category, it will be prioritized for federal aid.
"But race never factors in the tool’s calculus, an omission that runs counter to science. It turns out that the No. 1 predictor of whether you live perilously close to a polluting facility is race."
I have some inside insight here. I was working as an environmental activist 8 years ago when some folks from the David Suzuki Foundation briefed us on their Environmental Justice project. Their motivation was this: every time they ever made any progress on the environment, they risked losing it later, and they had to do that same fight over and over again on each issue. If, however, they could convince governments to recognize the environment as having legal rights, then they could win once and for all.
I think it's this finality people are craving. If you say that something is a bad idea, people might always change their mind later. If you can establish that it is unjust — especially by official arbiters — then the question is settled.
The trouble with that, however, is that justice doesn't work well for subtle problems. It works best for simple "stop this" or "do this" propositions, such as "put this man in jail," or "free this man from jail." I always think of a car. Justice is good for solving simple problems like, "this car is illegally parked: put a boot on it" or "it is unjust that this car lacks gas: fill it up." It doesn't work well for, "we think this car might not be running because it has a broken sprocket, but it might be the alternator." Fixing a broken car is a matter of details and competence. Saying "it is unjust that this car is broken" doesn't fix the car.
The justice framing is great for social movements — when it makes sense — because it offers people a simple yes/no proposition to demand, something to yell in a crowd. The Civil Rights movement was successful framing problems in terms of justice because it was the kind of problem justice can fix: stop excluding people from bathrooms, buses, and jobs.
Addressing the proportion of minorities in science is a whole different kind of problem. Shifting societal CO2 emissions is a different kind of problem as well. I think Suzuki had things totally wrong trying to make the environment a justice issue. These things require attention to detail, competence, long-term pressure to improve systems, etc. When people try to frame things in terms of justice, it really is a problem, in my experience as an advocate. It forces people to try to simplify issues to a yes/no proposition, which means they resist discussing policy details.
Caballistically this is an reflection of the relation between Gevurah (justice) and Chesed (doing something out of love/mercy, to help or save someone).
I think the shift in frame is an acknowledgement of injustice, indeed - but I'm not sure thats bad? I don't read it as a "mea culpa" kind of guilt, more that "helping the poor" often is a lot of virtue signalling - ie the 19th century industrialist who is fine with employing children in terrible working conditions but every month he and his wife attend a charity dinner at the club to donate to the poor, unwashed masses (and also, of course, look down on them and feel superior). Framed as "economic justice" it becomes about saying "we live in a society where if you are born to poor, uneducated parents, you will likely end up poor and uneducated yourself, and thats unjust." And then, ideally, go and actually do something about that, because just saying it is just as much virtue signalling, but I digress. Point is, regarding the utopia/dystopia perspective - "helping the poor" adresses the symptoms, and is a net gain over not helping the poor, but to get closer to utopia, we need to adress the root causes and effect systemic change.
Now, there obviously is a lot more to both, from effective altruism to wokeness and the layers and layers of virtue signalling on every single step, on either side, but ultimately I think thats the gist of it - that its not actually all that virtuous to help the poor if you are merely giving back a small part of what you exploited out of them in the first place. That we need to change systems for the better if we want to progress toward utopia.
If the system of law is still working, and relatively fair, it becomes the only way to obtain agency. If politicians and media are ‘influenced’ by the wealthy few, then only the law can hold the system to account. Not sure how long this will last as I suspect this path to agency is being ‘worked on’ as we speak.
Only a few paragraphs in and he is already using a GDP to climate correlation in order to make an argument against justice? I had to stop reading.
A number like GDP is of little value to anyone unless they are making calculations about a state's sovereign debt. It is not useful to reduce entire nations to single numbers.
I am largely sympathetic to the point here about semantics. The framing of everything important in metaphors of cops, judges, or criminals portends only the worst, most sterile and bureaucratic outcomes.
However Scott and others in this space are so reliant on economics for every part of their discourse. They give superficial examples based on ideas like GDP without even cursory examination. If you are talking about language and framing, what is the point of using an economic metric? How is that utopian or idealistic? Isn't that more of the same creep you mean to critique ?
Why do we worry about Justice Creep but not Banking Creep? Concepts originally designed to help lenders have crept into every aspect of our lives. They are used to explain almost every larger trend that enters our purview. Banking logic has infected intellectual pursuits in a way that makes us all seem miserly and sad, especially when it serves no purpose.
I've decided that instead of pursuing rationality by writing my own blog and gaining readers, I'll pursue "rationality justice" by convincing people to stop reading Scott. Shoo!
The quintessence of wokeness was already captured by him 150 years ago:
Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"—thus do they talk to one another.
"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"—thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
"And 'Will to Equality'—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"
...
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
"This is mostly a semantic shift - instead of saying “we should help the poor”, you can say “we should pursue economic justice”. But different framings have slightly different implications and connotations"
The framings are intended to shift the burden of action to a third party and away from oneself. "We should help the poor" means 'someone else should help the poor' and can be countered easily by "I help the poor, by [doing x]. What are you doing?"
I agree with your some of your criticism which can broadly be applied to modern movements, but I disagree with your idea that "justice" has this negative connotation.
"justice" implies fairness.
"Economic justice" isnt the same as "charity" it implies people are poor or wealth is uneven (or more then should be) because of unjust things.
I agree with this, and its hard to have any serious, honest ethical view of the world which says that people's relative wealth or poverty is purely a result of either their own actions or some neutral arrangement of things.
Does anyone seriously think that people in countries like Africa aren't poor at least partially because of things that would be considered unjust reasons?
"Climate justice" seems on the surface more iffy- but when you consider the negative impacts of climate change will far disproportionately affect poorer nations who have not by and large benefited from the carbon enabled economy to the degree rich countries have, "climate justice" makes sense.
Its saying "its not just that these things are bad, they are fundamentaly unfair, and thus unjust, and attempts to remedy them is just."
I don't really agree that this means people cant be heroes- but it does perhaps imply rectifying these things is a duty, not some special act of heroism.
Again, I think you are conflating the negative aspects of wokeism, like the absence of any positive vision, with something that is connected but not in the exact way you are expressing it.
They are not unrelated, but it's not a one to one connection, its more complicated.
The use of "justice" goes back before current times, the civil right movements talked of justice. Since the civil rights movement was both succesful and an inspiration, many people have repeated its language and its framing.
But many modern left movements depart from those in significant ways you mention.
Its a bit like how there was a successful campaign by feminists to alter more tolerant attitudes towards rape by the slogan, "rape isnt sex, irs violence."
By changing the way people think about things- poverty isnt just a bad thing, its an unjust thing- it does have effects on the way people respond.
Imagine there was an island that for some weird physical reason was surrounded by an invincibility forcefield, full of humans who were uncontacted by the outside world.
Lets imagine the field came down, and these humans were revealed to be very nice people but extremely poor- always on the brink of starvation, no resurces, living exposed to the elements, disease etc.
Now it would be a bad thing that they were poor, but it wouldnt be UNJUST.
No other people caused these people to be poor. Helping them would be a good thing, but it would be charity.
However, this is not the situation of any human living in poverty.
People are connected socially through globalism. Everyone's economic status is because of other people and actions and systems and previous actions.
Many people indirectly benefit from others lower status.
For example, Americans benefit from the poverty of other peoples by being able to compensate them substantially less for their labor in less safe and work local conditions.
This leads to more things being more affordable for more americans.
If you've owned anything with a computer chip prior to the last decade or so, the odds are prety good hey materials in that chip were mined by literal slaves.
Many people would say it is UNJUST to benefit this way from slave labor- particularly as there are complex degrees of responsibility in which entities, countries, corporations, have contributed to, directly benefit from, or reinforce those conditions.
IMHO 'Justice" is gaining use because its opposite is unjust - it is addictive in use because it communicates the impossibility of disagreeing with the person speaking for 'justice' without being unjust aka evil aka bad.
It is a nice rhetorical moment that others anybody who disagrees with you when you speak for "<???> justice!"
It's all very Alinskyesque. The use of the term "justice" added the end of whatever cause is deployed to increase the rhetorical effect because of our ever-increasing appetite for "progress." (The arc of which seems to always bend leftward--a function of the narrative being controlled by one side for decades).
It's why every time there is some new victory in the name of [fill in the blank cause] the very next chorus you hear (from the right and the left) is "there is so much more work to be done." It would be terrible to be on the "wrong side of history," you see. When you ask, there is no end game, no vision of what "done" actually looks like, without massive redistribution, re-education, relocation, and ultimately death/violence.
" but I disagree that this means that doing things like helping the poor or trying to stop climate change don't constitute a form of justice."
Suppose you believe that climate change, or something else, harms everyone. Is trying to stop it still a form of justice?
Consider the distinction between justice arguments and non-justice arguments from the opposite of your ideological position. A deontological libertarian will object to taxing the rich on the grounds that taking money from someone who has justly earned it is a violation of his rights, hence unjust, however much money he happens to have earned. A consequentialist libertarian will argue that permitting a polity to redistribute income ends up making everyone, on average, worse off, because it gives people an incentive to spend resources trying to be the ones redistributed to not the ones redistributed from and not only does that make the society poorer, there is no good reason to expect the people you want to favor to win the rent seeking struggle. The former argument is about justice, the latter is not.
I can try to answer:
> Suppose you believe that climate change, or something else, harms everyone. Is trying to stop it still a form of justice?
I think the answer would depend on the manner in which that harm is distributed, and whether the distribution conflicts with the stated norms of our Republic (admittedly, this kicks the can down towards the spooky sign that reads 'meta-ethics').
If the distribution is perfectly uniform across the polity, you could still argue there exists an injustice, in a Rawlsian sense. Behind the veil of ignorance, you may not only lack knowledge on *who* you will be, but also on *when*. Is there not a credible definition of justice which finds it unjust for a generation to secure a more comfortable existence at the expense of a much greater burden on their successors?
If like me you find this worth thinking about, then we might agree that 'environmental justice' or even 'climate justice' are adequate terms to describe the object of our discussion.
"It feels unjust that some people are born in Mail and some are born in California and that determines their life outcomes more than anything they do."
At the same time, you run into the limits of fairness. 'Lottery of birth' isn't synonymous with 'luck', in large part because people make efforts for their descendants to 'rig' the lottery, and negating that effort is itself unfair.
At the large scale, some of that has to be determined by effort to create the society the child is born into. A child born in Botswana or Gabon (to pick two of the more developed sub-Saharan African countries) has a better chance at life than a child born in Mali. This is unfair to the child born in Mali, but part of this unfairness is due to effort by previous generations in Botswana and Gabon to make their societies more functional. A magical fix to this to make things fair for the child in Mali as compared to the other two would be unfair to the previous generations that did the work.
At individual scale, pure genetic chance is more luck (although some of it is in choosing a partner). On the other hand, individual differences are harder to balance; is physical attractiveness a fair trade off for intelligence? Which is worse, an increased chance of cancer, or an increased chance of mental illness?
And, of course, some of those 'birth lottery' effects are still other people's responsibility. It's not the child's fault that they were born to a single parent, but it's not exclusively (or even primarily) societies fault. Any way to fix that unfairness is unfair to someone else. It's tough to admit, but there are somethings that can never be made fair.
For what it's worth, I was in the same position as Scott with regard to these words. I doubt it is that rare of a position to be in.
He’s discussing the labels on the map, not the topography of the territory.
I think this was why I offered to explain white fragility. I felt similarly surprised by Scott and commenters saying they had never heard these terms and didn't understand what they might mean
I have a serious question. Do you think it is possible that white fragility does not exist? How certain are you of its existence?
Thanks for your question. 3 thoughts:
1. I think there is some low likelihood that the history of systemic racism that I have learned about is false, in which case the idea of white fragility doesn't really make sense, although for anyone who encounters that history and believes it, I think they could probably still experience white fragility
2. White fragility could be a lot less common than I think it is; it could be that many people are either totally unconvinced by or totally uniformed about what I think of as the history of systemic racism, and therefore their reaction is simply incredulity rather than defensiveness as I and others might suspect. Or, we might be working from very different moral premises about the duty of human beings toward each other, i.e. they might not have any problem with systemic racism, nor any guilt from the privilege they receive from that system.
3. Do you think that white fragility does not exist? I get that people don't appreciate others assuming that they are experiencing white fragility, and I have conceded above that it may happen less frequently than liberals often assume. You might not like the choice of words and want it to be called something else. But why wouldn't white people have a negative, defensive emotional reaction when faced with the idea that they have caused harm to people of color, given that they think of themselves as good, not-racist people? It's a natural reaction - a lot of people don't like to find themselves in the role of the villain. Like I said in some previous comments, I have experienced it within myself multiple times. It felt horrible to me when I realized that I was the one causing harm, and I got emotional and defensive about it. It has taken practice to be able to respond calmly in situations where someone points out a racist impact that I have had. At the very least, it seems to me like a common experience of white liberals who pride themselves on "valuing diversity."
I think maybe I do take issue with the label. As a comparison, consider acrophobia, the extreme or irrational fear of heights. If someone refuses to climb a 20 foot ladder because they are scared, we might say that they are acrophobic. However, if someone climbs the ladder and we shake it violently, making the person worry that they might fall, we might still expect to get their heart racing and adrenaline pumping, but we wouldn't necessarily take this as evidence that they are acrophobic.
To define defensiveness in response to an accusation (especially an accusation where the stakes could be perceived by the accused as high, and where the accused may not a priori accept the accusation as true) as "fragility" seems incorrect.
If a store clerk sells alcohol to a minor without realizing the customer is a minor, and they are so accused, they might try to defend themselves. To call that "clerk fragility" seems odd. If a driver exceeds the speed limit (say due to a broken or miscalibrated speedometer), and tries to defend themselves, again it seems odd to call this "driver fragility". In both these examples, the facts are against the accused, but it is possible they did not intentionally commit these violations. It seems odd to describe people trying to defend themselves from these accusations as a hallmark of fragility.
The definition of white fragility that I have taken from your comment above would seem to readily extend the "fragility" label to anyone making statements of self defense against any strict liability crime, and that seems overly broad. Even more so if that label were applied to a defence of any crime whatsoever. It seems wrong to apply "fragility" in the general case as it just doesn't seem correct to call a large fraction of statements of self defense "fragility". And then when narrowed to the specific case of accusations of harm to people of color, it doesn't seem like defensiveness in such cases are sufficiently distinct as to deserve a special application of the term.
Switching gears to the self introspective "negative, defensive emotional reaction" that seems to underlie fragility. I participate in a capitalist society: I work at a job in exchange for a salary, I pay money for food and shelter and healthcare, etc. Capitalism clearly has winners and losers; people who get a better deal out of the system, and those who get a worse one.
If someone accused me of harming the poor, I might be defensive: I might say that I give to charity. Someone might come back at me saying even still that by participating in capitalism at all, I'm contributing to the continued and inevitable oppression of the lower classes. Ok, by some definition of terms, sure, I guess someone can claim that. Does my defensiveness constitute "middle-class fragility"? I don't think so.
I'm not sure what we expect of the accused bourgeoisie here. Action at the ballot box? Join a communist revolution? Maybe "middle-class blindness" or "middle-class indifference" might be better labels. As some sort of call to action to engage or change minds, those both seem a little better than "middle-class fragility". Though for someone who acknowledges capitalism's flaws, yet who's not going to abandon capitalism, it seems like any label is probably a tough sell.
Maybe the capitalism example doesn't map well to the white fragility case, but I am inherently suspicious of a label that applies only in special cases and can't be coherently generalized to seemingly symmetric cases. And I have not yet seen evidence that the concept of white fragility is undeserving of that suspicion.
(For a less charitable take, consider "witch fragility": the negative, defensive emotional reaction you get from witches when you accuse them of having harmed other people through the practice of witchcraft. The harms cited may indeed be real, but disagreement with the causal lineage of those harms should not by itself constitute evidence of a unique kind of fragility specific to the demographic of the accused.)
Thanks for replying. This conversation is helping me a lot. It makes sense to me that where we disagree might be over whether white fragility should be its own particular label at all, which is a super contextual question.
The thing that stuck out the most to me about your response was what you said about being "inherently suspicious of a label that applies only in special cases and can't be coherently generalized to seemingly symmetric cases." My guess based on that statement (and this may be assuming a lot, so please correct me where I err) is that we disagree about the status of systemic racism in the current day.
My guess is that you see systemic, impactful racism as largely a thing of the somewhat faraway past - slavery, genocide against indigenous people, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow, etc. and is not having much of an impact on people of Color today. My guess is that you might also think there is some amount of anti-white racism, which you would estimate at present has about an equal impact as anti-Black or anti-indigenous, etc. racism. If that is the case, it makes a lot of sense to me that you are suspicious of such an asymmetric term as "white fragility" with no counterpart such as "Black fragility" or the like.
I think that systemic racism is still a thing of the present, having impacts such as voter ID laws specifically targeted to prevent a higher ratio of people of Color from voting, vastly higher rates of incarceration for Black and Brown people despite similar crime rates to white people, preferential hiring (and renting to, and anything else you can apply for) of people with white-sounding names continuing to result in a huge wage gap and an even larger wealth gap between people of Color and white people. From my understanding of mainstream biology, basically any disparities we find between racial groups are evidence of differences in how people are impacted by social structures, not biological differences between racial groups, because different racial groups are not biologically relevant groups, only socially relevant groups.
So, from my perspective, it is actually very necessary to have racially asymmetric terms, because we live in a racially asymmetric world.
Did I hit on a difference between our underlying assumptions, or did I totally miss?
Justice justice, for all the missing justices.
Justice justice is for Justice (the band/musical-group) not being more popular!
If you are fighting for justice justice, then you are a proponent of justice justice justice.
you know, people who don't live near a good spot that serves avocado toast
Nope. These are “justice” as in distributive justice and corrective justice. Aristotle. If you think “criminal justice” when you hear these phrases, that’s you.
The people using these phrases think, to the extent they think about it, that these forms of justice can be achieved by giving to those who have not, mostly without taking from those who have. If there is a fantasy here, it is utopian plenty, not retributive harshness.
But the term "Nazi" is not nearly as broad as "justice" so it's not really comparable. Personally, ive only really seen these vindictive people on the internet (which i dont think is an accurate representation of the general public). And while the term justice may be more popular now, I think more people are also questioning what exactly justice looks like.
The idea of a world of good people and "saints" lends itself more readily to the concept of villains deserving of retribution. It's more useful to have discussions about the nuances of the concept of justice rather than simply saying "your idea of justice is wrong or incomplete. Stop using that word". It's more useful to strive for a just world rather than a good world of saints.
That's my opinion anyway.
I'm not a frequent user of the schema "X justice", so I could be wrong. But I think retribution is a big part of it. Reflecting on the ways I've heard the term used, its users don't seem inclined towards incrementalist change or giving to the have-nots. Rather, the notion seems to be that the status quo is intrinsically and intentionally unjust, and that a revolutionary shift is necessary to bring about a new just order.
What you've described is redistribution, not retribution. Left wing people sincerely believe that the world would be improved if the wealth of the rich was distributed to the poor. Calling this "retribution" isn't an argument, it's just an insult.
Redistribution involves two things: taking from the haves, and giving to the have-nots. I fully believe you that you're more motivated by the latter than the former. But I think many on the left are motivated just as powerfully by the confiscatory part.
There's raw indignation at the exorbitant wealth and conspicuous consumption of the hyper-rich, totally independent of how that wealth could be otherwise used. As for this being an "insult" - I don't think people are wrong to be indignant or outraged this way. Billionaire excess is very often genuinely outrageous! Confiscatory and retributive impulses aren't always bad or wrong!
The tendency to distrust and pull down wealthy people can be seen a positive adaptation. Wealth is easily translated into.power, and extreme wealth can be translated into a tyranny.
of course , complaints complaints from the right about *justice are the same thing. Eg
"The problem with this is that social justice advocates are very keen to colonize anything and everything they can under the mantle of justice because it increases the importance of what they are saying. If "climate change justice" is mostly about random small island countries getting inundated or Las Vegas running out of water, it can only go so far. If *every* kind of environmental problem can be tied to "climate justice" and it increasingly is, it magnifies the importance of the topic and the people yelling about it."
Its a complaint that a certain group are power grabbing, getting too big for their boots, etc.
The two prong requirement works for articulating why so many people are against redistribution as we have seen it in practice. We have been efficient in taking from the rich (when considering what we ask of the wealthy in terms of proportion of government revenues), but incredibly inefficient at giving to the poor. The funds are subject to exceptionally higher levels of fraud, waste, and abuse than those and often times benefit people that are as despicable as the most venomous billionaire--but happen to have aligned themselves with whatever political interest brought forth said redistribution efforts (housing authority chiefs, corrupt local politicians, cronies). In my experience many people aren't mad about paying taxes, they don't believe their tax dollars will make any difference worth a damn.
Eh. The SS sincerely believed throwing Jews into the ovens would improve the world, too. Sincere delusional belief while executing deep moral wrong is nothing new among humanity, and its existence in any particular situation is no moral defense whatsoever. Only in Marvel movies do the villians think of themselves as villains and enjoy it.
This person has a sincere belief that behaviour X will help people, but The Nazi's had a sincere belief that behaviour Y would help people! Redistributing wealth taken via coercion from the trillion dollar 1% is a moral wrong because SS! Get rebutted, radical redistributionist :)
Calm down. I'm pointing out that believing you're doing good while doing evil is so commonplace among human beings that it must count for zero when one is assessing right and wrong, and it's just silly to even bring it up as an argument. Sincerity is the least important component of virtue. Vladimir Putin sincerely believes he's helping Ukraine. People who support and oppose abortion both sincerely believe they're helping the would-be mothers. Et cetera. I'm sure you sincerely believe you made a powerful argument, and I'm equally sincere in thinking you didn't.
Of course, the converse is also true. Perhaps many leftists are acting out of intent of retribution against the rich, as the original post tries to darkly hint at. So what? As you've pointed out, intent doesn't matter, only effects. If people reduce climate emissions and give more money to poor countries out of spite, does that not still improve the world?
Suppose person X is proposing action Y. If the question is "is action Y morally good or not?" then, indeed, it doesn't matter why X is proposing it. If the question is "is person X morally good or not?" then it does matter, though it's possible that X sincerely intends something we could all regard as good _but_ that Y is so horrible that we can't see anyone proposing Y as anything but evil.
But here the question isn't either of those, it's "is X after retribution rather than merely redistribution?". And for _that_, X's intent is very relevant indeed.
If some left-winger wants a big transfer of wealth from the very rich to the very poor (or to the fairly poor, or to the merely-not-particularly-rich), then to whatever extent their motivation is to make the poor better off rather than to make the rich worse off as such they're aiming for redistribution but not for retribution.
(Also: 1. I wonder whether you actually have much evidence that the typical SS member was throwing Jews into ovens _because they sincerely thought it would improve the world_. Doubtless some of them were, but I suspect plain ordinary hatred was often at least as important. And: 2. it might be worth distinguishing between "X sincerely thought doing Y would improve the world" and "X sincerely thought doing Y would accomplish Z" where Z is something you/we approve of as much as X does. Perhaps the guys in the SS thought that having fewer Jews in the world was just intrinsically good, and they thought throwing Jews into ovens made the world better for that reason; that feels to me importantly different from the situation where a leftist wants to move money from the rich to the poor because he wants there to be less misery and poverty; you might think what he wants to do is a bad idea for other reasons, but I'm hoping you agree with him that misery and poverty are things we should want there to be less of.)
(Not so) fun fact, the hate for jews in Germany actually (at least partially) originated because they were seen as rich and exploitative :/
On a wider point, I don't think the parent wanted to make a hitler-ate-sugar argument - you're not becoming the SS for wanting to take money from the rich. But it's very easy to be very wrong about being right and the commenter made an extreme argument to showcase that point.
> Only in Marvel movies do the villians think of themselves as villains and enjoy it.
"Hero" and "villain" are not the only possibilities. Some people may reject this frame, and see themselves e.g. as "doing whatever any reasonable person would be doing in their place". It is quite easy when one uses a circular definition, where "reasonable" means "one who would do the same thing".
I suspect that many people who are seen as "villains" by their opponents, simply see themselves as "normal", "reasonable", or "smart".
"The only reason people complain about me is that they wish they were as smart as me, so they could be in my place instead, and then they would do exactly the same thing! You believe they would not? Well, then they are idiots!"
Even people who consider themselves virtuous, may simply care about some virtue other than helping people. "I am doing the right thing; and if some people get hurt in the process, it is a price I am willing to pay!"
That's too extreme. If you'd said "almost nobody sees themselves as a villian" I'd agree, but I believe that some few both do and revel in it. Consider the number of gamers who like to "grief" the obviously weaker.
I concur. It may be that “______ justice” campaigners who are attracted to the punitive element are a minority but they are frequently the noisiest.
Food shortages played a big part in the French Revolution, but when the heads started tumbling into baskets ‘the people’ began enjoying the spectacle for its own sake.
They still had no bread but it was enjoyable to see privileged people humbled, humiliated and killed.
I fear this goes to something deep in the human soul/psyche that when we are suffering, if we can’t get relief, we take some pleasure from seeing someone else suffer.
Mostly it's an opportunity to lay claim of being in charge of the re-distributive efforts - to gain power with other people's money as it's gifted through your channels to the supportive masses. It's called 'justice' because that imparts a patina of official-sounding legitimacy to what is really pure grifting. Justice is available through the rule of law, not the law of mobs.
Bingo
This is close to the core of why we should use "justice", in fact :)
Consider the example of USA giving foreign aid to the Marshall Islands. This could be a generous gift (to use your language), making the USA a country of saints (to use Scott's language).
However, put yourself in the shoes of someone living in the Marshall Islands. That person knows that their country will disappear by 2050 due to rising oceans, and it's no fault of theirs at all. Rather, it's the fault of everyone, roughly in proportion to how much carbon they have put into the atmosphere. So if the country with the highest carbon footprint in the world pays some money to the Marshall Islands, this is not just feel-good kindness... it's an urgently needed step toward a bit more fairness and justice in this world.
I looked up the geography of the Marshall Islands and find that (from wiki).
“The average altitude above sea level for the entire country is 7 feet (2.1 m).”
It would take a very large acceleration from the present 3.4mm (+-4mm) for the Marshall island to sink by 2050.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/02/world/The-Marshall-Islands-Are-Disappearing.html has a lot of detailed information on this question.
The NYT is basically a tabloid these days. I’m quoting the stats from NASA’s sea level rise portal, https://sealevel.nasa.gov/
Consider reading the article rather than mounting an ad-hominem attack on its source?
More seriously: even if the *average* altitude is 2m, there are plenty of important populated places near the coast that are at much lower altitude. You seen to imply that the problem only starts once the sea rise reaches 2m...?
And if it leads to still greater urbanization, and distance from traditional ways, thus more ultimate vulnerability to sea level rise - it still was fair and just, full stop?
John Mcwhorter wrote a good example of justice framing diverting from better solutions in the NYT
Racial justice assumes there is an ongoing institutional and prevalent force acting against the well being of black Americans. Mcwhorter examined things like police interactions among black Americans and others of the same income cohort. Little to no difference. Historically, over half of people in redlined communities were white
If we assume there are specific racially villainous actions that can be stopped we fail to help anyone because it's apparent that the problem is racial only at the very margins
Do we attempt to impose justice or to reform for progress? Mcwhorter proposes: teaching phonics to underprivileged kids, ending the drug war, and expanding access to and respect for trades rather than focusing only on college. Racial justice seems to especially propose white people undergo a spiritual change to stop their mystical inherent oppression and punishing those who do not participate in this
Climate change is probably the highest impact instance of justice solutions vs 'positive' solutions
Justice demands that a great wrong exists and must be categorically remedied. Thus the policy focus is that dramatic and immediate action be taken to achieve a grand goal of essentially preventing any major harmful effects. This isn't the kind of issue where you ask economists for input. But according to economists near term hard caps on emissions are something like half as effective as carbon taxes. And the costs will outweigh the benefits if the tax is clearly above the cost of the warming prevented. Justice demands that no bad thing happen but implementing it with that mindset is more costly and less effective. A straightforward analysis of Paris puts the benefit as low as 10 cents per dollar spent
It's of a piece with the other species of justice framing that Scott is talking about in the article. There's an inherent underlying assumption that we would have equality of outcomes in a just world. There is absolutely no reason to believe this.
It's basically pitting 'justice' in a state of perpetual war against bad luck, uneven genetics, uneven geography, human self-interest, the natural tendency toward centralisation and hierarchy in both the economic and political domain, and basically every other force that creates unequal outcomes in human societies- not least of which is personal choice.
Unfairness is baked into the world at so many levels or emerges so rapidly from organic human processes that expecting a mere absence of malice or even-handedness in dispute-resolution to produce equity is laughable, so in practice this vision of 'justice' has to become totalitarian and all-encompassing. Every variable- including personal choice- has to be coerced into irrelevancy.
Discipline in schools being degraded by complaints over 'disparate impact' is a fair example. It essentially guarantees that the worst-behaving individuals in the worst-behaving group can get away with more the worse they behave. Choice being decoupled from outcome in practice encourages the worst kind of choices.
https://mynorthwest.com/3399911/rantz-wa-schools-adopt-race-based-discipline-white-students-get-harsher-punishment/
I don't want to say that unequal outcomes imply you have zero injustice- it could theoretically be the case that black students really are being disciplined more heavily than the case merits- but the patch being applied here is guaranteed to create *drastically more injustice* in addition to basically destroying the ability of other kids to get an education. It's complete madness.
Criminality in any sane society requires mens rea, or at the very least criminal negligence. We do not prosecute for murder those who cause the death of others, accidentally, and notwithstanding exercising due care. That's just bad luck.
Even assuming arguendo your description of the facts (that the Marshall Islands will subside beneath the sea as a direct result of US emissions of CO2), you would need *additionally* to make the case that the US did this deliberately, in order to destroy the Marshall Islands, or with criminal negligence, i.e. knowing full well this would be the result and ignoring any possibility of doing something different. That's the only way this could turn into an issue of justice.
The criminal negligence is a pretty strong argument. Only a very few can be demonstrated to have acted with knowledge of doing harm. OTOH, nobody can be shown to have particularly targeted the Marshall Islands.
It's not really "their money" if its gained through exploitation and wage slavery. It is simply giving people what is theirs. There's an old trade unionist saying that "Profits are wages not yet distributed".
The death toll of capitalism is unparalleled to any modern system.
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/o6ot72/the_death_toll_of_capitalism_read_it_before_you/
Lol, capitalism isn't just "anything done for profit" - if that's your definition, then we're not talking about the same thing here. Pretty much any conquest, or really any bad action, even by a communist country, could be said to be motivated by "profit" in the general sense, so that argument is basically just "someone doing bad stuff = capitalism".
What most people are talking about when they refer to capitalism is free markets (which necessarily implies private ownership of capital). Free markets and private ownership have brought billions out of poverty, most recently in China and India.
The general criteria for "victims of communism" or "communist death toll" or any similar trite formulation is essentially "Anytime somebody died under a communist government" so the logic that you're applying to communism is being applied to capitalism.
Of course unsurprisingly you now object to such a criteria when its convenient which would illustrate a double standard.
The life expectancy of citizens in the worlds' freest, most market-oriented nations in the world are generally much higher than in the command economies and have historically been much higher than countries that declare themselves socialist. If you really believe in this way of attributing deaths to economic systems, and I don't think you are being sincere, then you ought to incorporate the pseudo-deaths caused by ubiquitous corruption and bureaucratic mismanagement of soviet agriculture/medicine/safety into your toy model. Otherwise you're comparing people lined up and shot vs people dying from all-cause mortality inside a profession they voluntarily selected.
Ahahahahhahha, a reddit Socialist post ahahahahahhh get real. Comical. Try Buzzfeed next time.
Its the content that matters isn't it?
Every step of this analysis is completely deranged, but let's just start with item 1.
In what sense do you believe that capitalist countries financed fascism, and how are you arriving at the conclusion that fascism killed 200 million people?
Is there such thing as exploitation or wage slavery? I'm having trouble with the idea that if I offer to pay someone a wage to do something for me, and they do it, they then rightfully own my profit from that.
Its the workers who create the goods/services which create profits. Why wouldn't they be entitled to the fruits of their labor?
I could just as easily say it is the employer who creates the profits by arranging for profitable goods/services to be made and sold. And obviously the workers are not entitled to the profits because that was not part of our agreement. Seems straightforward? If the workers create the profits, why don't they just do that themselves? Why do they need the employer? Could it be that the employer does something valuable?
I'm all in favor of employers being justly compensated for their labor, whereas people such as yourself are only in favor of these select individuals being satisfactorily compensated. It's a certain bourgeois chauvinism based on a mistaken idea of production.
Also, to respond to "workers are not entitled to the profits because that was not part of our agreement". This implies a fair agreement and one properly consented to. If somebody threatens you with poverty (i.e economic blackmail) then that's not meaningfully consented to. Its sort of like saying Tibet is rightfully China's because of the Seventeen Point Agreement, context matters in other words.
This simplified strawman economics model of a business has to stop being used.
The workers that built the capital that the company needed to start, such as the construction workers that built the factory and the manufacturing workers that built the machines the factory runs on need to be paid for their work... and were, with the people that paid them before the first product had rolled out of the factory (the investors) promised a share of the profit. And if the business goes under, as I understand it, it's the investors that lose their money.
The factory janitor doesn't produce a single thing, but their job is just as necessary as every line worker. Same with the truck driver, the HR person, the accountant... and the managers and executives. I don't like that the connections to other business, law makers, and regulators is more important to the success of the business than the quality of its product, but that's not the market's fault, and that's why the people at the top of big business are where they are.
Because labor all by itself doesn't create anything. I can dig holes and refill them all day without creating an iota of economic value. It's labor *plus* capital (machines, technology) *plus* good ideas and leadership that creates economic value. If the workers provided all three, then OK they created the profits, but in that case -- they supply the work, the capital, and the leadership, like a small business might reasonable argue -- then typically these days they *do* receive and enjoy the profits.
But if *all* the workers supply is labor, and the capital and leadership is supplied by someone else, nope. That's like arguing the vast bulk of privates in an army should get all the credit for a military victory, ignoring the role of sophisticated weaponry, intelligence, and good generalship. Basically it confuses a sine qua non with a cause.
Good leaders by themselves without anybody to take orders don't create anything and without worker-created profit you wouldn't be able to afford any machines or technology. Everybody should get the fruits of their labor whether they're leaders or at the very lowest level. The pandemic has illustrated quite clearly which individuals are the "essential workers" and they are paid dirt wages while their boss swims in cash.
Because they made a prior agreement to give those goods to the employer after they were done, in exchange for a fixed wage. If someone just builds something on their own without making such a prior arrangement, then they are indeed entitled to it under capitalism. Most people, even many communists when pressed on the question in isolation, don't find anything intuitively wrong with being able to enter into such contracts. Adding on the concept of ownership of property you create ("entitlement to the fruits of your labor"), and you de facto support free markets.
When this is pointed out the traditional communist fallacy is to then say, well, this isn't fair because the capital that the employer owns that incentivizes such agreements was somehow "stolen". But that line of rhetoric very rarely elaborated upon and obviously not necessarily true; if I write a computer program like Photoshop and someone rents it to do work, it seems really strange to argue that I'm somehow stealing from them.
Who controls what their alternatives are? The justifications behind the abuses of the capitalist system ring quite hollow. This doesn't make the alternatives any better, of course. What is basically boils down to is that any group of people who control power will fight amongst themselves for a larger share, unite against an outsider getting some of their power, and scheme to increase their power. The names used to describe the way in which the power is centralized and controlled don't really matter. (If you're an anti-capitalist, look into the way unions tend to become corrupt. If you're pro-capitalist, look into Upton Sinclair's description of the meat packing industry.)
Yes, but the trade unionists are as biased as the employers. Neither is capable of rendering an objective evaluation of relative value contributed. (And neither am I.)
>If you think “criminal justice” when you hear these phrases, that’s you.
I think Scott's point is that it's not just him, it's the majority of people who hear the word. Most of them have never heard of distributive justice, or even if they have still mostly associate justice with criminal justice.
Fairness is something that even some animals understand. Almost every child needs to be told that the world isn't fair, because they start from an innate assumption that it should be. Perhaps we should just talk about fairness instead of justice and then this complaint goes away?
how many kids do you have? I have 3, and just can't recall experiencing with any of them that innate sense of fairness you are describing, much less any episode where I told them the ugly truth about the world and witnessed their disillusion. The do understand instinctively concepts like retribution, tit for tat, etc., I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals
Problems with the logic of this paradigm and non-replications:
https://twitter.com/nicholaraihani/status/1197809126417616897
As Claudia Tennie says "cute videos are mind viruses that produce 'zombie ideas'"
Wikipedia plays this down, but afaict inequity aversion in capuchins etc is considered oversold is the majority of primate researchers.
Those studies seem to reach conclusions more measured than the tweet makes them appear. In particular, they tend to say that there is only 'weak evidence' or that there is only evidence for 'a rudimentary sense of fairness' rather than state baldly that there is a 'replication failure'. The complaint about the logic of the experiment seems rather superficial too - in humans, if someone sets themselves on fire to protest the suffering of their people, they've increased the amount of suffering of their people in the world. The 'illogic' of it might be interesting, but it's hardly a strong argument that it doesn't happen, or that the protester isn't really protesting what they say they are.
And the "cute videos are mind viruses that produce 'zombie ideas'" cute quote is a mind virus too. Describing an idea with bad sounding words makes no difference to its truth value.
My kids get really angry when they feel they are being treated unfairly, it’s true. But when daddy says it’s not fair for him that you won’t let him eat breakfast, they don’t care. “The sense that the world ought to be fair” is, I think, much better described as “high confidence that my concept of fairness matters, but the concepts of fairness of other people are irrelevant, especially when they want things I don’t.”
In the inequity aversion terminology, this means your children are showing "disadvantageous inequity aversion". That's where individuals protest if they lose out unfairly. "Advantageous inequity aversion" is rarer, that's where individuals protest if others lose out unfairly.
I think that a complaint that they have been treated unfairly made as if they believe this is a meaningful reason to be upset indicates that they believe fairness is important. Believing fairness is important enough to make personal sacrifices in order that others are treated fairly is a different thing.
It isn't 'fairness' that they think is important to them. It's _getting what they want_.
There's a pretty huge difference, right? If each one wants to have their book read, they both protest that the outcome isn't fair, even if what i do is choose a book that neither one of them wants.
Here's my thoughts on fairness: https://fracturedrelationships.substack.com/p/its-not-fair?s=w
"Justice as Fairness" is a line associated with Rawls. But most people don't treat them as synonyms, and their first association for the word "justice" will be things like criminal justice. "Fairness" does sound more suitable for Scott's lens, but I don't know if it gives the same scope for saintliness/utopianism. You can imagine a superlatively fair person, but not as naturally as a superlatively benevolent one.
Nonsense. Having reared 5 of them to adulthood (or close enough), I am confident no child is *born* with any sense of "fairness." Generally it has to be beaten into them, in fact. "No, it's not OK to take your brother's toy just because you want it and he's too small to resist."
Fairness is a sophisticated adult social value -- nature has no such concept, and if you could talk to a lion and ask whether it was fair that she preferentially targed young and weak members of the gazelle tribe for eating, she would be very puzzled indeed. It's certainly true that adults sometimes train their kids to expect a little more fairness in the wide world than they can expect within the confines of the family, but this has more to do with inadequate parenting than social failure. Anyone who trains his kids to expect a society of 300 million to function with as much intelligent insight into each of its members as a family of 4 is...kind of dumb, honestly.
You sound like you'd be a good source of data here. Especially since you're an adult who thinks that fairness is a sophisticated adult concept that has no meaning in nature, and presumably have brought up your kids with that opinion.
Have your children at a young age ever complained that they have been treated unfairly as if they think this is a meaningful reason to be upset?
Have they ever been upset that a sibling has appeared to receive higher rewards or attention when they were equally deserving?
To be honest, I'll be quite surprised if you answer no, but I'm interested to find out. If you doubt that other parents experience "It's not fair" as a weirdly common refrain from kids let me point you to this book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/its-not-fair-amy-krouse-rosenthal
If anything, I would say that the concept of 'life's not fair' is a sophisticated adult concept that kids have to have beaten into them.
My claim that kids have an innate sense of fairness is perhaps stronger than I have concrete evidence for, but it is not such a strong claim that I'm saying kids usually let their sense of fairness rule over their self-interest. These are two different things.
Sorry, but I think you're failing to make a distinction.
1) Yes, kids have desires, and they want those desires satisfied. (Usually *right NOW*.)
2) They also have a sense of fairness. This doesn't change what they want. But it can either reinforce or weaken their demands for it.
3) Unfortunately, their sense of fairness is not symmetrical. They don't necessarily accept that if it's fair that somebody share a cookie with them, that means that it's fair that they share their cookie with someone else. They feel ownership in their cookie, but they don't directly feel the ownership someone else has in the cookie that person is holding.
Reading the replies, enough people agree with him to constitute decent evidence that he's right about how "justice" sounds to the average ear. My point is just that if he's right about that, the use of "X justice" is less a cynical attempt to sneak a free ride on the popular sense of justice as retribution than a sincere misunderstanding of how the language of justice will be received. These phrases are coming out of an academic/activist community where people read and listen each other and debate what is best, and where the sense of justice as retribution is at its weakest. If anything, this is a group with a thin theory of mind about popular understanding, not a thick theory of how to hijack people's natural retributiveness for their own ends.
Also, RIP "with liberty and justice for all."
I disagree, the people in the activist community who use these terms have a pretty thick theory of mind; the phrasing is meticulously tuned to manipulate.
It's boilerplate modern political rhetoric about unfairness, victims and oppressors.
I think Scott has a better take on what people are mostly thinking. However, I don't know a good way to adjudicate who has the correct take.
Not many people have read Aristotle. In common parlance, "justice" implies a crime, a victim, and a perpetrator. Justice is achieved through punishment. Yes, making the victim whole is also an objective to be pursued, if possible; but the primary goal is to harm the perpetrator in proportion to the harm he inflicted on the victim (modulo situational circumstances). Thus, while "helping the poor" can be achieved by e.g. giving them money or food, "financial justice" can only be achieved by harming rich people -- ideally, but not necessarily, by taking away their money and giving it to their victims, the poor people.
I think this might be easier for speakers of other languages than English. For example, in German "Gerechtigkeit" means justice in the sense of "fairness" and "treating everyone equally". There would be other words related to courts, such as "Rechtsprechung".
Thus terms like "Klimagerechtigkeit" are clear and don't have the negative connotations that Scott writes about.
Using and abusing the word "justice" is quintessential for mob mobilization. You don't get to fly on the wings of memetic spreading unless you use that particular word. And that has absolutely zero to do with Aristotle, in whose times the Twitter handle @theRealAristotle would not have existed.
As for "gerechtigkeit" - which is rooted in the German word for "right" - it might also be translated as "righteousness". In any case, "selbstgerechtigkeit" pretty much does translate to "self-righteousness".
Googling tells me that the analogue of the American Department of Justice is called Bundesministerium der Justiz in Germany (and similarly in Austria and Switzerland) and that Justiz has mostly legal sense in German. So, yeah, it seems like Klimagerechtigkeit and climate justice have quite different connotations.
In general, I believe it is unproductive to blame miscommunication on the other party. After all, you can't control how they'll hear things, only how you say them.
In light of that, and insofar as Scott is not an isolated example of hearing this way, perhaps this sort of phrasing could be improved.
(Reflexively, you also can't control how other people will say things, only how you hear them. Therefore, that my view also implies that Scott could improve the discourse by hearing these people better. Your comment is not without merit, but "that's you" is an unproductive accusation.)
Aristotle? When did Aristotle talk about distributive or corrective justice? Aristotle's definition of justice was about interpersonal obligation and primarily a personal trait. That is what the term social justice originally meant when it was invented by Catholics. But distributive and corrective justice are 19th century terms meant specifically to criticize that conception of social justice. People like Mills then read that backward into Plato (but not Aristotle, as far as I know).
Though notably Mills ultimately said justice was of secondary interest to utilitarianism which is how he justified things he admitted were unjust. Yes, it's not fair to take a rich man's property simply because he's rich, but it produces utils by giving it to the poor. Justice thus had to give way to higher moral, utilitarian principles, which were unjust in particular but were a form of what he called distributive justice. He specifically admits that this is justice GIVING WAY to higher principles, not just some obvious application of morally intuitive justice.
Check out Nicomachean Ethics, book 5 where Aristotle discusses the different kinds of justice. At 1130b, Aristotle brings in the kind of justice "exercised in the distribution [dianomhs] of honor, wealth, and the other divisible assets of the community, which may be allotted among its members in equal or unequal shares" [taken from the free translation on Perseus]. His major treatment of this subject in his Ethics occurs in the following chapter, NE 5.3. But he discusses this topic all over the Politics, and gives and reasons from principles of distributive justice all over the place there, most famously in his principle that the best flute ought to be given to the best flute player.
It's just not plausible to read distributive justice as something Mill invented in the 19th Century, in the face of this 2400 year old text that is plainly talking about this subject.
Adam Smith also wrote about commutative justice and distributive justice in Theory of Moral Sentiments, at least from the second edition off their of my head, in the mid 1700’s, pointing to Aristotle and Cicero I believe. Might be wrong about Cicero.
I've just searched my version of the text (as in ctrl+f) and can't find the term distributive justice. So I'm not sure what you specifically mean but I can't find it.
My kindle version (can't find the hard copy) puts it in Book 3, Section 2, Chap. 1 "Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety." That part describes it as "a becoming use of what is one's own," akin to Grotius' (not Cicero) definition of justitia attributrix. Somewhat later Smith compares it to the distributive justice of Aristotle which "consists in the proper distribution of rewards from the public stock of a community" in a footnote.
Edit: if you meant to ask where it was in Nicomachean ethics, Smith notes "See ... 1.5 .c.2." I don't know how that might translate to Aristotle, however, or if it is the editor of TMS making that location reference or something.
I'll take a look. But distribution of rewards doesn't strike you as different from utilitarian or progressive distributive justice? Reward implies desert is earned through action, not through simple necessity, doesn't it?
It isn't plainly in the text.
If you take "distributive justice" to mean "the concept of whether society is fair" which includes economic aspects then of course that's been discussed forever. Long before the term itself was invented. You could argue it's a theme in the Iliad where the king deprives Achilles of Briseis and disrupts the just distribution of war booty. But that's not usually what distributive justice means. It instead means a specific modern conception of what is economically fair in society.
In that sense, no. You're quoting that out of context to read a 19th century concept back into Aristotle. Remember, like Plato Aristotle was a member of the oligarchal political faction, not a democrat and not a utilitarian.
The Bekker translation on Perseus inserts all kinds of anachronistic terms like political science. The Greek word used in that line is dianomais (διανομαῖς). I think that's what you mean by dianomhs. Dianomais means distribute in the sense of deliver, like distributing mail. Notably, it is what herders do to animals. It specifically does not mean distribute in the sense of justice or desert. A better translation, "one type is that which is created in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the polity." I expect he's thinking, for example, of one year when Athens ran a budget surplus (due to a particularly good year in the state silver mines) and debated about where that money should go. They ultimately bought ships but they thought about just giving it out as a kind of political dividend.
He is specifically not talking about the redistribution of private property to create social equity. Plato does actually talk about that and he directly condemns it as a tool of wannabe tyrants. But certain people read it back into the text for ideological reasons.
If you define distributive justice to mean "a specific modern conception" then sure you can assert that by definition Aristotle cannot be talking about it. I cannot see exactly how you are distinguishing between "'the concept of whether society is fair' which includes economic aspects" and your apparently very different "specific modern conception of what is economically fair in society." I *think* that you think that the modern term distributive justice always means "redistribution of private property to create social equity," which I do not think that the poster you were responding to above, nor the people who talk about social justice, use it to mean. At most you can say that *your* conception of distributive justice is one you find in Mill and attribute to him since he gives a utilitarian argument for it.
Here's a little more Aristotle from further down the page, since you accuse me of taking him out of context: "This is also clear from the principle of ‘assignment by desert.’ All are agreed that justice in distributions must be based on desert of some sort, although they do not all mean the same sort of desert; democrats make the criterion free birth; those of oligarchical sympathies wealth, or in other cases birth; upholders of aristocracy make it virtue." [From a free translation, but my Irwin translation is not much different] Aristotle's point is that distributive justice means distributing goods such as wealth and honors, to people in society, and that we do so according to some notion of what we think people are worth. But different societies assign worth in different ways. By the by, it is a corollary of this view that if you want to change society fundamentally, you must necessarily want to *re*distribute, i.e., to change the distribution of such goods.
It's true that Aristotle is no lover of democracy. He does argues against Plato in favor of private property (Politics, Book 2), and in so doing is clearly arguing for one form of distributive justice over others.
The poster you were criticizing is completely correct that Aristotle distinguishes distributive justice from justice concerned with punishment, and that is precisely the right response to the original article. (You are correct that the form of the word here is διανομαῖς; the dictionary entry is for διανομή and I was tired.
To your question below, I think it's important to read thinkers carefully and not read things out of them based on my historical preconceptions. But the main reason I wrote here was because I thought you were wrong, thought the person you were responding to was right, and was willing to go down the rabbit hole with you.
> I *think* that you think that the modern term distributive justice always means "redistribution of private property to create social equity," which I do not think that the poster you were responding to above, nor the people who talk about social justice, use it to mean. At most you can say that *your* conception of distributive justice is one you find in Mill and attribute to him since he gives a utilitarian argument for it.
No, at most what I can say is that the person who, as far as I know, invented the term used it in that fashion. And that other people adopted it to mean something else. Neither of which is not what you're talking about. I'm not saying you're wrong to use that definition. But I'd need you to explain it.
Are you going to grasp the nettle and claim, then, that a woman being passed around as property is distributive justice? If it is then how is the term not all encompassing of any kind of economic morality? If not, what is your definition? As I said, if you just mean "people have opinions about what's fair and unfair and that includes matters of wealth" then sure. Hell, the Code of Hammurabi is implicitly distributive justice then. But that seems like such a broad definition as to be useless?
I don't think that it is just to treat women as property. But if someone made a claim that women ought to be treated as property, I would take that as a claim about distributive justice, one that is wrong. Similarly, I think that it is unjust to bury widows with their husbands. If someone made a claim that they ought to be, I would think that person were making a claim about what punishment would be just, one that is wrong.
Also, yes, there probably are things in the Code of Hammurabi that are about distributive justice (although the stuff I remember is about punishment). But Aristotle is getting credit here because he pointed out the distinction between these two kinds of justice, or two uses of the term justice: just distribution and just punishment. And that is the distinction that Scott is ignoring in the OP.
Actually, question for you: It's clearly important to you, in some sense, that the idea is old and longstanding. Why is that? Let's say I'm right and that distributive justice is a creature of the 19th century. Do you feel this weakens it in some way? I ask because I run into A LOT of people dubiously trying to read things back into the Classics. I've never understood the instinct.
I know you are not asking me, but I will take a swing at the question. I think it is valuable to know that a concept is older rather than newer for a few reasons:
1: Knowing how far back the topic goes suggests that it was important for a long time, and might just be a really tough question, instead of one that only smart moderns even thought to ask. Teaching economics, just about every 101 class has one kid who thinks you could solve unemployment by the government just hiring everyone, and likely thinks we are all stupid and/or evil for not just doing that. Pointing out that people have tried that for millennia and it doesn't work well is useful. Likewise questions of "You are not alone in your troubles. Consider all these people just like you in the past..."
2: If you have a perfectly good term for something, and suddenly it goes out of use and another term pops up that seems to be talking about the same thing but with none of the historical arguments being brought to bear, you know something is up. Typically you can root around the history and find "Oh, one side of the debate got entirely wrecked, and the losers went off to lick their wounds, returning with a brand new term to argue about that is said to be completely different but is actually the same and they hope no one will notice." The modern term "mandatory volunteering" for high school students comes to mind... we called that slavery, or at least forced labor, back in the day.
3a: Newer ideas that are popular are likely to be worse than older ideas that are popular. Humans are really bad at consciously picking cultural features and societal designs, but over time things that work get adopted pretty well, so older things that remain salient over time are more probably more workable.
3b: Older ideas that keep cropping up over time are more likely to be based in human nature than human imagination. If some pretty clever modern philosopher says "Boy, people being out of work and stuck home alone during COVID was really rough on them mentally" I think "That might be true." When I see Samuel Johnson also says "If you are idle, be not isolated; if you are isolated, be not idle" that makes me think "Wow, I bet that is much more likely to be true." If I see Grotius or Cicero or Aristotle also saying "Holy crap, people go nuts when they are left alone with nothing to do for a little bit" I assign it a very high likelihood of being true.
Another example is the question of "Why doesn't PTSD ever seem to get mentioned in early writings about war, indeed not much until WWI?" That leads you to wonder if something changed recently, or what.
4: (Related to 3b) Older ideas that have not been struck down as crazy are more likely to be true because they have had lots of time to be repudiated; many old ideas an arguments become so ingrained in the culture because they are accepted as true, that people forget where they came from. If an idea turns out to be really old, I should be able to find dozens of commentaries and arguments against it, many of much higher quality than what you get lately. If those don't work, or didn't work, I can feel more confident that there is really something to the idea.
Likewise, every time someone says "How can you even own something?" I want to point them to Grotius, who pretty exhaustively went through every possible state of ownership with regards to things humans care about. Those became the basis for 20th century international law, but everyone sort of forgets about those arguments because we are so used to ownership everywhere as the default. Even if you don't accept all of e.g. Grotius' arguments, you have the framework to go from, as opposed to starting from scratch.
5: New things might best be thought of as just an experiment that might work. Maybe someday future generations are going to look back and say "Wow, that universal suffrage thing was NOT a good idea." I'd be less likely to expect regret if I could look back from now and see cases where it worked out, and more likely to expect regret if I see lots of cases where it was tried and failed horrible.
6: The later 1800's and early 1900's saw the rise of some really hideous and anti-human ideas. All else equal, if an idea spawned around that time I place a much higher probability of it leading to horrific consequences.
I think that about sums it up for why I look upon older ideas with more sympathy than newer ones.
Lots of good stuff here, although I am not sure I agree with you that older ideas are more likely to be true than newer ones. But I would add that I think lots of people disparage reading old texts as somehow not really engaging with the ideas afresh and being willing to think for yourself. And that surely is a trap you can fall into, of thinking ideas are true just because they are old. But you can fall into such traps as easily reading Quine or contemporary authors. In fact, it might be easier because today's writers use terms and ideas that are already familiar to you, making it harder to break out of your own thinking and learn really new ideas.
Definitely agree on the use of terms etc. and would add that older authors will bring up situations that are totally outside one's experience and help to see things in new ways. Plato's Euthyphro really did that for me; what modern would have to consider "Is it right for me to prosecute my own father for murdering one of our slaves?"
Sure. I guess I'm most frustrated by people retroactively inserting ideas. Like the use of the word distributive justice in the Aristotle translation. That's not a good translation but they obviously want to retroactively insert the actual concept. Now, we can of course agree that he is discussing something and economics and fairness. But the idea that he was advocating for something like a modern welfare state is absurd. To take another example, the idea that international realism was invented by the Greeks is just cope. Yes, the Melian dialogue has some of the concepts, but it's not some thesis of the Athenian worldview.
1: Right, but my point is that the argument goes from "lots of people had lots of thoughts about what was fair economically" to "the idea of distributive justice, a modern term and issue in the next election, was discussed by Aristotle." That's only true in the vaguest, broadest sense. That doesn't mean it's not worth learning! But very rarely do you get such direct lessons. Except maybe in terribly obvious things.
2: I'm not sure about this. Social justice, as originally defined, was a conservative Catholic belief. The Catholics still hold basically similar beliefs but the term was appropriated by the left and then later abandoned by Catholics. Without too much change in underlying ideology. But I do agree there's a lot to be gained by ignoring the specific terms and seeing what the actual object of conversation is. The issue is that you then have to retranslate it back into terms people understand.
3a: I'd agree to this with the modification of "ideas" to "customs." Socrates didn't actually run anything. He was a philosopher and from an out of power faction. Studying how Athens worked is useful in this sense. Studying how Socrates thought Athens ought to work is still useful but less so.
3b: Fair enough.
4: I agree with this. It's even more useful to see the arguments of defeated political factions because it's entirely possible they knew something you didn't. Even if you find them unconvincing you at least understand what your own side overcame. Broad, long lasting political movements usually have at least some sense to them. If you can't think of why that is you don't really understand them. And if you don't understand something you don't understand it's opponents either. This is kind of what I gestured to in my other comment: Aristotle argues against something like the state caring for everyone. This doesn't denigrate the idea and can actually be useful for understanding it.
5: Fair enough.
6: Ibid.
I agree that Aristotle wasn't talking about a modern welfare state, but I think that confusion is in how "distributive justice" came to be used now, not whether it made sense in Smith's time. He certainly wasn't using it in anyway that would argue for legal redistribution, and pretty much defined the distinction between commutative and distributive as the former being things it is justifiable to punish people over and the latter isn't. The state cannot mandate distributive justice points precisely because they cannot be clearly defined or agreed upon. Modern welfare talk of "distributive justice" would be more closely defined as "a becoming use of what is someone else's" and even that might be being too charitable :D
I can see some sort of parallel if you see the "state" as "the king", and then say ok, a king ought to use his resources to take care of his people. A becoming use of what is his own might be argued to apply to using the royal treasury to buy food for the people in case of famine, for example, but how much and what kind of food etc. still seems to put it in the realm of opinion and out of grammatical, punishable behavior.
Not enough moderns read Smith. Even Rawls had only the Reader's Digest condensed version of Theory of Moral Sentiments to work from, unfortunately. At least he had that, I suppose, but he might have had an easier time with the full work. Alas, it was out of print for most of the 20th century.
Sorry, I feel I wasn't clear. I meant to say that distributive justice in Aristotle and other pre-moderns isn't retroactively putting the words back in his mouth, but rather recently changing the term to mean something other than what it meant back then. Sort of like how "liberal" means something VERY different in the USA post 1870 than it meant in 1775 when Wealth of Nations was written with phrases like "liberal system."
As opposed to how translators always use "pike" instead of "spear", and so change Caesar's legion to having 16-20' weapons they throw around. That shit makes me crazy.
Absolutely. I'm disappointed to say this is probably one of the worst pieces Scott has written in a while. Like, it's just nitpicking about something which is just exposing an absence of familiarity with a really non-obscure, non-ingroup core aspect of political philosophy.
It really reads as a parody:
"I can’t find clear evidence on Google Trends that use of these terms is increasing - I just feel like I’ve been hearing them more and more often."
Does nobody see any issues with starting a *rationalist* piece like this?
Scott then spends a paragraph doing... what exactly?
"What is “climate justice”? Was the Little Ice Age unjust? What if it killed millions? Is it unjust for Mali to have a less pleasant climate than California? What if I said that there’s a really high correlation between temperature and GDP, and Mali’s awful climate is a big part of why it’s so poor? Climate justice couldn’t care less about any of this. Why not? Hard to say. Maybe because there’s no violation and no villain."
This is such a shallow pass at a topic which ought to be a great topic of discussion. Discussing whether justice/fairness are concepts which apply in the absence of human intention is pol phil 101- see here for example https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/#JustAgen
I think Scott is fully aware of all this and has just gone on a bashing of climate/"woke" justice because it gets used by an out group. Even the wikipedia article he links to explains the concept relatively simply.
By all means, there are really interesting discussions to be had around the scope of justice, the impact of justice as a tool of analysis etc. But the piece as a whole is just shallow and ungenerous, with lots of strawmanning and feigned incredulity. Disappointed.
The general point that Scott seems to have abandoned the premise of steelmanning is pretty sad. I get that he is trying to churn out more and more content, but it really detracts from anything he isn't already pre-disposed to engage with on an equal level with.
I concur, and this is one of the few posts of Scott's that I simply think is flat wrong--or, at least, he should have stopped at noting that the language exists in order to create a moral duty, not to punish. I don't really identify with the XXXXX justice groups, but they are a huge proportion of my wing of the labor movement, and I can say with some confidence that even if they do believe in retribution of the rich, that's simply not how they're understanding "justice" in the phrase "social justice."
I applaud you for referencing Aristotle, but deduct significant points for assuming more people are familiar with the index of justices than have seen >1 ep of 'Law & Order'.
An amazing amount of weight is carried by the "mostly" in "mostly without taking from those who have." I have the uncharitable suspicion that "mostly" doesn't have its usual meaning in this particular sentence.
It is "on us" and our "fantasy" that "soak the rich" rhetoric really sounds like prioritization of retribution over relief?
Here, here.
(Possible?) copyedit thread:
“the guy who’s more sensitive to violations and more efficient and punishment than anyone else“ —> not sure what was intended but I think the “punishment” line is truncated
I can’t recall hearing or reading anyone use the term climate justice. Google says people do…so it’s a thing.
Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone in real life use the term woke. It’s wildly popular among Very Online People.
Very Online or sufficiently young... I don't know if you've visited a college campus recently, but I can attest that the term "climate justice" is very common there.
Similarly, people on campus may not use the word "woke", but only in the sense that fish don't frequently use the word "water."
I visited my alma mater a bit ago, and every other light pole had an official university banner with the phrase “stay woke” on it. And it’s not even a particularly “woke” campus. So I think it’s safe to say that the younger generations are actually using the term on a regular basis, or at least regularly interact with it.
It looks like a little over 1% of the population consists of full time traditional college students.
And an even smaller percentage of the population is at elite schools most in the thrall of this BS rhetoric. Nonetheless, that small group of people tends to end up establishing standards for journalists and other elite tastemakers, so their linguistic and ideological quirks are important to examine.
Melvin cited an Australian example, and the American "paper of record" has plenty of examples too: https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Anytimes.com+"climate+justice"
Is it important to examine - or is it just clickbait targeted at Very Online People?
Both? I think both. The propaganda most influential on our elite is probably important to study. And yes, this is that.
Also, I think the NYT's audience doesn't substantially consist of the Very Online. Even if there's minor overlap, the Very Online probably go to trendier, angrier sites and consume news through podcasts neither of us have ever heard of.
“ The propaganda most influential on our elite”
Is it? You assume the elite give it anymore thought than anyone else. I see no reason to think that they do.
"elite schools most in the thrall of this BS rhetoric"
What is your basis for this? That doesn't match my experience (having attended both elite and significantly less elite schools).
I graduated over a decade ago, and I took classes on subjects like environmental justice, although that was at least broadly related to my major.
For what it's worth, I've come across climate justice online and IRL a fair amount
I've encountered both "woke" and "climate justice" a fair bit IRL
I saw this article just the other day in a mainstream newspaper: "International Women's Day Highlights Climate Justice As A Feminist Issue"
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/international-women-s-day-highlights-climate-justice-as-a-feminist-issue-20220303-p5a1ba.html
There have literally been "March[es] for climate justice" is numerous major cities across the country/western world.
NPR talks about it.
A related TLP-esque theory: the move away from virtue, away from agency, is *precisely the point.* By placing all of these domains outside of individual control, they're removed from your power, and you're absolved of any real responsibility or personal failing.
Currently, many are powerless and frustrated in their individual lives. They start out convinced that nothing they do can help the world because of their own deep-seated insecurities and inadequacies. But recognizing, confronting, and overcoming your insecurity is hard. Reframing everything as "justice" scratches the same itch, allowing people to express their sense of powerlessness, but doesn't make them feel like it's an individual failing of theirs, since "justice" is systemic, broad, administered by the state and beyond any individual's control.
Hrm, that doesn't feel right to me. Mostly I see X Justice used as a call to action. A call to be a superhero and do battle with the unjust.
Interesting - I think I've more often seen it used as a call to "caring" or "awareness", which has motivated the wallowing-in-powerlessness theory for me. But that could be motivated reasoning on my part.
Once we move beyond the object, we tend to see what we want to see. Is the word "justice" a call to action or an excuse to not act? Is 50 stars and 13 stripes a symbol of freedom and opportunity, or imperialism and racism, or decadence and degeneracy?
The correct answers are "It's a word" and "it's a flag".
This seems too skeptical. Yes, different words can mean different things to different people, and ultimately they are just words. But if we can't "move beyond the object" and look at its use(s) and meaning(s), we'll hamstring our ability to understand society.
Oh, there is meaning beyond the object, but it's impossible to get to that meaning by talking and talking and talking and talking, which is the only thing that you can actually do in a comments section. You're trying to get water from a well using a colander and then wondering why it keeps coming back empty. Meaning exists beyond language- the only thing words can do is gesture at an illusion of a shadow of the real world. Hieroglyphics and art are better at actually communicating meaning than words.
For what it’s worth this hews very close to what I perceive to be the truth for many young/collegiate/woke-adjacent communities who discuss things in terms of _____ justice. It is almost verboten to have a discussion about climate change, for instance, with those who frame it in terms of climate justice, in which individual choices people make are acknowledged as important. I.e. suggesting to a group of organized college Dems that they might drive less, take shorter showers, or participate less in fast fashion or frequent consumerism is considered hostile and beside the point. They would argue that they couldn’t possibly make a difference through individual choices, only large scale corporate/systemic change, and distractions like the above suggestions would be coded as neoliberal, vaguely un-hip, or insensitive; at least this is true in my experience. Try ruminating about individual changes we can make to flight climate change on a forum such as r/Politics and you might be surprised to find yourself decried.
It is besides the point, though. The "individual choices" narration is a red herring kept in the memesphere by corporate interests. The idea of personal carbon footprint was championed by... BP.
https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham
To be fair, unless you have a personal jet, individual choice is probably irrelevant. I wouldn't say that about most moral issues--individually helping a poor person is quite relevant. But climate change, in as much as it is a cataclysmic problem, isn't going to care about a single person's impact.
Being a "convenient excuse" doesn't make it wrong. Nothing you individually do will ever effect the climate in a measurable way. Coordinated action is required for that.
However, making personal sacrifices might help demonstrate the sincerity of your belief and be more persuasive.
I think you're right, and that Scott missed an important point there: It's hard to divorce "helping the poor" from actually, you know, helping the poor. Pursuing economic justice, on the other hand, doesn't have to involve helping anyone.
This theory seems very similar to the ideas expressed in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tooiNm9WmkM. It explains the problem and tries to arrive at a possible solution. I liked it.
Climate “justice”—“just ice.”
More broadly, justice is for putting things on ice. Good for hotheads, bad for warm feelings.
henry george wrote very movingly about how this framing contests with hypocrisy around charity, without being so foolish as to say good things aren't good.
https://cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry_justice-not-charity-1891.htm
Sometimes the zeitgeist swings too far and perhaps it gets annoying when people talk about justice as a buzzword instead of the result of reflection. I think what you identify is use of justice as a buzzword, and yeah the internet rotates through them aggressively. At best it does have the function-in my opinion- of not letting rich liberals off the hook for some of the harms they've driven in this country (particularly around housing), where helping and being nice is contrasted with legitimate support of some of the greatest drivers of huge economic problems.
But then people say "housing justice" and oppose supply increases anyways. So I shrug and stop listening to the word justice until I trust the speaker to actually be able to argue why something is just.
To summarize the strong parts of what Henry George said:
1. We need to think about the systemic root causes of bad outcomes, and reform the system to prevent those systematically. In the same vein as "giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, but teaching a man to fish feeds him for a lifetime".
2. handouts strip away dignity and the poor could provide for themselves a lot more if the system stopped actively screwing them.
There's also a lot of confused stuff about theology and about the rich being thieves and fallacious arguments about how no good will come of constructing public works.
It's less that no good comes of constructing works, but that public works raise land value, which means they won't solve systemic inequalities deriving from land. This is basically the most rudimentary form of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem Henry George Theorem, which posits that the maximum revenue a government can generate without deadweight loss is, exactly, the land value within its borders.
But I do think he is right to point out that people can tell the difference between 'just redistribution' and 'handouts', and that building a system on the unjust redistribution will lead to frustration from the taxed and the recipients.
An essay which reframes the question of "justice" from a Buddhist perspective titled "Wisdom over Justice" https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/uncollected/Justice.html
an excerpt
"... the Buddha never tried to impose his ideas of justice on the world at large. And this was very wise and perceptive on his part. It’s easy enough to see how imposed standards of justice can be a menace to well-being when those standards are somebody else’s. It’s much harder to see the menace when the standards are your own."
Ring the right bell for the right cause - scratch the right itch with the right term - and the guilt ridden tend to come running, wallets in hand. It's pavlovian. Righteousness is very marketable, especially when people are eager to show off their progressive bona fides and what have you.
Turning everything into "justice" supports moral absolutism and attempts to eliminate the possibility of debate. If you disagree with justice, you're just evil.
It's like "equity". Instead of arguing about what's fair, some people want to change the definition of fairness so it aligns with their cause.
Great Craigs think alike.
Spin that shit!
Denying anything can be "unjust" supports moral relativism, and eliminates any possibility of debate. If you think something is unjust, you are a a moral absolutist and should be ignored.
I mean I think this is basically all coming out of the SJ community; they have their own idiosyncratic meaning of "justice" and are applying it to lots of things. I don't think it's some distinct phenomenon that's broader than SJ. And indeed many of the things you say here apply to SJ more generally.
Slight disagree. Wikipedia says that eg spatial justice "is promoted by the scholarly tradition of critical geography, which arose in the 1970s." While it's a pretty obscure justice, this suggests they already had a tradition of doing this kind of thing back then. I agree that 1970s critical geography is lefty, but I feel like it's a broader type of lefty than just "the SJ community".
Interesing! Huh. Still, as you say, I think it's basically a feature of that social justice/critical theory/leftism cluster (I realize these are not the same thing but I typically group them together because their ways of thinking seem essentially similar to me).
It is essentially similar. People were "discovering" things on tumblr that I "discovered" in crudely published magazines in the GHWB administration.
"Critical X" reads to me as "woke X" (edit: and therefore "SJ X"), at least as far back as the 70s. E.g., "critical legal theory" is the foundational underpinnings of a lot of modern woke stuff, even though it was also that far back.
I thought this was common knowledge.
Like many things, it is a superposition of common knowledge and conspiracy theory, depending on which side you are on.
spatial justice I found kind of interesting. One thought is that it’s just a fancy name for land management. I think of a river that serves thousands of people over thousands of miles and somebody screwing around with the headwaters oblivious to the downstream effects. There’s really no excuse for that happening anymore. (Although I’m sure it does.)
Working that out is a form of spatial justice.
The term climate justice I find absurd.
Until we can move “climate” around.
do... you think "justice" is just a word that means "moving things around"? That's not what that word means.
"climate justice" could be rephrased more accurately as "climate change response justice". The world has to choose how to respond to climate change, with mitigation, adaptation, etc. The "climate justice" movement is a movement that attempts to ensure that the response results in outcomes that are "just", according to their definition of "just", which corresponds to left wing values such as fairness. So for example, they would want to ensure that coal workers are compensated and reskilled when their coal plant shuts down, so the poor are not impacted by the energy transition.
> The world has to choose how to respond to climate change, with mitigation, adaptation, etc.
In my view the world doesn’t have to choose anything. A very large cohort of communities geographical locations and nation states will have to decide either alone or amongst themselves how to manage any crisis that occurs such as climate change. India does not have the same problem as northern Canada for instance.
I don’t see how the word justice factors into this.
> So for example, they would want to ensure that coal workers are compensated and reskilled when their coal plant shuts down, so the poor are not impacted by the energy transition.
We might want to start a fund for the benefit of the descendants of the cotton gin debacle While we’re at it;
I know I sound rather Hobbesian, but there is a fundamental truth in that worldview that should not be ignored. When the reach of justice exceeds its grasp it turns pretty quickly into either tyranny or anarchy.
I also think that what justice means is very contigent on context; There are conflicting goals. Is the decision to be made in the context of the greater good? That means that certain marginal influences will not be treated well almost by definition. If marginal interests are what is paramount in any discussion of justice then there is a cost associated with that for others. Pretty quickly boils down to either collective or individual notions of justice . in the collective sense I think the word becomes for too vague to be of any use.
I think that the mentality behind Gall-Peters & similar pretty clearly lines up with SJ types. If anything it's just a very early precursor that ideologically matches the current SJ.
I think the line of causation runs in the other direction. I think social justice largely descends from, or at least draws much of its framework from critical theory. My impression is that this was more visible 10-20 years ago, but that might be more due to a change in my own circles. Critical theory and the social justice movement have for at least a few decades (since before "woke" was a term in popular consciousness, ) essentially existed as a feedback loop with each other.
Beyond a feedback loop, I have trouble differentiating the two entirely as there appears to be significant membership overlap
Reminds me of this comment : Process vs outcome based orientation
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SWxnP5LZeJzuT3ccd/?commentId=TfJAnL84ZiaqBngvy
Thanks for the note, also things to consider: the four dystopias (Darren Allen), X types of leadership, Lewis Model of Culture. The social structure/topology has surely changed.
Seems like a good way of putting it. Justice focuses on outcomes of rule/norm violations, virtue focuses on devising and applying those preventative norms.
This may be a variation of Crotchety Crank's point: acting in the name of 'justice' is acting in the name of a greater good, a higher principle. Whereas 'helping others' can easily be construed as condescending (which it often is) and even self-serving (which it often is). Any whiff of self-serving condescension creates dissonance for those who like to think of themselves and others as being altruistically motivated. They may feel on safer ground as the Keepers of The Obviously Unimpeachable Justice Faith.
It's interesting that Christianity (and any other established tradition that has an element of charity) has some pretty strong memetic defences against this, and many Christians still fail at not being condescending assholes. Now if you introduce a new ideology completely devoid of all these failsafes...
I was thinking this same thing. The New Testament doesn't care that much about "justice" (fairness, maybe?) in the real world. But the Bible (as a whole) VERY MUCH cares about taking care of the poor, the widows, the orphans, the sick. And it very much says that we as individuals should be honest, fair, merciful, etc. Society will do what it does: this is a fallen world. But each one should do what one can for one's neighbors.
And you're right, if you're a proper Christian, you should be aware how bad you suck at being a Christian, and keep on trying in all humility. And I'm worried too about the "successor" religion. Christianity, I think, is probably the least bad religion, so when you toss it out, I wouldn't expect something better, and I don't think "no religion" is an option for most people.
> helping others' can easily be construed as condescending (which it often is) and even self-serving (which it often is)
I have a hard time understanding how substituting the word justice protects one from those downsides.
Agree. That is kind of my point - but I think the concept of justice might be considered my many to be a cause beyond reproach. Personally, I think it is a red herring and a pretty suspect concept altogether but in doing so, I feel I am teetering on the edge of a destructive cynicism. Who is bold enough to deny that justice is good?
When you don't know a word, but don't have a dictionary, you can often determine the meaning from how people use the word. The pitfall of this is that it may result in one thinking that "criminal justice" means "making bad people suffer".
Maybe the people you’re thinking of who use “climate justice” and “economic justice” and “X justice” don’t realize how these phrases land with others. But this not a motte and bailey. They are quite sincere in also thinking that “criminal justice” is not justice and is not a model for what they want.
Again, maybe these phrases are poorly chosen give their goals and beliefs. But they very much don’t come out of an attempt to ride the coattails of criminal justice.
It's been interesting to see my friend group evolve on criminal justice tbh. Maybe 2014/2015 they all clearly thought that retribution was a bad criminal justice goal and that it should all be about rehabilitation.
Now they still believe the criminal justice system is broken, but not because retributive justice is bad - it's just that the wrong people are getting punished.
This is just a survey of my Facebook friends, I don't have data about the broader culture. But I worked in criminal defense for a while, have an interest in this, and had noticed this trend before this article.
I don't doubt that the internet is full of hypocrites, but I'll also point out that "the justice system gives nice rehabilitative treatment to some groups and harsh retribution to others, due to factors like racism and classism" can be a systemic criticism, not just a complaint about the wrong people getting punished.
I mean I agree with that and don't even think that this is hypocrisy. It's more like a frame change from "why does a black man caught with cocaine do ten years in prison when tax evaders go free" to "why do tax evaders go free when a black man with cocaine does 10 years in prison."
That's a nitpick but the post *is* about semantics. The former framing emphasizes the injustice of the harsh sentence, the latter the injustice of a lack of sentence for a bad guy. Because of my background I see the harsh sentence as the greater evil and would prefer to address that. I do not believe putting more tax evaders in jail will do that.
>They are quite sincere in also thinking that “criminal justice” is not justice and is not a model for what they want.
Is that because they disagree with its approaches or simply aren't in control of it?
My suspicion is that we talk about "helping" when the pie is big enough i.e. the economy is growing, and the average person sees a chance at advancement. When it becomes more of a zero-sum game due to low economic growth or stratified classes, then "justice" comes more into vogue.
Even if inequality is growing, I am also not convinced that the public's perception of that as being a problem, which is informed by the media, will have any meaningful connection to base reality. Public perception of the frequency and magnitude of mass shootings, school shootings, and police violence have all shot up dramatically in recent years despite all of those things becoming less frequent and less severe.
On issues like this, the media mostly operates on Simulacra Level 3.
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/unifying-the-simulacra-definitions
If anything, it's the other way around - obsession with inequality leads to economic policies that prevent the pie from growing or even cause it to shrink, creating zero-sum conditions.
I think the pie is growing, but at the same time from what I read, the gap between rich and poor is getting larger (at least in the USA). So from the viewpoint of the majority, the pie may not be growing much.
Having said that, you could be right that the pie is actually growing and the idea that it is not is politically slanted, but what I'm getting at is that if people perceive the pie to have stopped growing then they are more likely to demand "justice".
I don't remember encountering the "helping" rhetoric that often, but the difference makes intuitive sense. There also seems to be a directional aspect; "helping" implies voluntary initiative from above, whereas "justice" implies conceding to demands from below, the human motive of economic redistribution shifting from generosity in good times to fears of social unrest and political instability in hard times.
It's simple: it's all "justice" because justice implies the existence of both victims and perpetrators. Unfairness and disparities in outcomes between people, rather than bad things that can be improved in absolute terms. It's a justification for attacking a person, rather than helping a person. It's just more of the same political stuff.
"Justice" also connotes someone somewhere intending to do harm where there isn't always intent. Justice can be demanded, there's moral certainty, whereas anyone can just shrug off platitudes. The term's connotations are satisfying simple and simply satisfying, which is perfect for the social media age.
That's a cool way of looking at it. What I want to know is whether people using [X] justice are actually more concerned with exacting justice against someone instead of helping the original group. I don't think Stalin called it "Economic Justice", but did he call it "helping the poor"?
From the wiki article on economic justice, it doesn't really sound that bad. "Economic justice aims to create opportunities for every person to have a dignified, productive and creative life that extends beyond simple economics." Isn't that a good goal?
I agree that it sounds annoying, but mostly because it sounds like the latest term in a long line of saying things without really helping. I don't really see how [X] justice is any more pernicious than committing yourself to War on [X].
This sounds very motte-and-bailey. "We just want to create opportunities for every person," the motte; "let's punish the 'oppressors' we hate," the bailey.
I think "let's punish the oppressors we hate" is a strawman.
I got tired of hearing "guillotine Bezos" from my kids.
But it's not a strawman if it's actual behavior. One claims "help the poor" but then defines that as "overthrow the bourgeoisie." The true goal is often the actions taken, not the intentions stated.
The people I know who are interested in economic justice helped get ballot initiatives passed to expand minimum wage, expand medicaid, and overturn right to work in my state. We also respect picket lines and boycotts. Speaking only personally because I don't know for sure about anyone else, my family also almost always tips 20+% and gives a decent (thought sub 10%) amount to charity.
At no point have I guillotined anyone in the bourgeoisie. Hell, I think I might be the bourgeoisie. (I've always been fuzzy on this.) I quite agree that actions matter, but I think if you look at our actions the economic justice crowd comes off pretty well.
Look. Most human attainment is on a bell curve, and half the people are going to be on the left of that curve for whatever metric you care to investigate. For the ones that we look at in the modern world, I'm well placed on the right and it's pretty easy for me to make my way. That's privilege and I'm very glad to have been so blessed. But I can do what my part to make the economy more fair to people who are less fortunate than I am, and I think that's what most people who aren't using economic justice as a sneer mean when we say it.
>> What I want to know is whether people using [X] justice are actually more concerned with exacting justice against someone instead of helping the original group
Giving a buck to someone who gets robbed every night isn't much different than just giving money straight to the criminals.
If the opportunities are expensive to create, and the "we" who want them to be created have a plan that involves them not doing the paying because they've found someone else who can be made to pay, then either A: they're going to *ask* the someone else to pay and be willing to take "no" for an answer, or B: they're going to heap apologies and respect on the someone else whose wealth they are seizing, or C: they're seeing the someone else as a villain due for a dose of good old-fashioned retributive justice.
And I almost never see A or B.
There's a few other meanings of "justice" which I think are more relevant for some of these justices. There's fairness, which fits best with the "justice" in "economic justice". There's also restitution, which fits with "racial justice".
I've been scrolling down looking to see if anyone else had said this first. Thank you.
I really think a lot of this post is basically Scott strawmanning people he doesn't like. He could have run this idea that woke people like the idea of X justice because it maps to criminal justice and they get to punish people by literally any woke person he knows to find out that they/we don't think of it that way. Instead he constructed a straw woke person and then ruminated about their villainy.
I recall hearing in childhood religious school back in the early 90s that the English word "charity" comes from the Latin "caritas" meaning compassion, and it's about a feeling of caring deep in your heart. But the Hebrew "tzedakah", often translated as "charity" comes from the root "tzedek" meaning justice.
So if they're smelly and obnoxious and ungrateful and no one could blame you for not feeling compassion, you still need to give because justice calls for them to receive. Similarly if they are so numerous that you can only relate to them abstractly.
I never saw this as rejecting utopianism. It's just that in the Jewish vision of an ideal economy, there are still some people who can't take care of themselves and everyone else just steps up and takes care of them.
That's correct. But not only is it not caritas, the CRT-inflected understanding of justice is not tzedakah in support of the inevitably unfortunate (who might be any of us--a Job, for example). Rather, it is retribution on behalf of the "victims" of sin, the sin being advantage itself (styled as "privilege").
Tzedek is closer to righteousness than justice in my understanding.
I agree. This reminds me of the eternal debate on philanthropy vs taxation. As long as we are talking about charity, giving more is better - but it is perfectly alright if people choose not to give. If we frame it as justice, nobody should be allowed to prevent justice from running its course. The powerful should not have the right to withhold justice.
So if one wants charity for the poor they would organise a fundraiser. But if they want economic distributive justice they would try to Tax the Rich.
So it makes perfect sense to me that a movement that uses the term justice inflationary also devolves into cancel culture and a general jungle of formal and informal norms.
Yes, but also we have a question about legitimacy. The donor/taxpayer wants to be assured of the merit of what they're paying for. (Is it really needed? If it is needed, is it needed more than morally equivalent priorities? Will it do any good?)
As long as we are thinking in these terms, we are acknowledging the donor/taxpayer's implicit moral agency and right to judgment (even if the taxpayer's ability to exert judgment is limited to evading taxes, redirecting them through donor activity and casting votes for preferred political candidates).
But the CRT perspective assumes universal reluctance or refusal to donate/pay for justice strictly on account of racism and/or hoarding of privilege.
From this standpoint, there is no point in organizing a fundraiser (the rich are racists and won't give) and there can be no hope of redistribution (privilege hoarders will never relinquish their position at the top of the social pyramid). The justice of the cause having been established and defined already by fiat, seizing the levers of power becomes the obvious and only means of obtaining justice.
Good points. I think that the question of 'who gets to hold the lever' and decide which cause is worthy is absolutely central to understanding all this language about justice and privilege and empowerment. These terms directly speak to the envisaged shift in power from the hitherto powerful and privileged to the disenfranchised and underpriviledged who shall be empowered as right-holders.
Irrespective if one agrees with this view I think its a pretty straight-forward idea.
"So if one wants charity for the poor they would organise a fundraiser. But if they want economic distributive justice they would try to Tax the Rich."
Which supports the theory that "____ justice" is just about retribution. The debt is what, 30 trillion? The government spent 7 trillion last year alone? The last few years have shown that the government will spend whatever it wants, whenever it wants, regardless of the tax revenue it brings in. So "Tax the Rich" could only be about resentment.
Justice is what love looks like in public is a common motto among the woke religious.
That's what this song is about, no?
https://youtu.be/IbNv_feXTe8
I think there has been a general shift towards villifying our social/political opponents. “I believe in helping women” leaves open a discussion of “how”. “I support justice for women” implies that all persons who disagree with my beliefs are evil. Similarly we use words like “misogynistic” and “racist” with ever widening meaning because those words label our social opponents as evil.
I talked with a Unitarian minister recently about the difference between moral issues and political issues. She asserted with certainty that there was no difference whatsoever. Apparently those who disagree with her notion of “justice” are simply evil.
I'm not sure how her stance as you've described it implies that people who disagree with you are evil. Just because you consider something to be a moral issue doesn't mean that you necessarily have total certainty that you are right, and even if so, those who disagree with you could easily be mistaken rather than evil.
In addition to conflict theory maximization, once you define things as unjust you stop doing cost benefit analysis on them. I noticed this when I talked about raising minimum wage with people. To me, it's a matter of whether the higher pay outweighs job loss. To some other people, paying less than $X/hour is just immoral like slavery or something. You can't make good policy that way, especially on complex stuff like economics or climate.
Another great thing about the "justice" framing for the disingenuous political actor is that it doesn't actually require you to commit to any specific end point or set of policies.
If you say "Everybody should get paid exactly the same" then you have to defend that particular proposition. If you just say "Economic justice!" then you can just point in a general direction without committing to anything in particular.
I think whether increasing minimum wages will in practice cause job losses is one of those partisan arguments that makes people assume their opponent is from the other tribe and therefore pointless to argue with.
I note that I don't consider people with different moral beliefs than mine 'evil'. My wife thinks praying to God and apologizing for sin is importantly moral. I think God doesn't exist, and that all moral rules involving him are incorrect. But I don't think she's EVIL. I just think she's wrong.
In the same sense, I think there's room for a *tolerant* form of moral-politics. If you're tolerant of people with a different moral code than yours (presumably within some range of moral codes), you could see politics as an extension of morality and still not vilify those who disagree with your politics. No idea if the minister you were speaking to was tolerant, but I know Unitarians are generally noted for it.
That's not quite Pete's point, though. Yes, there is room to disagree while only considering someone to be wrong, rather than evil. When someone is pro-life, a person who is pro-choice can think that they are wrong (factually wrong, morally wrong, whatever) and not necessarily think them evil. By calling them a "misogynist" that seems to be very directly saying "and therefore evil." It's hard to hear the terms racist, misogynist, white supremacist, etc., without understanding the meaning as "and therefore evil." That's distinct from the ambiguity of disagreement, and seems to be exactly Pete's (and I believe Scott's) whole point.
I generally agree with Pete's first paragraph and was responding only to the second. Sorry for not being clear!
Byrel, you are correct that I was not describing the Venn diagram correctly. There is a possibility that the minister would accept some persons as being immoral but simply wrong as opposed to “evil”. However, I have never heard her suggest that such is the case. And she feels that her moral beliefs are a sound basis for political action.
Does this imply that an optimum for her would be for the political tribes to sort themselves on the morality axis, thus having a moral tribe and an immoral (or maybe amoral) tribe?
Short of this, it would seem that she'd be sort of stuck choosing the more moral of the two tribes (and then maybe trying to improve it).
Am I missing something here? It seems like a weird axis to optimize along, since it means that when the preferred team loses, it's dark times indeed (morally speaking). Seems like you'd want both tribes to value morality.
Hi Matt … I’ve been thinking more about this. Despite my earlier equivocation, I think that the term “moral” really does imply that “moral people are good” and “immoral people are bad”. (Though the word “evil” was probably too strong) Using the term “moral” is fundamentally different from talking about a utilitarian morality axis. Ethics and social theory and personal preference can encompass many concepts and shades of meaning, but “moral” seems absolute.
In the case of the person I mentioned, I think she has a personal vision of how the world should be ordered and is willing to use any weapon in order to produce that resolution. Equating morality with politics simply is another means to that end and I think it is done with little consideration for the implications. Your discussion of a moral axis is a very rational approach but it is not the way her mind works.
Maybe. I feel about 70% confident in that.
I was taken aback recently when an otherwise intelligent person said "TV show X has bad politics". Bad, of course, being any option other than their own.
I welcome the pendulum swinging in the other direction, it's about time.
To add to your point, to me it seems like we have a huge uptick in “essentialist” language. We don’t say someone did a racist thing, we say that person is a racist.
Think of the context of idiotic 14yr old behavior, and you see the different implications in this language…
Perhaps it allows people to support a cause without having to propose any specific solution since "justice" should be self-evident.
I mean, on the neoconservative right everything is war: war against terror, war against drugs, spiritual warfare. I think the framing resonates depending on your moral framework.
Left wing liberals are focused on a notion of equality and fairness as justice (I think Haidt's moral foundations theory is really helpful here). So the idea that wealthy nations create the most CO2 and cause the most global warming, where poorer nations (mostly already hot) will disproportionately experience the worst effects, is inherently unjust.
Has anyone used the term "war on drugs" in the last sixty years without being opposed to it? As far as I can figure out it was a short-lived Nixon-era slogan.
The US, of course, never had a meaningful war on drugs, and certainly doesn't today. The Philippines has a war on drugs. The US has a half-assed enforcement with no hope of taking a meaningful bite out of the problem.
Meanwhile the "War on Terror" was an actual war, and "Spiritual Warfare" is a term that I am willing to believe exists but I've never seen it used.
> Meanwhile the "War on Terror" was an actual war, and "Spiritual Warfare" is a term that I am willing to believe exists but I've never seen it used.
I can promise you, as someone who grew up in the American South going to Church every Sunday, the idea that you have *never* seen the words "spiritual warfare" used (or similar phrases, like "Lord's Army" or "Armor of God") is wild to me.
Yeah I grew up evangelical. "Spiritual warfare" was all over the place in the 90s, and as far as I can tell is still a dominant paradigm in evangelical circles.
To be fair, it does sound cool (until it's associated with boring church people).
Also, compare: jihad.
I don't think the war on terror was an actual war. It was the framing for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (and other involvements), true. And these were wars. But it covered a lot of other legal, domestic security, and international policy shifts.
My point being, it's a framing that a certain segment of the political right commonly uses to frame policy and moral goals. And it brings with it a set of normative assumptions and methodological practices.
War on X, like X Justice, or like Free X, is the same kind of moral framing that everyone does.
The "War on Poverty" was a well known phrase in the 1960s associated with the Johnson administration, so this is not exclusively the domain of neo-cons.
It seems to me that we have made great progress in the war on poverty, and that this progress is mostly unrelated to any Great Society programs.
Good point. I fell into a rabbit hole last night reading about "war on x" examples. I was surprised how many were from the left.
So about the "311,000" hits for "climate villains": this estimate is completely wrong.
I don't mean that it's not what Google says on page one of the search results. That part is true. But if you click through to page 15 of the results for this search, you find that the estimate reduces from 311,000 to 149 results. Google has decided that want to always provide an estimate of the total number of results for every search, but they have neither precomputed accurate estimates for all possible searches, nor do they wish to spend the compute to calculate good estimates on the fly for every search, when most people never go past page one. Their estimates can be ok for searches on common words (where they most likely do have cached in a database somewhere the current number of web pages associated with that term), but for compound phrases, they take each of the component words, and do some kind of math to estimate the value. So here, they would look at both "climate" hits (4,470,000,000 results), and "villains" hits (2,190,000,000 results), and maybe a few other parameters, and make a guess as to how often these appear together. Unfortunately, these guesses have almost no relationship to reality.
I often see these number cited as evidence for how prevalent something is. Given Google's reputation and prevalence, I find it pretty irresponsible that they still list these estimates despite knowing how wrong they are. But presumably some product manager likes showing users a lot of zeros to give an inflated impression of how comprehensive Google's web crawling is.
Here's a longer analysis. It's five years old, but not much has changed in that time:
https://karl-voit.at/2017/01/15/google-search-estimates/
Apparently, Google is currently experimenting with removing this number, which I applaud: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-estimated-number-of-search-results-gone-33016.html
I'm less sure the estimates (of the number of search results) is wrong and think it's more likely that Google decided to more aggressively limit the number of results you can see. (And that makes sense – keeping some kind of 'paginated results' data, with thousands (or more) of results in some server's memory is expensive at their scale.)
I personally miss the days when there were (or could be) literally hundreds or thousands of pages of results for a search, but I think Google noticed (a while ago) that almost no one bothers looking beyond the first or maybe second page anyways.
I defy the data that there are only ~150 results for "climate villains"! That seems way too low to be plausible.
I second this theory. I don't know how accurate their estimates are, but I know that their total results are truncated enormously. Everything returns about 15-20 pages before "repeat with omitted" and returns about 30-50 pages once you "repeat with omitted." Searching for the two words 'climate' and 'villain' returns only 30 more results before or after searching again with omitted results included, than the respective search (omitted/non-omitted) for the quoted phrase '"climate villain"' even though most of the results for the two words don't include the phrase "climate villain" and many don't include either word (e.g. they highlight the phrase "bad guy" as why they matched it with "villain" or they highlight the word "environment" as why they matched it with "climate.") Similar numbers occur when searching for other random phrases. (I searched for "colossal regret" and "American dream" for reference. After repeating the search with omitted results, "American dream" still only gave 41 pages with 405 total results. The 44 million estimated results seems much more plausible of a total count for that phrase than the 405 it returned -- or the 21 pages before repeating with omitted results included.)
The “American dream” example is excellent, and handily convinces me that clicking through the paginated results is not a good representation of the total number of Cleve pages cataloged by Google which logically match the search input. However, I still maintain that the first-page estimate is also an inaccurate measure of the same.
While it does give the “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 149 already displayed.” message, repeating with the omitted results returns only 290 results, at least 3 of which point to this blog post. Keep in mind, this is not a claim that only 290 such results exist on the internet, but that Google has only cataloged this number of pages matching the result. There’s lots of parts of the web Google’s crawlers can’t get to (private Facebook threads, etc.)
The intrinsic lack of justice in the world (as it is) is disturbing, to say the least. Arguably human beings have been in a struggle to make the world more just for a long time, but at its heart, the world is not just. How could it be? For the same reason it’s not unjust either.
It seems to me a lot of people aren’t really able to come to terms with that truth in a fundamental way, and they start looking for someone to blame.
Feels to me like saying “we should pursue economic justice” is a way of saying “we should help the poor, and I went to college!”.
There's definitely a lot of signaling going on with the phrase. Maybe more so signaling allegiance with SJ causes more generally, rather than college specifically. Of course, many people learn these terms in college and the affiliation is probably pretty strong.
Some of us rather think "we should arm the poor" though I suspect I'm in the minority here.
Depends what exactly you mean. I, for one, strongly support the constitutional right of the American poor to bear arms.
Arm the poor and watch them cut your throat for your wallet. Once you've told them "everyone richer than you is The Enemy" (and this is what "Hang the rich" boils down to), it'll take them about 5 seconds to work out that hey, that guy with the nice haircut and college education and all those lovely books on Theory is richer than us!
Not to mention that lots of those "poor" are already armed- and probably have worldviews you'd find horribly reactionary.
Meanwhile, the rich can afford their own security. It is the honest working man who suffers the brunt of this wretched philosophy.
All of this, of course, comes with the counterpoint that collective bargaining and unions (actually productive use of labor instead of Theory-laden myopia about a Revolution, Permanent or otherwise) actually gets good results for the poor and the working man- which is why most would-be revolutionaries are as anti-union as any arch-capitalist. If the working class can genuinely improve their position, after all, that might mean the Revolution might not happen!
Not at all. I am strongly in favor of Second Amendment rights for the poor. Nobody needs a gun more than some struggling single mom in a drug-infested neighborhood. She should be able to wear some honking big .45 on her hip when she goes to the store for baby formula. I would offer her state-subsidized training at the local range every Saturday, too, so she knows how to use it.
I'd support a policy of making gun safety courses either subsidized or free for all citizens.
So... as someone who actually does use "___" Justice, quite frequently, I'd like to say that I think it's a good thing to reframe "helping the poor" or "saving the poor" as "pursuing economic justice." I don't think it's a good thing for people to think of themselves as saviors, to me that's a really unhealthy and unhelpful mindset which results in people who aren't themselves poor thinking they can be the experts and the decision-makers, and that there is something wrong with poor people, that they need to be "saved" or "fixed." We live in a world where there is enough food to feed everyone, yet people go hungry; enough shelter to keep everyone warm, yet people go cold. To me, that says there is something wrong with our system of resource distribution, not with the people who ended up, for one reason or another, being left out of it.
Does that result in a sense of responsibility to fix the system? Yes! Does it imply that we don't live in Utopia? Yes! Because we don't. And I don't think we should pretend to. But it also implies that we *could* live in utopia. It demonstrates a real hope about the possibility of utopia. It says, "if we could figure out how to live together better, we could all have enough to eat and be warm."
Several more points:
-I agree with James Grimmelmann that what is meant by all these forms of "_____ Justice" is very much restorative justice, not retributive justice. Which I encourage you to look up if you haven't heard of that "_____ Justice" before :)
-Climate Justice means responding to climate change in an equitable way, recognizing that its impact is greater on some groups of people than others, and thus that as we plan how to mitigate the impact of climate change, we need to do it in such a way that historically marginalized people don't continue to bear the brunt of the impact.
-Now don't get too made at me for attempting to give this community the opportunity to learn to better steelman SJAs. To an SJA like myself, your article screams that you need to check your privilege because your white fragility is getting triggered (would love to explain those terms more if requested). It sounds like you want to cling to the sense that you still live in a utopia, want to feel good about being a generous, saintly person, and want these so much that you don't want to recognize the systems that oppress people with historically marginalized identities and instead would like to rationalize their situation being their own, individual fault.
Oh, and might it have pictures? 'Cos you know, us redneck -ists and -phobes en't too smart, readin' is hard for us what with all the big words and hard concepts.
Be careful what you wish for - I might have responded to this comment in earnest :)
The rhetorical shift to e.g. "environmental justice" is, I think, genuinely puzzling to people outside a very narrow sphere of hypersensitive life. I don't think we need to appeal to uncharitable notions of white fragility to explain why people might find them confusing. (I fully get what it means, you don't need to explain, but it also seems like bulverism which avoids engaging with the subject matter at hand.)
With that said, I absolutely think more woke perspectives are a necessary addition to a conversation like this, so thanks for chiming in even if I disagree.
Thank you for chiming in as well. I'm listening. I think the white fragility vibe I got was less from the puzzlement over the rhetorical shift and more from the complaint that the result of the rhetorical shift was comparable to the shift from utopian to dystopian fiction.
I think that there is another view on the whole "shift" issue, if we look at it not as a progress from utopia to dystopia, but just as progress.
Taking the setting from a somewhat similar line of thought in https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/05/dont-be-an-asch-hole/, an antebellum Southerner in the early 1800s who speaks out against slavery, or even just isn't racist, might be a praiseworthy person. On the other hand, someone who isn't pro-slavery today doesn't seem to deserve any praise; they just meet the minimal criteria of being an OK person.
In this context, a shift from talking about "help" or even "saving" to using "justice" might be either a reflection of shifting societal norms, or an attempt to influence these norms (whether conscious or unconscious).
I think that talking in the context of social systems and the outcomes they provide is illustrative of the difference between the contexts.
Let's assume system that has unequal outcomes that are bad for some group and an alternative system that has very different outcomes which are more equal. A discussion in terms of "justice" presumes that the former system needs to be dismantled and the latter system is inherently better. A discussion in terms of helping people implies a burden of proof to show that the suffering group will actually be better off given the proposed changes - since you can easily have a system which is simply equally bad for everyone, or you can have a failure in building the hypothetical new system after dismantling the old one which makes it worse for everyone. And this is not hypothetical, there are all kinds of naive proposals with the intent to increase justice which would make poor people even worse off.
Also, do note your phrasing, for example, with respect to climate justice, that you directly go from recognizing certain facts, which is reasonable, to recognizing a certain duty, which is very different. The fact that impact of something is greater on some groups of people than others does *not* automatically imply a duty to ensure that this does not continue. Your phrasing assumes this as axiomatic, which I fundamentally refuse - you can *debate and convince* me of the notion that in this particular case for particular reasons one particular group should be forced to sacrifice something to ensure that historically marginalized people don't continue to bear the brunt of the impact; there are all kinds of arguments for this situation that make sense; but if you start with an assertion that this simply needs to be "recognized", presuming that the debate must end with that conclusion, then that's not a debate I'm going to get involved in, it's something like another commenter pointed out (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/justice-creep/comment/5562310?s=r), that this use of "climate justice" starts with the presumption that your proposed intervention is just and appropriate, while it very much needs to be debated.
Or perhaps that's the key difference that's hidden by the different, incompatible interpretations of the very loaded word "justice" ? Because for me, even restorative justice starts to apply only when there is actual guilt involved and does not involve redistribution of resources from someone who is in a privileged position unless they actually *personally did* something unjust and abusive to get there; and my inherent understanding of justice is that I consider group punishment as fundamentally unfair, so implying collective guilt for something their countrymen or ancestors did can't possibly facilitate justice in my mind.
For climate justice in particular, there is in my opinion a clear duty for better-off countries/people/groups to help those that are worse off. However, the duty does not arise because there are unequal *outcomes*. The duty arises because climate change is caused by carbon in the atmosphere, and different groups have very unequally contributed to this carbon.
With that in mind, the USA cannot just say "we don't care about the disappearance of the Marshall Islands, it's their problem". Because the USA, being the country with the world's highest carbon footprint, is also the country in the world that is most responsible for the rising oceans. The Marshall Islanders on the other hand have contributed ~zero to the climate crisis.
Traditionally, people did not have to pay for some negative externalities of their actions. For example, everyone could pollute clean air or put carbon in the atmosphere without a cost. This was clearly unjust, because some people (the rich ones who could afford fossil fuels) used a disproportionate share of a common good, without any cost to them. In my opinion, this leads to a clear moral duty to help those who now suffer from a carbonated atmosphere.
"Traditionally, people did not have to pay for some negative externalities of their actions. For example, everyone could pollute clean air or put carbon in the atmosphere without a cost.This was clearly unjust, because some people (the rich ones who could afford fossil fuels) used a disproportionate share of a common good"
Unless the rich already contribute a disproportionate enough share to the common good that it compensates for climate stuff. If they have to pay for negative externalities, they should also get paid for positive externalities.
Or to put it another way: If westerners had not started using fossil fuels to drive the industrial revolution, would the third world be better off today? Maybe they owe us?
Is that a form of "positive externality justice"? ;-)
"Alright, after crunching the numbers we find that you owe Jeff Bezos 200 dollars worth of positive externalities."
https://i.redd.it/wxix3x1bbdn51.jpg
I'm sure that all my Amazon purchases have made him 200$ richer already :)
Seriously though: the link between fossile fuel consumption of the rich and negative outcomes on the poor is scientifically undisputed, whereas it is much harder to establish such causal links for positive externalities.
Ar-Pharamazon owes me way more than that with what he's doing with "The Rings of Power" and his showrunners running amok with "hardened warrior piss-and-vinegar Galadriel" and "political operator Elrond"; I didn't spend time and money in my twenties acquiring every last volume of HoME to put up with this kind of glib rebooting!
I've got to say, the line "If they have to pay for negative externalities, they should also get paid for positive externalities" did make me stop and think. I will note that in practice, humans seem to not think that these are symmetrical. Pretty much every legal system lets you recover damages from someone who harmed you (in at least some contexts), while I don't know of anywhere that lets you sue someone you saved to recover a portion of the utility you provided them. And similarly you don't get a pass on assault charges if you also were the surgeon who cured your victim's cancer.
To be fair, we do offer subsidies for some things with positive externalities, such as green energy, food, and education. You might debate how well those are targetted, but an attempt is at least made
It would be an interesting system. Take that kid in China who got ran over by a car and nobody helped. What if a bystander knew he could get big bux for saving the kid? But then people would start faking near-deaths to make money, so maybe not so good.
"And similarly you don't get a pass on assault charges if you also were the surgeon who cured your victim's cancer."
Presumably he got paid for that already.
Copyright law and patent laws are entire sections of the lawcode of every country in the world that are about suing people for utility you provided them.
Thanks to @Guy and @Theme Arrow. I hadn't thought about positive externalities in this way before - very interesting, although I think I agree with Theme Arrow that they probably shouldn't be symmetric.
I think you're right that using the term "justice" presumes that there's something that needs to be done about the situation, and I agree that simply the existence of a difference in impact is not an argument for why something should be done about it. Thanks for your comment.
But is there a way to conclude for all or most members of the set "poor people" that there is never something wrong that requires fixing? If there is ever something wrong that needs fixing, and it is something immanent in the individual, does the need to fix it require that the poor person be at fault?
Incidentally, I would love to see some non-tautological evidence for the existence of "white fragility." Is it like phlogiston?
White fragility is more like presumed guilt, since the more you argue against an accusation of it, the more fragile you display yourself to be. It's inarguable and therefore unhelpful to bring into just about any discussion. And, of course, it's hopelessly racist.
Yes. I feel like there should be a term for this particular style of float-burn presumed guilt, but if there is I am insufficiently caffeinated to recall it.
I've heard "Kafkatrap" before.
I don't immediately have a great answer for you about white fragility except to say that I am a white person and I notice the experience of it in myself. I don't think in individual instances outside observers can say with certainty what the internal experience of another person is. However, it does make a good deal of sense to me that people would tend to be sort of defensive about a topic that tends to make them feel guilt and shame, which race does at times for me and for many other white people I have talked to about it. I don't know if anyone has done a good scientific study about it, but people who talk with white people about race a lot tend to have some interesting anecdotes about it. My comment about it was more just to share my knee-jerk response from a SJA lens, not to posit that Scott is actually definitely experiencing white fragility in this instance.
In what way is that experience different from feeling any other form of social aggression?
Glad to read this understanding of failures of our resource distribution systems, and what justice could be ie an absence of marginalised and oppressed people denied access to fundamental requirements for a decent existence.
And how many of you glibly finger-wagging *are* "marginalised and oppressed people"? I see a lot of talking on their behalf by precisely the well-meaning white saviours which is decried by the 'justice for X" talk.
Maybe too loaded to answer. Yours, a white, marginalised and oppressed woman.
Oh, comes it to that, I can tally up a nice little list of marginalisation and oppression myself, but it's as artificial an exercise as the antipodal one of telling me I have more privilege and status than a famous wealthy African-American man, for instance, based purely on "you're white".
We'd really have to define terms. And time is too short for this.
Not too short, however, for someone to trot out the "white fragility" accusation. The problem is one of definitions, and as someone has mentioned, definitions creep. "Racism" had a particular meaning, however limited or non-comprehensive it was, but now "racism, racist" just means "If you disagree with me you are a bad person".
" To an SJA like myself, your article screams that you need to check your privilege because your white fragility is getting triggered"
And this is why I argue above that "X, Y or Z Justice" is a way of having your cake and eating it - you're certainly not clothing any naked or feeding any hungry by these buzzwords but my oh my, the bright comforting warm glow of virtue by scolding the naughty!
Now *you* can be the saviour swooping in to rescue us, mired in our ignorance and complacence, fixing us with your expertise on all the talking-points of social justice. Doesn't it feel just *yummy*?
You encapsulate precisely what I said about "saviours and saints" being regarded with suspicion, and about how being the Morality Police is the way of abrogating that virtue for yourself but in line with the new directives about not putting yourself up as a leader. It's different when you do it to outsiders, though, because it is recognised and agreed that *those* people (the fragile triggered whites) *do* have "something wrong with [them], that they need to be "saved" or "fixed."
Righteous hatred and righteous violence have been popular since recorded history.
Can you tell us what "people go hungry" means, in explicit detail? I assume you don't mean it literally, because most people are hungry sometimes. I was really hungry yesterday. Does it just mean "people don't have everything to eat that they'd like to eat"?
About a third of the world's population will die younger than they should due to complications of inadequate macronutrient consumption during some period of their life (permanently weakened immune systems and gallbladder failure are common complication of even brief periods of starvation; 100-200 million people in India alone suffer sufficiently inadequate access to macronutrients to cause permanent side effects in most years, with the affected people not necessarily being the same one year to the next), and approximately 6-10 million people directly starve to death every year. To be fair to your point though, most of the people I hear using phrases like "economic justice" tend to be talking about domestic inequality in countries where obesity is a bigger problem than malnourishment; rather than global inequality which actually kills people through hunger. Though there is also an argument to be made that even in the first world, many people lack access to adequate nutrition through food -- though multivitamins may in principle give most of them alternative access if multivitamins can actually replace vegetables -- if we are considering micronutrients and not just macronutrients.
What are your sources for these statistics?
I knew that malnutrition caused many deaths by weakening the immune system, but did not knew that temporary starvation regularly causes permanent immunosuppression.
I'm surprised to read that so many people directly starve to death, as oppose to dying from the effects of chronic malnutrition. Are they living in regions afflicted by famine, or do people directly starve even apart from famines?
The dystopian comparison is not applicable, as there is Orwell and Huxley (and if you insist, Kafka and Phil K Dick). Orwell (or Kafka) deals with force and redistribution of power as "justice", Huxley (and likely PKD) deals with subverted utopias as "freedom". People are starting to forget about Huxley, whilst overly obsessing over Orwell. https://expressiveegg.org/2017/01/03/ur-kinds-dystopia/
Social justice, the first one of these I heard 20+ years ago, still doesn’t make sense to me. I read about it and it still sounds like white noise or laundered ideas passing as an excuse. What the professor said here: https://youtu.be/YQ-Upb4Szms
No more kicking the monkey !!!
Long ago, I asked what the difference was between social justice and justice. I never did get an answer.
[Attempting to create a steelman definition] 'Social justice' is the subset of justice regarding harms caused by societal causes, just as "criminal justice" is the subset of justice regarding harms caused by criminal causes. Criminal harms are easily covered under the law by definition, as the law is what makes something a crime; the law will specify some combination of restitution to the victim and punishment to the offender that constitutes 'justice'. Social harms are not as easily covered, often because society, and not an individual, is responsible for the harm.
As someone on the right, I don't like 'social justice' and its derivatives because the harms are often subjective and their causation is often indirect. When the cause of 'harm' is 'society', it's impossible to end up with a 'fair' result.
Not claiming to be an expert, but my impression was always that 'social' justice calls attention to the fact that our social fabric and hierarchy (and norms that support it) produce unfair outcomes. Whereas, 'justice' by itself seems to have a more narrow criminal/deontological connotation (punishment for wrongdoers)
Alasdair MacIntyre, call your office. By which I mean: we can only frame ethics as justice because (as MacIntyre points out), we in the modern West lack a common vocabulary of virtues and values, which would (in his view) derive from a notion of the telos (purpose) of a human life. In the great religious traditions, justice is balanced with mercy (at least theoretically), but justice as SJW's use the term isn't the justice that Aristotle thought of as one of the virtues: it's a demand for intervention by some authority, not the practice of fairness towards another person. Mercy, on the other hand- at least, as I see it- can only be an individual virtue, but woke/Successor Ideology/SJW theory doesn't have any room for individual virtues, so all we have is justice without its necessary counterbalance.
I could be wrong about all of this, but I think MacIntyre has a lot to say about where things went off the rails.
I agree with the thrust of your point, especially regarding the "demand for intervention by some authority". But I disagree that we've really "lost the vocabulary" to discuss or promote these ideas. Not many study Ancient Greek, true, but I think we can express "τέλος" just about as effectively by talking about "the meaning of life", and we don't need to deeply understand Greek "ἀρετή" to communicate the idea of "virtue". There must be other reasons why those memes have lost their force, relative to "justice"-focused versions.
But who is "we"?
Indeed, the vocabulary still exists, but the concepts it refers to are devoid of shared meaning. Nobody agrees these days what the "meaning of life" or "virtues" are supposed to be, which is exactly the point.
Dear Crotchety: First, all props to you, awesome internet name, one that I wish I had thought of first.
Second, it's almost certain I am not doing, er, justice to MacIntyre's argument (in After Virtue) which is a big long and learned argument. But I think MacIntyre has insights as to why our conversations about ethics in the modern world are so unsatisfying and fruitless. I am endlessly fascinated by the complete lack of mercy, compassion, forgiveness, or even redemption narratives in so much call-out/cancel culture. Once you're a racist/sexist/transphobic whatever, you're done, cooked, outta here. . I think this shift to justice as appeal to authority has something to do with it.
Ha, thanks, I chose the name as self-parody but I worry a bit that I've leaned into it too far.
I'll have to reread After Virtue, since I don't think was in the right frame of mind to understand it charitably the first time around. I was (and suspect I still am) very sympathetic to his argument; my quibble is fairly narrow. I think people still have an intuitive understanding of what a word like "sin" or "virtue" means, they (we?) just don't treat it as important and use it as a guide in living lives and treating with others.
And while I suppose I can see how this cashes out into cancel culture, I think there are more profound consequences in other domains. For example, a figurative lack of charity might pale in the face of a literal lack of charity.
Nitpicking here - justice is balanced with charity, mercy is the mingling of justice and charity. Mercy springs from charity and justice. However, charity is more than mercy and justice is more than law. Charity and justice are cardinal virtues, mercy is a secondary virtue. We nowadays tend to translate “faith, hope and charity” as “faith, hope and love”, and love is a better way to think of charity, especially in relation to God.
Charity is first and primarily love of God which then conduces to love of our neighbour, justice is equality and equity between people as individuals and as members of society, and mercy is the principle which derives from both, spurred to love our neighbour as ourselves by charity and to repair deficiencies by justice.
Deiseach, thank you, I think you're offering a beautiful and classically Christian framework to these ideas. On the other hand, I'm Jewish. So we think about God, for example, as having two "thrones," (we're in metaphor-land here people), the throne of strict justice (din) and the throne of mercy (rachamim.) Din is justice as judgement, rachamim (mercy) is letting go of the need to extend the fullness of law/judgment, because people are fallible and without mercy the world could not stand. (This is a big theme of the metaphors of the liturgy of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.)
In classical Jewish thought, judgement/justice (good vs evil, etc) and mercy/compassion are always balanced and the ideal person always holds them both as ideals and guides to action. But getting back to Scott's posting, in the contemporary world, we have justice everywhere, but mercy nowhere, especially for the "sinners" who say or do something perceived (or cynically twisted into) as racially or genderly or culturally offensive. Justice is great! But it's not the only thing that makes human life better. I think we'd agree on that.
A long time ago, Scott reviewed After Virtue by MacIntyre and, since he's a consequentialist, the book predictably didn't leave a great impression.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/10/book-review-after-virtue-or-somebody-here-is-really-confused-and-i-just-hope-its-not-me/
Like many semantic shifts, I suspect this is because using the justice framing is more successful in arguments. People need to fulfill justice/obligations but want to be saviors.
Also, the idea of being any kind of hero has become seriously fraught. Most of us still dream of being praiseworthy paragons on some level, but even if you’re actually a selfless saint, once you’re recognized you can look forward to being scrutinized and torn apart for myriad reasons. Just wanting to feel like a good person is pathological now. You can never get goodness or virtue quite right on the front end, because all you really have are intentions, and any negative impact might be deemed to outweigh the good by someone somewhere.
As others have pointed out, we’ve lost a common language of morality such that no person or action can really be good. Instead, thinking you’re a good person is basically the root of all evil. This idea has been in the water supply a long time. No one wants to feel like their motive is to boost their ego, assuage their guilt, or serve some kind of savior complex. So we’ve had to find a way to rebrand our basic desire to be moral and pro-social beings with something that doesn’t feel like self-indictment.
Thanks for this comment. I will think on it. I agree that there is a tendency in our culture (and I see it in my own post) to imply that "wanting to feel like a good person is pathological", and I agree that is a problem. I think part of where the suspicion comes from for me is that historically, there have been a lot of people (especially westerners) who have claimed that they were helping, even saving people, when they were obviously doing them great harm (i.e. putting African people in generational slavery based on a new concept called "race" and claiming it was good for them because it allowed them to learn about Christianity and thereby save their immortal souls).
The way "justice" is being used in this post implies something systemic, so beyond the level of an individual. When I think about "helping," I think about what I can do. It's neither justice nor being a savior. It's just the right thing to do.
And to most people these days, you saying this means you MUST have some kind of sinister, scheming ulterior motive, like FEELING GOOD about the fact you did something good when you're supposed to instead feel constant scrupulous guilt at every waking moment over all the evils in the world and how you aren't doing enough to stop them.
I instead subscribe to the radical philosophy that it feels good to be good.
I agree! And your comment reminds me of the Talmudic maxim that while we as individuals are not responsible for healing the world, we are not free to desist from the task.
It seems like Marketing 101. Define the name of your movement in a way that makes it very difficult for your opponent to argue against it.
If I support more foobars and you support less foobars, we can have a sensible discussion about whether foobars are good or bad. Or, I could label the pro-foobar position as "Foobar Justice" and hold a big "Foobar Justice" rally. Now, in order to make the opposite case you need to either come out and say "I oppose Foobar Justice" or else attempt to make the case that "actually it's the less-Foobar position that's Foobar Justice".
But of course this is an asymmetric weapon, it only works for the sorts of people who have the sort of social power that allows you to redefine words; if you don't have all the journalists on your side then you're not going to be successful.
See also: "-phobe". You don't have to win an argument that bazqux is good, if you can simply label anyone opposed to is as a bazquxphobe, clearly motivated by an irrational fear of bazqux.
Foobar Justice made me giggle like an idiot for at least 15 seconds.
This vaguely grasps the vibe but not the essence. You can't just call whatever you want justice and expect people to accept it without a justification (pun intended). The reason why this "justice creep" is so memetically successful is becase there are indeed valid resons and arguments to look at some issues from this point of view. Same with -phobes. It doesn't replace the argumentation, it works as a link to it.
What happens when you actually try to replicate such vibe without having a propper justification can be very well seen in modern Russian propaganda. They keep talking about russiaphobes everywhere, keep claiming to be on the Right side of history, how current war in Ukrane is just, because they are fighting literal nazis brainwashing poor ukranians into hating Russia. How democracy and liberal values is just an ephemism for USA zone of influence and the West is just brainwashed by their own propaganda to notice it. And even people in Russia don't buy this crap. Well, some do but much less then in a counterfactual world where such claims standed to the scrutiny and russian media had any credence at all.
But what is the standard for whether “justice” or “phobe” makes sense, other than “I agree with the position”? The “valid reasons” appear to be entirely in the eye of the beholder.
You say “Russophobic” doesn’t make sense as a label for people who oppose the Ukrainian invasion, and I agree. But I feel the same way about applying “transphobic” to someone who thinks more honest research is needed on the long term effects and efficacy of puberty blockers.
You read the arguments, counter arguments and counter counter arguments, check multiple sources, listen to the experts in the field and people whose rationality and intelligence proved to be high, try to account for your own biases, use heuristics which proved to be successful in producing valid knowledge - you know, do the usual epistemology stuff.
Ironically, your comment proves it's incorrectness.
> The reason why this "justice creep" is so memetically successful is becase there are indeed valid resons and arguments to look at some issues from this point of view.
No, the reason it's so successful is that all major relevant institutions in the West (academia, entertainment, news outlets) are overwhelmingly left-wing. Sure, there a red bubbles of media, but I'm sure many here be the first to say OANN and Fox News are not good news outlets. (I think the same, incidentally)
> What happens when you actually try to replicate such vibe without having a propper justification can be very well seen in modern Russian propaganda. They keep talking about russiaphobes everywhere, keep claiming to be on the Right side of history, how current war in Ukrane is just, because they are fighting literal nazis brainwashing poor ukranians into hating Russia.
Reporting in the NYT or NPR or some random university's statements on relevant topics reads exactly the same to a conservative.
> No, the reason it's so successful is that all major relevant institutions in the West (academia, entertainment, news outlets) are overwhelmingly left-wing.
You are mistaking cause and effect here. Academia wasn't always left-wing. It wasn't somehow coerced to be left wing through violence. It became left-wing naturally due to the fact that leftist arguments were more persuasive.
That is a traditional "invisible hand" argument, and entirely orthogonal to the discussion at hand.
I don't see how it's orthogonal.
I claimed that substance is required, you said that just huge popularity is enough and I pointed that this popularity was achieved through substance.
If my last claim is wrong, then yours is valid, otherwise it's not. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
The existence of valid reasons for something doesn't necessarily imply that it's wrong. My point was that there is no dissenting voices in the mainstream, and therefore claims of e.g. "islamophobia" are not absurd to you (and many here) as "russophobia" or "christophobia". Whether that arose due to the arguments actually being better than counterarguments has not been established.
Interesting, what evidence do you have that the Marxist takeover of universities is related to the persuasiveness of Marxism? Is it the 50 million+ dead, or just the grandiose language?
No, but seriously, wouldn't it be weird if a coordinated infiltration and indoctrination program just happened to coincide with the Marxist takeover of universities, and that *suddenly* Marxism just got way more persuasive at that exact moment, despite its genocidal history?
Well, the first hint is that there is no coordinated marxist indoctrination program, nor there was a marxist takeover of universities in the West, unless you stretch the words so much that they loose all their meaning.
It's an obvious null hypothesis. If X becomes popular among intellectuals then we assume that it has something to do with truthfulness, persuasiveness and other intellectual virtues of X. Unless there was actual enforcement of X to begin with. Like in USSR, during actual Marxist takeover. Feel free to present your case though.
I'm not sure what does these millions of dead people have to do with your point. Do you claim that academics in the West became so frightened by the communists, that they decided to become cryptocommunists themselves in order to be safe after the inevitable communist world revolution?
Are you claiming that the Fabian Society did not exist?
Or... and stop me if you've heard this before: Since membership in the Academy, or bureaucracies, or the media has nothing to do with popular opinion and everything to do with existing members choosing who gets let through the gate; such organizations become philosophically/socially purer/more isolated over time.
Lets assume that it's true. How did a new ideology take over such institution? Were the existent members bribed? Or coerced through violence? Or did the ideas just spread naturally?
Since gatekeeping is a social process, undoubtedly by hiring/accepting people that they considered "like" them, coupled with cliqueshneshness and exclusion/shunning, then using the institution to broadcast which views were acceptable and pre-screen out the ideologically undesirable?
The academy was a training ground for priests. The civil service was a way of rewarding political allies. Ideological conformation has been baked into them from their very founding. To claim it's not there now you'd have to demonstrate that it's been expunged..
One consequence of the excessive justice-speak is that it has, along with my predisposition towards contrarianism, made me skeptical of the concept of "justice" at all. Someone asked me about a year ago, why "justice" is an important virtue, and I realized it was a question I had never considered.
Surely it's important for a governing body's legitimacy: a government which does not uphold the commonfolk's expectation of justice will face social unrest. But among utilitarians, is there a reason to pursue justice as a first-order virtue? I can't summon an argument for it.
Well, if we're working with the standard definitions, your question has a clear answer. Among utilitarians, there's no reason to pursue anything whatsoever except utility as a first-order value.
With that said, most people have very strong primitive intuitions that justice (in some sense) is important. That's probably why thought experiments like Nozick's "Utility Monster" have been very effective arguments against strict utilitarianism. Motivated in large part by such arguments, many nominally-utilitarian philosophers have developed theories which build in distributive justice (and sometimes other factors like retributive justice) alongside utility, trading them off against each other in a way which doesn't result in those unpleasant conclusions.
Low social credit score?
Even from a strict numbers game point of view, I would prefer a world wherein all 10 billion people on the planet get 1000 utilons, than one where 9,999,999,999 people get 1200 utilons and one randomly selected poor bastard gets -10,000,000,000 utilons. This, I suggest, is the utilitarian version of justice.
Actually I think this point is the key to the question posed above. Because of human intuitions that justice/fairness are important, I think fairness should increase utility overall. In your hypothetical model, this would be something like everyone getting a 'bonus' 100 utilons just from the system being fair. Note that this is already the higher utility situation in your example, because you prefer it, demonstrating that you'd get extra utility from knowing you were in that world rather than the second world.
There's a fairly hard cap on how much this can help utilitarianism's inequality problem. Do people prefer a fairer world? Yes. Are they willing to give up their own resources to get there? Somewhat - but not usually to a great extent.
People regularly confront this question in the form of "should we pay more taxes so the state can provide more services?" And the most reliable way of getting people to vote "yes" is if you can tell them *other people* will be the ones primarily doing the paying. And virtually no one volunteers to pay more in taxes than they're required to - even though there's a box for that, at least in the US!
In general, most people would love to keep their full paycheck, even at a cost to social equality. I think this speaks to a mild preference for social equality, but a far stronger preference for having more stuff personally.
So, I would prefer the second one personally. But I wouldn’t call it just. I think utilitarianism just doesn’t really care about justice. Also, isn’t this Olemas?
Also it’s worth noting that if you believe Christian lore, Jesus was unjustly killed so that we could go to heaven. Which is basically all of us getting extra utilitons for one person suffering horribly in some undeserved way
(1) I think you mean Omelas
(2) Why do you not call it just? What is your view, upon which you base the decision, that it is unjust for that one person to suffer such massive injustice? I think you have a point there, and that is a question that utilitarians need to answer, but I think it is a lot to assume that the philosophy doesn't care about justice - I imagine the very reason for it is that they believe it is the most just system by comparison with what we already have
(3) Theology of the Atonement is one version of the substitionary death of Jesus. In His own right, He was unjustly condemned, but by becoming human He paid the debt owed by humanity, which could never be paid by ourselves, for the punishment due to our disobedience and fall. By taking on human nature, He as man incurred that debt, and by dying paid it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_theory_of_atonement
There are several different theories of the atonement, not just one, but whichever one is in favour at any particular time is a matter of how thought has developed at that time.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/history-theories-atonement/
1) yea, good catch
2) Didn’t you just acknowledge in your question that the person suffered a massive injustice? I guess a system in which people suffer injustices isn’t a just system, almost tautologically. To more directly answer the question, I guess it feels not just, so I wouldn’t be confident in my ability to defend a label of “just” if I tried to attach it, and whether or not it has the “just” seal of approval seems a bit beside the point.
3) That’s interesting, I hadn’t heard that perspective. I’d never heard it phrased as him incurring the debt, rather it was always phrased as he chose to take on the debt by becoming human and dying on the cross. I’ll be curious to see what the pastor of my church thinks of that one
I do believe in justice and injustice, but I imagine a utilitarian would ask, in return for "where is justice in your system?", "what makes you think there is such a thing as justice, what do you mean by just and unjust, where do you derive those?"
There's a couple of theories of the atonement and my particular understanding may be shaky, but it's that (1) mankind incurred the just (there's that word again!) penalty for our disobedience, which was separation from God (2) we could never, by our own efforts, pay that penalty (3) Christ assumed humanity to pay it for us as both True God and True Man. As truly man (and not divinity wearing a skin suit) He, a man like us in all things but sin, did not incur the penalty Himself but as part of general human nature which He shared. As perfect man, in perfect obedience to the will of God (see the Garden of Gethsemane), He paid the penalty for us in His own flesh by dying on the cross.
The vicarious satisfaction theory is not a merely judicial one (Christ pays the penalty like someone paying bail for another) but involves sacrifice, and there we get into the higher airs where my wings won't take me.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02055a.htm
"But the appearance of St. Anselm's "Cur Deus Homo?" made a new epoch in the theology of the Atonement.
...Anselm's answer to the question is simply the need of satisfaction of sin. No sin, as he views the matter, can be forgiven without satisfaction. A debt to Divine justice has been incurred; and that debt must needs be paid. But man could not make this satisfaction for himself; the debt is something far greater than he can pay; and, moreover, all the service that he can offer to God is already due on other titles. The suggestion that some innocent man, or angel, might possibly pay the debt incurred by sinners is rejected, on the ground that in any case this would put the sinner under obligation to his deliverer, and he would thus become the servant of a mere creature. The only way in which the satisfaction could be made, and men could be set free from sin, was by the coming of a Redeemer who is both God and man. His death makes full satisfaction to the Divine Justice, for it is something greater than all the sins of all mankind.
...Thus the Greek Fathers, who delight in speculating on the Mystical Redemption by the Incarnation, do not omit to speak also of our salvation by the shedding of blood. Origen, who lays most stress on the deliverance by payment of a ransom, does not forget to dwell on the need of a sacrifice for sin. St. Anselm again, in his "Meditations", supplements the teaching set forth in his "Cur Deus Homo?" Abelard, who might seem to make the Atonement consist in nothing more than the constraining example of Divine Love has spoken also of our salvation by the Sacrifice of the Cross, in passages to which his critics do not attach sufficient importance. And, as we have seen his great opponent, St. Bernard, teaches all that is really true and valuable in the theory which he condemned. Most, if not all, of these theories had perils of their own, if they were isolated and exaggerated. But in the Catholic Church there was ever a safeguard against these dangers of distortion. As Mr. Oxenham says very finely,
'The perpetual priesthood of Christ in heaven, which occupies a prominent place in nearly all the writings we have examined, is even more emphatically insisted upon by Origen. And this deserves to be remembered, because it is a part of the doctrine which has been almost or altogether dropped out of many Protestant expositions of the Atonement, whereas those most inclining among Catholics to a merely juridical view of the subject have never been able to forget the present and living reality of a sacrifice constantly kept before their eyes, as it were, in the worship which reflects on earth the unfailing liturgy of heaven.'
...It will be enough to note here the presence of two mistaken tendencies.
The first is indicated in the above words of Pattison in which the Atonement is specially connected with the thought of the wrath of God. It is true of course that sin incurs the anger of the Just Judge, and that this is averted when the debt due to Divine Justice is paid by satisfaction. But it must not be thought that God is only moved to mercy and reconciled to us as a result of this satisfaction. This false conception of the Reconciliation is expressly rejected by St. Augustine (In Joannem, Tract. cx, section 6). God's merciful love is the cause, not the result of that satisfaction.
The second mistake is the tendency to treat the Passion of Christ as being literally a case of vicarious punishment. This is at best a distorted view of the truth that His Atoning Sacrifice took the place of our punishment, and that He took upon Himself the sufferings and death that were due to our sins."
Of course people will disagree: some will prefer the second option. Winning overall utility just depends on more people preferring system 1 to a great enough degree that the system 2 people are outweighed.
Obviously I don't know that this would definitely be the case, but given that this seems to be a common objection to utilitarianism, it seems likely more people would prefer system 1. But maybe not! 🤷♀️
Maybe it's cynical, but considering that we do live in an unequal world, and the vast majority of us on the top of the system do pretty little to correct it, that suggests to me that most people in Omelas would leave things the way they were.
Actually, I think I got this wrong earlier. Individual self-interested actors within the system should choose system 2, almost by definition (other than the one with ultra-low utility). But that doesn't negate the overall average preference for 'fairness' and the small amount additional benefit that people in the system would get from knowing they live in a fair world. This is true even if this preference/additional satisfaction is very small.
Of course, since the vast majority have a preference for system 2, this becomes impossible to implement. Even though the former might maximize utility, it would be hard to escape the latter.
This is also setting aside the problem that individuals would have to believe that they live in a fair system: it hinges on perception, but this is probably ultimately unknowable. How do you measure utility? How do we know that we don't already live in system 1?
Also, in implementation, we have to balance utility against something like resources. Utilons won't cost the same for each individual, so it will be cheaper to make some individuals happy than others. If we're maximising utility given a fixed supply of resources, an unequal solution probably maximises utility. I'm not sure this would be balanced out by any satisfaction we might get from believing we live in a fair system (if the system appears fair).
Is a world where all people get 1000 utilons better or worse than a world in which the lowest person gets 100 utilons and the mean and median people get close to 1100 utilons? That uneven world is less fair, but is it definitely less just?
Our world isn't Omelas. We have multiple overlapping mechanisms in place to help those at the bottom of society, to the point where those mechanisms are often at cross purposes (for example, we want people to get mental help, but we don't want to force them into institutions to do so). That inefficiency wastes resources; it reduces the overall utilons available for society, if you use that logic. Some waste is unavoidable, but the closer you get to evenly distributed, the more resources you waste on trying to achieve balance and the worse everyone does.
That's very much how I see it. I'm not happy about large groups of people sitting at 100 utilons, and hope for ways to improve that. I am not in favor of a solution that brings the 100 group up to 500 by dropping the mean and median to, say 800. The total loss of utilons far outpaces the increase in that bottom group. Though it depends on specifics, I feel as though many attempts at doing that have actually resulted in that 100 group essentially staying at 100 (or alternately, a different group and that group switching places).
That's how I've seen the attempts at switching to communism. Willing to drop the mean/median to help the bottom, but only succeeding at dropping the mean/median without actually improving the bottom.
Yes, I agree with this. There is a significant cost in utilons for inefficiencies in the system.
Among utilitarians there isn't a good argument against building a supercomputer that experiences functionally infinite utils and allowing it to turn the entire universe into computronium so it can experience more utils. Until Utilitarianism can actually give a good answer to utility monsters beyond desperately praying they can't exist in reality, I don't think it's going to have a future as the replacement for spiritual reasoning about ethics.
My utility function doesn't assign any positive value to 'computronium experiencing utils'. Am I not a utilitarian in the sense that you mean?
>My utility function doesn't assign any positive value to 'computronium experiencing utils'.
This is just another form of praying desperately that utility monsters don't exist by trying to define an AGI's utils as "not really utils" without any grounding. What makes a human's utils qualitatively so much more valuable than an AGI's utils that the AGI has a value of 0?
"Someone asked me about a year ago, why "justice" is an important virtue, and I realized it was a question I had never considered."
From the religious side of the question:
https://aquinasonline.com/justice/
"St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiae understands the virtue of justice to be founded upon the notion of jus or right because, according to the classical definition of the virtue, it is by justice that one renders to another his due by a perpetual constant will. Justice directs man in his relations to others according to some kind of equality or rightness. This relation of rightness is what is meant by jus. It is a right that is due to other men, and it is this object which specifies the virtue. As such, it is logically prior to the virtue itself which perfects a man so as to render this object swiftly, easily and gladly. Hence Thomas treats the question of jus before he does that of justice.
The notion of jus then is a complex notion. It is a relation that at once incorporates equality and the fact that it is owed, or a debitum. These two poles of what is involved in the notion of jus, i.e. being equal because it is natural and being owed, seem to create an incoherent tension. All men are equal in being owed rights by others, which are their rights by nature as rational beings. By means of the jus, i.e. right, humans are related to each other as equals, since it derives from common human nature."
Even utilitarians have some notion of "actions that increase benefit and reduce harm". Justice means working out how that is decided, how they are apportioned, etc. How do we decide between benefit for A which may cause harm to B? Justice is involved there - does A have a *right* to that benefit? Is the harm to B greater than the benefit to A? Is there a case for permitting harm to B?
I notice this phenomenon basically exclusively in left-wing cause areas, and I think it's because social justice, specifically, is about distribution not output. Outside of hardcore utilitarians, people don't think of the total quantity of a desired resource/welfare as something you can get right or wrong. Whereas whether a distribution is right or wrong is probably the first moral belief a person develops, e.g., try giving just one baby sibling candy. The word we have for what we are trying to achieve when we solve a distribution problem is "justice." People who are predominantly interested in solving distribution problems then overextend that paradigm, and so we end up with weird stuff like "reproductive justice," even though the top priority of its supporters isn't really to correct some distribution but to protect a right.
The Justice trend likely also connects back to Critical Theory / Marcuse / the New Left. These guys were/are busy critiquing every aspect of The West in order to tear down the system. For each identified injustice it was only natural that a corresponding Justice movement be built up to further the cause of Revolution.
And let me add that Critical Theory, which is now pervasive in our culture, has no positive vision to build up, only (by definition) a criticism. So there can be no great deeds to memorialize, only wrongs to call out.
As someone who agrees with many of the critiques I think you're referring to, I definitely don't agree that there is no positive vision to build up. To me, that's like saying that the QA team doesn't care about the final product, only about tearing down the first version of the code. I don't know how we can improve our society without first noticing the things we don't like about how our society is currently structured. But then you have the opportunity to try to make changes to improve it. That's the vision.
The assumption that all problems derive from a society's "structure" strongly limits the range of discussion about potential solutions, though, no?
Let me clarify - I’m not just being mean when I say Critical Theory has no positive vision. This was explicitly and cleverly the intention from the outset. Critical Theory is “critical” in that it consists of a series of critiques. The positive vision, if you will, is that these critiques (and support from properly-placed elites) would be sufficient to undermine The West as we know it so that the (largely unspecified) Revolutionary Utopia could rise up from its ashes. Theodore Adorno, one of the founding fathers of Critical Theory, wrote his unreadable tome “Negative Dialectics” to justify in Hegelian terms the idea of a dialectic consisting solely of an antithesis. It literally was designed on purpose to not have a positive vision, as a feature. Communism had the problem that its visible structure could itself be critiqued. Neo-Marxist Critical Theory was an improvement over traditional Marxism in that there would be no positive edifice to serve as the focal point for critique. The down-side is that it takes patience to wait for the West to crumble from within. I disagree with its aims, but I am amazed at the clear thinking evil genius behind Critical Theory.
To be clear, I don’t mean to say that you and people like you have no positive vision. I’m sure you do. Just that Critical Theory itself was designed that way.
People deciding to apply a literary criticism technique to the physical world is the ne plus ultra of "academic" as a pejorative.
Yes. Needing justice means that there are “bad guys” preventing justice or promoting injustice. The 21st century is all about splitting the world into good-guy and bad-guy categories, assisted by our preferred sources of media and propaganda. The West is in a very bad spot.
The fun thing about this is that without the criminal justice connotations e.g. “climate justice” just means “the normatively correct policy towards climate” so being in favor of it becomes a tautology.
That's really not it. Climate justice approaches AGW from the perspective that groups with less power are disproportionately harmed not only by climate change itself but also are disproportionately harmed by the solutions. Thus all the job retraining and other benefits for low-wage workers in the Green New Deal, for example.
The standoff in Washington state over the carbon tax--where some supporters wanted a revenue-neutral version (or at least could accept that to get it passed) while others insisted the tax be redistributive or not at all, is a pretty good illustration of plain environmentalism versus climate justice.
This seems to be tied to a shift in worldview that I'm tempted to label "post-Christian": the "Christian" view (though, not exclusively held by Christians) is that we live in a fallen world, and while we should always strive for justice and loving our neighbor, we'll never achieve it on this side of eternity: the world is and always will be fallen. Evil is natural and good is the exception.
But the "justice-oriented mindset" (held by many good Christians) seems to stem from and foster a perspective where "utopia" is the default state and anything keeping us from utopia, is an injustice inflicted by perpetrators. It carries an expectation of perfection, and anything short of that is something to be angry about.
In short, it's a question of whether we live in rotten world where we still have the opportunity to do good, or in a good world that we have the 'opportunity' to mess up.
The first view encourages an admiration of "saints" and an equanimity towards "sinners" who are doing "no more than what you'd expect of them". The latter encourages a righteous anger towards sinners, with an apathy towards everyone else, who are doing "no more than what's expected of them".
(Just to be clear, I'm not trying to disparage Christians who believe in and support "X justice" - again Christians *are* supposed to strive for justice - but I think the frequently associated worldview of "Utopian Expectation" conflicts with a Christian worldview)
Slight correction; while the world is fallen, evil is *not* natural. Matter is not intrinsically evil, the creation was good and only tainted after the Fall. So good *should* be the rule, not the exception. It is the bad effects of the Fall which make us do what we know is wrong, or desire that which we know is not good for us.
> a perspective where "utopia" is the default state and
Justice, to a conservative christian, is defined as "getting what you deserve". Which is death/punishment, because everyone has sinned. Mercy is, then, "getting [a good thing] that you don't deserve." Mercy gets a huge focus these days, not so much the justice.
> anything keeping us from utopia is an injustice inflicted by perpetrators.
If you mean demons/Satan, sure. If you mean people, then no. And it's not an injustice per se, it's an action toward a negative end. Perhaps, if it's preventing someone from getting something good that they've earned it could be, but not generally, no.
> It carries an expectation of perfection, and anything short of that is something to be angry about.
Although perfection is the _goal_, Christians all recognize this as not being achievable. Hence.the mercy.
> whether we live in rotten world where we still have the opportunity to do good
This sounds like every Christian perspective I've experienced, save that you can do both good _and_ evil in the world. Or neither, alternately.
> a good world that we have the 'opportunity' to mess up?
I've never heard this position from conservative christians. Perhaps liberals might?
> first view encourages an admiration of "saints" and an equanimity towards "sinners" who are doing "no more than what you'd expect of them".
This is a fundamental (ha) misunderstanding. Christians generally are "saints" in the sense that our sins have (and are continually) being forgiven. Some branches have formal Saints, which is a different thing.
Sinners are not some class of people who always do evil, but rather are _everyone_. We are _all_ sinners in need of forgiveness. As such, one's _actions_ are good/bad/neither depending on some nebulous categorization. And one can be a "sinner" in that one consciously chooses the evil option. But you can still ask for forgiveness and be saved (yes, even Putin, but God would have strong words with him, especially if he continues choosing evil afterwards.)
"Love.the sinner, hate the sin" is not homophobic propaganda, but a fundamental outlook on how one is to treat people. You can -- and _should_ -- oppose evil _actions_, but still recognize that the person performing the action is also a child of God in need of forgiveness. Just like we all are.
It seems my comment wasn't clear - you're replying to parts of my description of the justice-focused "Utopian Expectation" worldview as if I were describing Christian theology, when I wasn't. ("A good world we have the opportunity to mess up" was a contrast to Christian theology, not a description of it)
And, yes, I was using "saint" and "sinner" in a colloquial sense to mean someone who does conspicuous good or evil (similar to the sense in which Scott referred to "saints" in the article), not the Christian theological sense in which we're all sinners saved by grace.
Justice is indeed getting our deserts, and what people tend to forget is that sometimes that means getting punished. We have a modern notion of justice as "for the victims/redressing wrongs/making things fair' but sometimes yes, you do deserve to be censured or have things taken away, as much as you do deserve to have things restored.
This is why justice and charity must be balancing parts of what we do: mercy is the union of both, where we give the dues (both rewards and punishments) from justice, but we forgive debts from charity.
Mercy can be perceived as weakness and softness and be abused, see the Coen Brothers' film "Miller's Crossing" and the character of Bernie Bernbaum, who survives a first execution attempt by begging for mercy, but is then contemptuous in a second attempt by the same guy by saying all he needs to do is beg again and he'll be spared again (he isn't).
Sam Gamgee makes something of the same mistake about Frodo's forebearance towards Gollum; that being kind in that degree means some measure of naivety or foolishess softness:
"Sam looked at his master with approval, but also with surprise: there was a look in his face and a tone in his voice that he had not known before. It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. Of course, he also firmly held the incompatible belief that Mr. Frodo was the wisest person in the world (with the possible exception of Old Mr. Bilbo and of Gandalf). Gollum in his own way, and with much more excuse as his acquaintance was much briefer, may have made a similar mistake, confusing kindness and blindness. At any rate this speech abashed and terrified him. He grovelled on the ground and could speak no clear words but nice master."
But in the much-quoted dialogue between Frodo and Gandalf, it is true that the mercy (or pity, as it is phrased here) of Bilbo did rule the fate of many; if Bilbo had killed Gollum when he had the chance, then when Frodo ultimately failed, the whole quest of the destruction of the Ring would have come to nothing:
"`Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses? We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious. And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.'
`Well, what's to be done with it? ' said Sam. `Tie it up, so as it can't come sneaking after us no more, I say.'
`But that would kill us, kill us,' whimpered Gollum. `Cruel little hobbitses. Tie us up in the cold hard lands and leave us, gollum, gollum.' Sobs welled up in his gobbling throat.
`No,' said Frodo. `If we kill him, we must kill him outright. But we can't do that, not as things are. Poor wretch! He has done us no harm.'
`Oh hasn't he! ' said Sam rubbing his shoulder. `Anyway he meant to, and he means to, I'll warrant. Throttle us in our sleep, that's his plan.'
'I daresay,' said Frodo. `But what he means to do is another matter.' He paused for a while in thought. Gollum lay still, but stopped whimpering. Sam stood glowering over him.
It seemed to Frodo then that he heard, quite plainly but far off, voices out of the past:
What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!
Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.
I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.
Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.
`Very well,' he answered aloud, lowering his sword. 'But still I am afraid. And yet, as you see, I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him.'"
I think the two worldviews you describe are sometimes referred to as "Tragic" and "Therapeutic".
Yeah, that does seem to be a largely equivalent mapping to what I'm describing, thanks!
Young philosopher who teaches Political Phil here (though doesn’t publish, so not an expert).
Here’s the usual train of thought. First, the difference between Morality and is Justice is that the latter is thought to be about ‘the basic structure of society’ with ensuing debate about what the boundaries of this are. But as a first pass, getting cheated on by your partner is thought to be not unjust, but being robbed by the government is, even if you feel the former immoral treatment would be worse.
One thing Rawls took a theory of distributive justice (a theory about how benefits and burdens should be allocated by the basic structure) to be concerned with was ‘the social bases of self-respect’ – some minimal standard of respect with which you can interact with others and pursue your conception of the good life. SJW's have taken this and run with it.
70s/80s philosophers focused on structures and institutions like the law and courts, over time expanding to consider e.g. marriage and the family, and took these to be the main things we’d need to think about to ensure people could live minimally decent lives, see e.g. unfavourable attitudes towards the unemployed. But the modern argument is that our self respect depends a lot on things like culture and norms and stereotypes, so IF you think that the social bases of self respect are very important (such that we should be willing to make tradeoffs against e.g. economic freedom), and IF you think that self respect is strongly affected by cultural ideas, then you’re going to see all cultural ideas and discourse as a domain relevant to achieving justice – hence the kerfuffle over implicit bias, stereotypes, representation in media.
(Of course the causal sociological story actually runs from society to these arguments; philosophers don’t have enough of an impact. Parts of society get certain ideologies, become philosophers and then come up with the justifications. Of course many people also get the social bases direction wrong too – solve the economic inequalities and you’ll probably fix the stereotypes, which we know don’t have all that much power to explain current gaps).
Regarding Mali’s climate being a big part of why it’s poor, though this is true, the dominant line of thought would be that this is not relevant (to justice). Since capitalism has produced such a large surplus, it’s possible to arrange society in such a way that more of that surplus is distributed so everyone meets some minimal standard of living, and our failure to do this means Mali has a claim against richer nations. Even though it’s true that ‘the climate’ is a big part of our causal explanation, which part of a multi-factor causal explanation you pick as being relevant depends on normative assumptions, including how it’s legitimate for people to behave. When a driver crashes their car, the actual speed plays a very large part in the causal story. But assumptions about how drivers, council, and bosses ought to behave is going to determine whether we think the cause is the driver being reckless, council not having the appropriate signage or speed limit, or his boss putting unrealistic demands on the driver, or the wider economy making him poor so that he needs to drive quickly to make a buck in the first place. The speed might not be relevant to us.
We theoretically have enough causal levers that we could have helped Mali without causing climate change at all, despite its climate, and that’s what matters, no analysis of variance or (conveniently) knowledge about economics needed - it’s enough that a just outcome is possible and we collectively have failed to provide it. (This also is why ‘economic justice’ comes up less in discussions than ‘social justice’ – the perception is ‘redistribution’ can be a one-size-fits-most for various economic problems).
The counter argument of course is ‘planned arrangements of societies according to some ideal hasn’t gone well in the past, maybe we should study what things actually work and be concerned with what’s effective given how humans and systems tend to behave’. But of course how humans tend to behave is also a product of culture (more evidence of injustice!) and this kind of reply is less appealing in other domains e.g. if government officials keep being corrupt, you don’t say ‘well maybe instead of calling this state of affairs unjust we should remember what human nature is like, and design systems around it, think about what’s more effective, have a positive narrative’ – most of us would say that though what’s effective matters, this nevertheless seems to be an unjust state of affairs and we should label it as such.
So in general, it seems that there’s a tension between two roles we what the ‘justice’ concept to have. On the one hand, we want to use it to identify things that ought to be changed. On the other hand, we want to be able to create *effective* change, and these goals can trade off against each other. SJWs are identifying parts of the basic structure of society they think we are collectively obliged to change. Scott is drawing attention to the effects this usage has on actually creating progress. In the background are a lot of unstated assumptions / conceptual holes about what kinds of explanations count as relevant, and what causal levers we have or don’t have available.
> But as a first pass, getting cheated on by your partner is thought to be not unjust, but being robbed by the government is, even if you feel the former immoral treatment would be worse.
Is this really the case? I personally think getting cheated on by your partner is unjust if you didn't cheat yourself. There are probably other things that would make it more just (being an awful person, refusing sex, etc), but I think it's possible to concieve it as unjust.
I don't think that's the popular conception, since it would imply getting beaten by a mugger is not a justice issue.
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Could you clarify how that implies that getting beaten by a mugger is not a justice issue?
I mean, AJPio's description of justice being just about structuring society would imply it doesn't bear on the main thing we point our "justice system" at, individual criminality.
If you think the mugging is the fault of a lone individual not caring about you, that's morality as they're doing the wrong thing. If you think regular muggings are also the result of e.g. inexcusably not having a functioning police force, then you might also have a claim of injustice against the police / gov.
My usage of 'justice' includes much of what falls under morality, but not the superogatory things like charity/mercy or personal holiness. It relates to giving what is deserved. Merriam-Webster, for example, doesn't include any indicator of requiring collective action in any relevant definitions. Dictionary.com does in 1 out of 5 definitions.
I think it is popular conception, as a cheater or mugger might have 'bad karma' and get their 'just desserts' i.e. justice.
Broadly 'justice' seems to be our hard-wired game theoretic tit-for-tat instinct, which generalizes to a wide variety of social contexts
Right, I realize I was ambiguous, and I should have said that it was AJPio's idea of justice being solely systemic that is unusual.
"‘well maybe instead of calling this state of affairs unjust we should remember what human nature is like, and design systems around it, think about what’s more effective,"--literally the core organizing idea behind the US system of government. Modern democratic and quasi-democratic governance systems are very much based on Federalist 51's idea that,
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
This was a powerful post for me perhaps because I hadn't thought about it. My mentor used to say to me that language isn't just semantics; it is everything. It is everything because language is how we know the world and make distinctions, she would say. Thank you for reminding me of that fundamental truth.
"A narrative of justice allows, at best, non-criminals - people who haven’t broken any of the rules yet"
No, a narrative of justice allows for victims - persons with absolute moral authority, who cannot be blamed or held responsible for their plight. People who can demand restitution - and retribution - from those who they identify as perpetuating injustice.
Victimhood grants status, and "justice framing" identifies victims. This is not to say that "being victimized" is good, but remember we're talking about how we label reality, not what reality is. So, all else being equal, it's better to be a "victim of injustice" than to merely be "unfortunate".
As lawyers we will do well to be on our guard against any suggestion that, through law, our society can be reformed, purified, or saved ...
Law reflects, but in no sense determines, the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In Heaven there will be no law, and the lion will lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.
Grant Gilmore, The Ages of American Law 109–11 (1977)
This is a great quote. I was a lawyer for a decade and I was probably exceptionally bad at it. But the best case scenario for someone speaking to me was that their life was only going to get a little worse. And that includes my clients.
Forcing other people to do stuff will never fix a problem the way you really want it fixed. It's always a kludge you throw at the wall when you're out of civilized options.
I've always found it useful to think of the law as only a mechanism for reducing injustice in the interests of forestalling violence. If you go to court and think "I will very probably not experience gross injustice here, and there's a very good chance some gross injustice happening elsewhere in my life will be reduced" then you will probably leave satisfied. But if you go in thinking "I'm about to experience justice!" then you will not be very happy at all.
Something's off here. What Scott describes as "justice creep" sounds in many ways like a classically Christian understanding of justice. For instance, what is St. John Chrysostom invoking when he says "the coat rotting in your closet belongs by rights to man who has no coat" if not some version of economic justice? And yet, Christianity manages to also talk about many other virtues, and revere many people as saints (including, uh, Chrysostom). So, at least within the worldview from which the concept of saints derives, there is room for both widespread injustice crying out for remedy and genuinely heroic examples of virtue. And why shouldn't there be? The fact we have many injustices to right does not cancel out opportunities to cultivate virtues like patience, fortitude, and temperance.
From another direction, I believe there is a group of comic book superheroes called the Justice League
Who generally solve their problems by punching very obvious bad guys in the face.
The point I am trying to make is that it is possible to think someone is praiseworthy for bringing about justice, and not just that they are blameworthy for failing to bring it about.
But Justice always requires harm. If you commit a crime, Justice requires that you be fined, or locked in a cage, or executed. If you have an unfair amount of stuff, "Justice" requires that your "excess" stuff be seized and you involuntarily made poorer.
What's off about this and "justice creep" is something I've struggled with as a Catholic: the word 'your' in St. John Chrysostom's sentence is very important.
'Turning the other cheek' to offenses is something Christians are asked to do. If someone slaps me, it's good for me to bear the offense, even turning the other cheek to grant them another blow, even if the result is not justice. On the other hand, if I see someone slapping someone else, it's not right or good for me to go over and turn THEIR cheek; I'm not being virtuous by doing so, and I'm certainly not making them virtuous.
'Economic Justice' in modern parlance isn't encouraging people to go through their closets, it's going through their closets for them (and that's before dealing with the group identity politics that always creep in).
Perhaps framing things as an issue of "Justice" justifies coercion to solve the problem? "Let's help the poor" might encourage people to donate money. Seeking "Economic Justice" permits taking *other* people's money to solve the problem.
IME most people who think about all things in terms of justice are transparently in pursuit of retribution, which includes punitive redistribution and/or collective reparations.
Are you the parent of a bright child? Your desire to provide her access to academic options suitable to her interests/intellect = hoarding resources. (The pie cannot expand.) Justice requires that you strip your child of the privilege she inherits from you. (Privilege cannot be extended to all, it must be taken away from some.)
Do you enjoy the climate in California? Justice requires that you welcome as many immigrants from Mali, or Honduras, or Syria, as want to come to CA, since your privileged use of the environment in CA contributes to global warming which drives apocalyptically bad weather elsewhere. It's only just that California be shared with the victims of your privilege.
I keep waiting for some of the well-off justice warriors I know to hand the keys to their homes to Native American families who could really use them, but for some reason, that never happens.
Per John McWhorter, the current brand of social justice reflects a religious impulse. Embracing radical equity is way to get clean, as we are all polluted by the (original) sin of racism and its concomitant stain of privilege. All of us, that is, except for the designated non-privileged.
What strikes me as interesting is that among true believers, certain categories of people who used to be considered non-privileged have fallen from grace. These include women, who are now only conditionally non-privileged (they should be non-white or at least bisexual, but in any case their general status has been overtaken by transwomen, justice for whom takes priority); Jews, who we now should understand are white, both currently and historically, except for those who aren't and therefore are eligible for sympathy (for microaggressions related to being non-white, not for getting beaten in the streets for being Jews); and Asians, who hoard educational resources and are successful like Jews, so are filthy privileged, a.k.a. white-adjacent.
I'm probably more anti-woke than I thought. Your comment itself encapsulates the essence of anti-woke understanding, and I agree with pretty much all of it. Thanks!
This comes very close to articulating my problem with the social justice movement, at least as it applies to my friend group.
I've got a lot of small complaints but the bigger issue is that the current take assumes people go without because of people.
In this model, a state of nature just provides everything, and the only reason there are haves and have not is that human-built systems get in the way. There's no allowance for the idea that maybe those systems provide valuable services, and trying to point out that they often do is either a sign of privilege or bootlicking.
The underlying request appears to be, "Everyone! Stop doing things! If we all stop doing things then poor folks will finally have free internet!"
From 12th January 1973
it will no longer be legal.
Whatever you do
__Don't__.
Don't be one of those people who mistakes
doing for not doing or you could face a fine.
For more information please reread this poster.
I think what you've just described is not social justice, but its exact opposite, which for lack of more precise term I'll refer to as libertarianism. "Everyone! Stop doing society!"
I get what you mean by "libertarianism" here, but just want to note that *actual* libertarianism would not be a solution to the problem because if left to their own devices, somebody might do a society anyway. This worldview actually requires a strong central government to ensure nobody does anything societyesque.
At this point I'm being ungenerous, tbh. There are genuine goals that these folks want accomplished, but in my admittedly ad hoc opinion they are all redistribution of existing resources followed by the abolition of the systems that create new resources.
ditto
> If I were in Terra Ignota, my fondest wish would be to excel in some way the same way Sniper, Apollo Mojave, and the other utopian characters excel, bringing glory to my Hive and giving its already-brilliant shine extra luster.
...how much of the series have you read?
I interpreted it as being from the POV of a person in that world, i.e. someone who isn't privy to the details we can read in the books themselves. (And also maybe the POV is _before_ the events depicted in the books!)
"I can’t find clear evidence on Google Trends that use of these terms is increasing."
I checked Google n-grams for just "justice", 1630-2019. (Don't try terms like "climate justice" there, because I think what you get is mostly "climate. Justice".) While "justice" peaked in 1971, hit bottom in 1984, and has now risen significantly higher than its 1971 peak, it's still only one-third as common as it was from 1762-1865. But inspecting a few dozen of the books the phrase was found in, it seems the apparent massive decline in interest in justice was due to a decline in interest in the duties of a Justice of the Peace, and in divine Justice.
OTOH, the 1798 book /Enquiry Concerning Political Justice And Its Influence on Morals and Happiness · Volume 1/ by William Godwin, written at the peak of the use of "justice", suggests that "we assume the term justice as a general appellation for all moral duty." If that was a common belief, that could explain the explosion of usage of "justice". In any case, this seems to be what's happening now.
That use of the term "justice" to mean all-purpose morality probably originated with Plato's Republic. The history of the Greek word δικαιοσύνην is too complex to get into here; but basically Plato wrote this huge book that said "justice justice justice justice" over and over again while slowly twisting the word to connotatively mean "absolute good" and to literally mean "systemic oppression in the pursuit of the attainment of absolute power and spiritual perfection by an elite few".
So the entire Platonist tradition has been stuck with presuming both that "justice" is always synonymous with "the absolute good", and that its meaning is at the same time infinitely malleable via dialectic. (They don't see it as being malleable; they see dialectic as infallible, so any apparent changes in the meaning of "justice" under dialectic exegesis merely expose our previous understanding as flawed.) The Social Justice movement is part of that tradition.
So we shouldn't expect their interpretation of "justice" to stay logically consistent over time. It would make sense to also try interpreting them as doing what Plato did, and what they claim everyone else is doing: using language to socially construct oppressive structures, in the pursuit of power.
1971 is when A Theory of Justice came out! Woah!
On the one hand the courts act as supervisors and enforcers for the US administrative state, now at least as powerful as the increasingly ceremonial democratic elected state. So it's sensible for someone who wants administrators to do something to use the rhetoric of justice still popular in the courts.
On the other hand, this 'whatiwant justice' reeks of low-IQ academia and Clement Greenberg's point that everything in academia is kitsch.
A riff on this is that “we should help the poor” implies (or at least leaves open the idea that) charity is a supererogatory action: morally praiseworthy but not required. Charity is a gift, its recipients should be grateful, and the givers can feel magnanimous.
Justice is morally obligatory. Charity is not a gift but restitution for a wrong; givers aren't magnanimous but are merely returning what might as well be stolen property, and should still feel residually guilty for the period of time that they held it; recipients don't feel grateful, because they are just receiving what they were morally owed, and indeed might feel bitter for the period of time in which they hadn't yet received it.
Life is unjust. Where do I file a complaint?
If you think of "criminal justice" when you think "justice", aren't you already partly in dystopia? Otherwise, "justice" evokes people getting what they deserve, as opposed to their getting crumbs out of the munificence of moral saints who are also the better-off.
“ people getting what they deserve” usually means giving good things to good people, but also punishing bad people. The need to take positive action to achieve “justice” implies injustice is being perpetrated.
Who, other than society at large, determines what people deserve?
Criminal justice generally deals with the most obvious clear cases of people not getting what they deserve that most people will encounter, because law is where society defines and codifies what people deserve. More specifically, the law defines what is clearly unjust to the point of requiring society to intervene, what restitution to the victim constitutes justice for the victim, and what punishment for the offender balances justice for society and the offender (ie, 'cruel and unusual punishment' is unjust for the offender).
Wow I thought wellness justice was a joke by Scott, but nope.
What if we join the zeitgeist and fight for “rationality justice”? Although I don’t know what exactly that means.
That's the problem, and I think why Scott wrote the post. Some of these ideas have reasonable clear purposes and just use the "justice" framing. Some of these ideas also use the "justice" framing but are less clear on how to operationalize it, such as "rationality justice."
When you recognize the problem of "wellness justice" you come to realize that all of the "justice" framing is inherently flawed (or sneaking in a different perspective that most people would not otherwise agree with). That flaw/perspective is an expectation of equality of outcome. If different outcomes is considered unjust, then only equal outcomes can be just. Not equal opportunity, which is what most people would say, but actual outcomes.
We can talk about climate change with or without a "justice" framework. Adding the framework sneaks in the idea of equality of outcome.
Definitely. To be generous, the remedies I’ve seen for justice usually revolve around fairer structural access to solutions, as in “every one should have fairer access to wellness or good doctors or clean air.” But, like you said, the devil is in the details, and the metric of fairness, and what to do with the inevitable distribution of outcomes say 10,20+ years down the line. If it is always based on whether outcomes are equal… then there are much more serious discussions that are sorely lacking right now. Namely, how much variation are we willing to accept, and on what scales? Where do we draw the operational boundaries that we use to judge fairness?
Let me see if I remember the Thomas Aquinas I've just been reading. Justice consists in rendering to each his due. Justice is concerned with equality; equality can be arithmetic, as in everyone receives the same amount absolutely, or geometric, as in everyone receives the same amount in proportion to something.
As applied to the post: pretty much everyone is "for" justice. Including social justice; since justice is a property of human relations, justice cannot be asocial. Pretty much everyone is for equality. And we usually agree that the relevant equality is geometric. We disagree about how to implement geometric equality: which qualities are the measure of proportionate punishments and rewards, to what extent they are present in particular cases, and whether certain trait-rewards pairs constitute equal proportion or not.
We argue about to what extent economic desert is in proportion to hard work vs. exchange value. We argue about whether the executive or the janitor is really the one who works harder. We concede some desert to the work of creating and organizing a useful enterprise, but argue about whether the founder's reward for this kind of work is proportionate to his employee's reward for her work. But importantly these are all economic justice arguments. Including the rightist ones. In fact "Welfare Queens" is probably one of the biggest economic justice movements in recent politics. It just didn't call itself that.
"Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice."
-Cazaril in Lois Bujold's "The Curse of Chalion"
Are there any cases where justice is not zero-sum?
That's the big semantic shift here. "------- justice" implies that the only way to proceed is to take something away from one party and give it to another. It denies the possibility of positive-sum outcomes.
I have trouble distinguishing cause from effect here, but a lot of this seems to correlate well with the rising popular sentiment that anything that discomfits rich people is worthwhile, even if it winds up discomfiting non-rich people as well.
That kinda sounds like a PR problem to me. Where's noblesse oblige when you need it?
Capitalism is generally seen as positive sum, but many who would use a social justice framework are also anti-capitalist because a larger percent of that gain goes to a smaller percent of the people. Even if everyone gains something, they seem offended by the disproportionate distribution.
To me that's a larger issue of the "justice" framework. Even in a positive sum environment, so say nothing of zero-sum, it still says that we should take away from those with more to give to those with less. This implies that they would be willing to invoke a *negative sum* solution if the end result were more equally distributed.
Even prima facie zero-sum solutions end up negative sum because transaction costs exist.
We don't have nobility any more, why would you expect noblesse oblige?
A combination of wealth *and respect* can I think substitute for literal titles of nobility in this context. If the wealthy are granted respect in proportion to their wealth, or more properly in proportion to the qualities and achievements that we presume earned them that wealth even though we don't have time to look up their bio right now, then they might feel a reciprocal obligation to use that wealth in the service of the less fortunate. Or at least be pressured into it without too much effort. But we're now at a place where, at least among the people calling for "[X] Justice", wealth incurs *disrespect* by default, the presumption that you're a scoundrel who plundered that wealth from the less fortunate.
Noblesse oblige requires reciprocal oblige. "You're rich, therefore you're a villain *and* we're going to take away your wealth", isn't a persuasive argument.
It's certainly a vicious circle with disrespect breeding callousness, and vice versa. But it's also the case that one side of that circle is in a much better position to break it.
How? By e.g. giving hundred billion dollars to charity to make the world a better place? We've already seen that this *doesn't* break the cycle.
Justice is always negative sum. Even if it manages to make someone whole, the opportunity costs remain.
This is very interesting, given that many of the same people who use lots of terms like 'social justice' and 'climate justice' are also for the shift towards 'restorative justice', where the idea is to move away from the punishment model in the actual justice system.
I got a two-month ban for a one-sentence version of this post :(
Edit: That aside, it seems to me that classical conceptions of justice revolve around the minimization of externalities. Harm should be compensated and/or punished, while doing good should be rewarded. As you reap, so should you sow.
Social justice strikes me as at best orthogonal to this, and often directly opposed, in that it seeks to weaken the connection between reaping and sowing. That's not necessarily always a bad thing, but it's very different from justice justice.
> If I were in Terra Ignota, my fondest wish would be to excel in some way the same way Sniper, Apollo Mojave, and the other utopian characters excel, bringing glory to my Hive and giving its already-brilliant shine extra luster. But if I were in 1984, my fondest wish would be to bring O’Brien and the others to justice; to watch them suffer, to undo the wound in the world caused by their scheming.
I think you have this entirely backwards, which may explain the disconnect here.
Think about low-hanging fruit, here.
If you're already in a utopia where everyone is very industrious and excellent, there is very little opportunity to actually improve things by trying to excel yourself; your society is already at the limits of what can be achieved by excelling, the marginal gains from the next marginal individual of average ability trying to excel even harder are slim to none. However, if your utopia is very focused on individual excellence and maybe doesn't spend much time looking at structural factors or inefficient distributions, one person looking for 'injustice' of these types might be able to find quite a lot of overlooked ways to improve things for people, and have a large positive impact.
Similarly, if you're in a 1984 dystopia, where everyone is constantly being brought low and made to suffer... it might feel nice to have your particular tormentors brought low and made to suffer, but it's unlikely to change much of anything or do much good. Even getting rid of the criminals and villains at the top of the foodchain will accomplish little, because there's no one good in your society to replace them. In this world, trying to excel an be personally virtuous may actually have a bigger impact than adding to the pile of persecutions; there may be a lot of people you can easily save and situations you can easily improve, just by caring and working hard, because no one else is doing that.
I think the move towards justice may be *because* we are in some sense a high-industriousness near-utopia; increasing productivity isn't actually going to help because it's already so high that we could instantly solve all of our problems if we directed that productivity towards doing so. Individual excellence can't save us because that excellence has as its best projected outcome becoming a tech billionaire and making a website a lot of people use to share misinformation and cat videos. In this world, the low-hanging fruit really *is* about how resources get directed and distributed, which goals are prioritized, how people are treated, how power is structurally represented and utilized - ie, 'justice' issues.
This is a great point I hadn't thought about before!
Marx thought the same way: only the unprecedented increase in production brought about by industrialization made improving society through redistribution possible.
I usually come down on the side of "we should increase productivity" rather than "we should improve distribution" but your argument really makes sense to me. Thank you.
There is one aspect of the justice language that wasn't mentioned in this post and that is quite important to me: I think the justice language is a lot kinder to the people who suffer most from the problem at hand.
Consider economic justice: if we "help the poor", this implies that the people being helped are poor, in need of help, etc., probably due to their own fault. But it's not their own fault, on the contrary! Much of that poverty can be traced to unjust events in the past, for example exploitation by richer countries.
Same for the climate: people who bear most of the consequences have to do that because better-off people have a lifestyle that leads to a much too high carbon footprint. It is important to understand just how unjust this is, and that the people who "help poor victims of climate change" are in fact co-responsible for the problem.
Why would it be their own fault? That is not at all my impression of the perspective of those who think we should help the poor.
On the other hand, why couldn’t it be their own fault? Why must it be someone else’s fault? Calling it “justice” removes the possibility that the “victims” had any agency in reaching their current situation and no agency (or at least responsibility) to take an active role in improving that situation.
There must be utility in dichotomy.
I agree that it could be their own fault. Or it could be somebody else's fault, or it could be nobody's fault. My impression is that those who seek to help the poor often treat poverty as a fact of nature rather than as something that is somebody's fault.
E.g. currently a lot of people are poor because Ukraine got invaded and they had to leave in a hurry and maybe they even got robbed on the way out. I see a lot of people wanting to help them in various ways, and I don't see many people faulting them for not having prepared better or whatever.
I suppose part of this is that "helping others" feels like a nice thing you get bonus points for doing, but "X justice" sounds like a basic thing you have an obligation to enforce. So maybe there's just some memetic selection going on, where justice memes are just intrinsically fitter -- in which case there's little hope here, unless a fitter meme shows up or society/language changes significantly?
The steelman for Justice is of course that in a justice framework the downtrodden have a right to things (like resources, legal equality etc.) and it's legitimate for them to demand them and organize to get them, while in a charity framework the subaltern should be grateful for whatever scraps they get while those handing out the charity get to feel saintly for what they do.
Yes--this is a great point.
I'm very frustrated by how strawmanned this account of justice has been. Not to mention its seeming complete unawareness of the Catholic economically-focused social justice tradition, with its concepts like the universal destination of goods.
It's really making me feel the loss of the great left-wing commentators Slate Star Codex used to have. I would love to read what Multiheaded, Oligopsony, or Deponysum (the last of whom still comments here IIRC) would say about this.
Don't overthink it. It's just that most classic American tradition: the rebrand. The idea that you can change the way people feel about things by changing the words they use to talk about them is surprisingly well grounded, at least when it comes to consumer goods. Its track record in activism is not nearly as good, but that's not likely to stop people from trying.
Systematic problems exist and will most likely require systematic solutions. Slavery was an issue that was evil to many individuals, and there was moral value in being kind to individual slaves, but what saved the most *individuals* was not individual niceness, but laws being changed and navys stopping ships.
Justice (or 'fairness' if that's a less freighted term) is inherently about how people relate to each other, so problems in that space will naturally tend towards the systematic.
It's odd to read this view on a blog that often talks about effective altruism. Individual niceness is rarely optimal or most effective. Effective altruism is an unintuitively systematic approach to the problem of suffering in the world.
If anything I would perhaps put this trend down to increasing utilitarianism in the world. Utilitarianism is an unintuitively systematic approach to morality. Perhaps it's precisely because Utilitarianism is winning out over virtue ethics that the utopian view of individuals excelling at virtues no longer resonates quite so well.
But aren't you just saying that coercive, society wide (or systematic like you say) action achieves bigger impact than individual free will? like Mao was more effective at killing people than Jack the Ripper (see how I dodged Godwin's law here hehe). So if the ultimate aim is noble then more good is achieved if you enforce it system wide, and if the ultimate aim is evil then more evil is done. Don't think it establishes that one approach is superior, especially when we seem to routinely disagree or get wrong what we should do.
I'm picking up on a theme in the post (and previous comment sections) that to me seems to be saying that we should focus on helping individuals and not groups. I think it's important to help individuals, and that's what saints do, but helping groups is important and necessary too, and it's strange to see a community that typically thinks systematically and strategically argue against it.
So, I agree that systematic action can achieve bigger impact, but I think it isn't just that, sometimes the right problems to solve are systematic and no amount of individual goodness will sort them out short of the whole society becoming saints.
Assuming all the coercion lies on the 'systematic goodness' side of the debate is odd too. If a current system is itself coercive, fixing it requires changing the system, and some people who like the current coercive system might be sad about that, but it's ultimately a less coercive world once it's fixed. Was it coercive to change the laws to make slavery illegal?
if a big civil war was fought over it I think we can agree it was coercive, and yes in hindsight / according to our current values that price was worth paying. I sense one difference between us is that I don't feel as certain as you seem to that just because there is a problem that there is also a solution. Being born in a communist utopia tends to breed that type of skepticism maybe.
not strictly related but since you mentioned slavery, here's a topic I think often about: most people (incl. me) are meat eaters today, and we all know that animals are treated horrendously in the meat industry, much worse than human slaves were ever treated (and if you object to comparing people with animals, remember that back in the day folks also looked at black people as less than human etc. quite possible I think that in the future this human/animal distinction will look specious and undefensible). How harshly will we be judged in 200 years by future humans when all food will be grown in labs (conveniently removing for them the need to have to make the moral vs. taste trade off) and animal rights will have taken quantum leaps forward? I don't feel particularly confident that we'd still pass muster.
You do realize that you've provided an example that demonstrates kyb's point better than his own?
The current system is inherently coercive (animal imprisonment and slaughter), saintly (vegan) behavior has very limited effect, helping individuals cannot solve the problem at all (no matter how many of them you rescue, the industry will just breed new ones), only systemic change (developing lab-grown meat) can. And there's nothing inherently coercive about the systemic solution (though I'm sure it'll be met with some resistance, and some amount of coercion will be required to implement it).
Also, it's one thing to be skeptical of any particular proposed solution, or of its proponents' honesty and/or ability to implement it. It's another to be "skeptical" that a solution, any solution, is possible at all. The latter is a very strong, counterintuitive claim, perhaps applicable to hard constraints set by physical laws, but not to the kind of man-made society outside of which the concept of justice isn't even meaningful.
I was more thinking about it in terms of it's much easier ex-post to see what's right or wrong (or at least see what aligns with new moral standards once those standards have decisively shifted), but harder in the moment / within the moral system of past times. As I said I still eat meat, somewhat queasily but not convinced enough that abandoning it is justified. I am NOT absolutely convinced that a change is necessary (after all most animal suffering in absolute terms still happens out in the wild etc. etc. if one wants to rationalize things it's not that hard). I'm just saying I can see the possibility that future generations will judge me to be in the wrong.
Separately if there is a change on this particular topic I would say 99% pct likely that it's induced by technological changes (synthetic meat) that renders old ways of meat production obsolete/disposable, rather than some systemic political solution involving forcing people to abandon eating meat, which seems like an incredibly remote possibility even in 2022. You could draw parallels to slavery abolition - if all of the US was a giant cotton plantation dependent on uncompensated labor I doubt 1863 would've happened at all - only because the north didn't need slave labor (any more), industrialization made it affordable to compensate workers in cash etc. did it become affordable for them to see the moral light. In same vein i could see how the path to defeat say poverty doesn't go through systematic political coercion or reforming human instincts (The New Man) but through robotic/ai/energy revolution removing any access limits to material wealth.
To your other point about existence of solutions you misread me a bit, I don't believe that no possible solution exists, it's more a probabilistic view about things often going wrong / having unintended consequences etc. and also that no matter how bad the current situation is it can still get much worse if we don't pay attention. Was Syria pre-arab spring pretty bad? yep. But are things there much much worse today? you bet. Just because there is a problem doesn't mean you want to force through change because it can still move against you. In the case of Syria the bad result was brought about by adverse malevolent human intervention that counteracted the well-intentioned initial movement, but sadly you often don't even need that for things to go completely off the rails.
I have very similar feelings about the word "fairness". So much so, that I would treat them as synyonymous. If somebody uses either word to argue for a position, I will immediately discount it heavily. Life is neither fair nor just.
People just use the fuzzy words "fair" and "just" to imbue their subjective preferences with unearned moral weight. I find that fundamentally dishonest and always in bad faith.
"Of course, every society is somewhere in between Utopia and Dystopia, and needs values relevant to both. Justice is a useful lens that I’m not at all trying to get rid of."
Is it useful, though? When I find myself using it instinctively (like when I perceive myself being mistreated), I can usually reframe it and get a much clearer picture.
> Life is neither fair nor just.
But *should* it be?
It cannot be. How would that even work?
That's the thing. It cannot be. But fairness and justice exist on a continuum, no?
The relevant questions for me, then, are:
1. How much unfairness can/should/must be tolerated in a given system that is bounded yet interacts with other systems?
2. Is it possible that some degree of injustice is for some reason necessary in an otherwise well-functioning system? (W/apologies to Dostoevsky & Ursula LeGuin)
"That's the thing. It cannot be. But fairness and justice exist on a continuum, no?"
Those concepts are too nebuluous and ill-defined.
You can project any opinion you want onto them and it will feel like righteous justice when you scream at someone or fight for something. And they will feel the same, when they scream right back at you or fight for the exact opposite.
It is a visccerally appealing way to see the world, but not a constructive one.
Right, so since you're allergic to most words that are used to summarize this:
1. Do you think the world we currently live in can be improved?
2. If so, how would you improve the world?
I read about how this would work once. I think it was a short story written by Vonnegut.
Once you concede that it cannot be fair and will not be fair, it becomes a matter of competing interests. Is a Syrian immigrant in Europe's desire to get a good paying job a "fair" goal, or should wealth be redistributed from Europe to Africa to be more "fair" to the Africans even while eliminating the possibility of that immigrant becoming more financially secure?
There are several layers of injustice involved here, and outside of personal preference, I don't see a great way to distinguish between them.
Personally, I like the positive sum benefits of capitalism with a decent social safety net that isn't strong enough to defeat the positive sum aspects of the capitalist system. I am against the negative sum alternatives (hard redistribution) that make the average go down, even if it makes the lives better for the small number at the bottom. As I mentioned on another reply, I think the attempts at that hard redistribution have typically failed badly, and resulted in a reduction in average wealth without a corresponding increase in the wealth of those at the bottom.
Good observation. I have been describing it as the Formal layer suppressing the Tacit layer.
Read Jonathan Sumption (e.g. his Reith Lectures); former UK supreme court judge -- very much in the direction this post is heading, but from a different (more legal and historical, also institutional) perspective, crisp and clear.
I think its mostly about marketing. Most of the issues to which "justice" is added are extremely complex and not easily amenable to improvement. They are also morally complex too (e.g. carbon emission limits in developing countries). Describing an issue as extremely complicated and not easily improved does not motivate advocacy or fundraising. Neither does acknowledging moral nuance.
Justice flattens and simplifies all that. Either you care about justice or not. Nobody will admit the latter, so people are herded to support activist stances on issues for fear of being ostracized as unjust, and ultimately on the wrong side of history. The details of the issue, both technical and moral, become secondary. They can be addressed after the support and money are raised, presumably.
Rather than google trends, I recommend google Ngram Viewer to track the popularity of words and phrases. Here are the Ngrams for a "social justice" and a few others: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=social+justice%2Cracial+justice%2Cclimate+justice%2Ceconomic+justice&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csocial%20justice%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cracial%20justice%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cclimate%20justice%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ceconomic%20justice%3B%2Cc0
In Hebrew tzedek (צדק) means justice and tzedaka (צדקה) means charity, although I'm not actually sure when the latter came into common use with that meaning. There's also mishpat (משפט) which is more unambiguously legalistic/criminal justice. Sometimes mishpat will be contrasted with tzedaka, in which case mishpat means law and tzedaka means charity, but sometimes tzedek will be contrasted with hessed (חסד), which is usually translated as "kindness", in which case tzedek is the more legalistic term.
There's also Tzadik (צדיק), a righteous person, which derives from the same word, and usually a Tzadik is someone who is unusually virtuous (e.g. Noah in the flood story was a Tzadik). Although even there it's a question whether this was just that he was better than his peers or he was objectively unusually virtuous despite his surroundings.
Scott writes:
> Here’s a crazy theory: the moral transition from other virtues to Justice mirrors the literary transition from utopian fiction to dystopian
That isn't really my understanding of how literary 'topias have progressed. Which pre-dystopian era utopias are you thinking of? _Utopia_ by More is the only one I can think of and is only ambiguously utopian at that, and perhaps you could argue some works of political philosophy sketch the outlines of what a utopia might look like if only we listened to the Wise and Correct author of the piece. At a huge stretch you could see _Brave New World_ as a kind of utopian vision, and I'd only suggest that because it was written prior to the period usually regarded as the 'dystopian era' so is less obviously a deliberate take on the 'dystopia' genre.
Other than that though I can't think of any others that would qualify until after the atomic-age dystopian period, where you do see some genuine attempts at writing utopias (e.g. Heinlein if your idea of utopia is right-libertarian or Banks if your idea of utopia is left-libertarian) - utopias in general are not well explored in fiction because almost by definition a society free of conflict will be free of narratively interesting conflict, so my impression is not that 'utopia' are a reaction to 'dystopia' but rather that if you have a point about what you think society should look like it is easier to write a dystopia without that quality rather than a utopia with that quality.
The difference is that help requires a patron and someone willing to be patronised. Justice requires power (typically, the controlled application of violence). Calls for justice are really demands for power to be applied against your perceived enemies.
while mentioning climate justice you missed the single thing that would let you understand what it is, did you know that there are carbon budgets and climate justice is about the distribution of those budgets ?
Which is exactly why it sounds like a scam to me. Others have pointed out that this sounds like the notion of indulgences, and 'budgets' where poor country A gets the same allowance as rich country B sound great in principle, but in practice?
Either poor country A on its way to development happily goes the same way of pollution as developed countries did in their path of industrialisation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China), thus adding to the problem instead of solving it, or they can't/don't have the capacity to use all their allotment.
That leaves open the possibility of A raising revenue by selling or transferring the unused portion of its budget to B, who now don't incur fines or other punishments for exceeding their quota. End result: same amount of original problem but we've invented a way of making it sound as though we've done something about it.
That doesn't seem quite right to me? I'm not as familiar with the carbon budgets concept, but rich countries did all get rich by going through a period of dirty fossil fuel-based industrialization. Now, we're realizing that climate change is a big problem and that the world collectively needs to reduce its carbon emissions. given that setting, it seems like the fair options would be (A) rich countries decarbonizing very quickly, so that poorer countries can have access to the same growth opportunities by emitting some CO2 without blowing through overall climate change targets or (B) rich countries decarbonizing slower and not giving poorer countries the same opportunities for fossil fuel-based growth as they had, but paying the poorer countries for their loss.
indeed, it can be so easily explained, it isn't the vague and undefined, or worst undefinable concept that Scott describes, it is a clear case of distributive justice and the whole thing looks very strawman-ish to me
That still doesn't solve the problem of climate threat, though. We are being told carbon emissions must be reduced absolutely, so letting Germany reduce its emissions by 3% and then pass that 3% allowance on to Third World Country so its people can shift from bicycles to motorbikes belching diesel fumes is still causing warming/cooling/flooding/storms.
Poor countries *can't*, under this model, access growth opportunities that involve emitting carbon dioxide because that horse has left the stable. It doesn't matter if the smokestacks are in the USA rustbelt or the Yangtze River Delta, the emissions are still damaging.
So carbon budgets that play pass the parcel are more window-dressing than tackling the problem, because there are interlocking problems here: one is environmental damage, which mandates undeveloped countries should and must remain undeveloped industrially because of the strains on the environment which is already fragile and damaged, the second is poverty which requires those countries to exploit resources and you can't climb up to 'Western standard of living' by weaving baskets out of bamboo, no matter how green, sustainable, or ecologically balanced that production is.
"There" "are" carbon budgets? Can you explain what you mean? I'm aware of the concept of a carbon budget, but no discussion of climate justice I've heard (and I've heard many) has ever mentioned them. They seem like a useful tool/way of thinking about global warming which is currently not really used, either in real life or in justice-related demands.
we can emit only 400 Gigatonnes more of CO2 to stay within 1,5 degree warming and you can check when we will run out of budget on this "clock" https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/research/co2-budget.html
One plain climate justice definition could be "everyone gets a fair share of the budget" which Oxfam translates into: top 10% should reduce emissions by 95% to allow bottom 50% to treble their emissions, this is the current distribution of emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region.
The rigid budget also implies the longer we take to start reducing emissions the deepest cuts we will have to endure, check the "ski slope" diagram which really should prompt everybody into action now https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-mitigation-15c
There is no way the top 10% are going to reduce emissions by 95% because that would mean such a huge impact in how we live, work and create the machinery that supports our society. If the bottom 50% are going to live by green energy powering their homes instead of burning wood and coal, for example, they still need to mine the minerals for solar panels and use industrial processes to manufacture these, which are the bad old polluting type of processes no matter how much work is done to reduce emissions.
We are talking, in effect, about a brutal "you can't evolve to our lifestyle because it is too expensive for the environment" message to the bottom half.
if the top 10% manage to reduce emissions by 95% (netzero 2050 would work toward ) the bottom 50% can treble, triple, 3x emissions. If advanced economies are really going netzero by 2050 we would have a lot of new clean technologies that would ease the constraint on poorer nations, for example solar energy might leapfrog other forms of energy generation, like Africa went from decades of no telephone to high mobile phone penetration and ubiquitous internet access in 20 years. Really, the world can change faster than we can envision
OK, but Deiseach's first sentence is true, which would seem to make your entire thesis irrelevant.
The dig at "climate itself isn't just" feels cheap, like it deliberately tries to misunderstand what is meantby climate justice.
To me, climate justice clearly does not imply that we should all have a right to live at a temperate climate zone. It implies that there is a part of climate that is man-made, that disfavours some more than others, and that is caused more by some then by others.
Like murder: It is man-made (we do not call earthquakes murder), it disfavours some (the victims) and is caudes by some (the murderer/s).
It would feel wrong to react to murder with a call for non-murder progress, to call on murderers and non-murderers alike to maybe strife to murder less, so we may live in a better world.
Likewise, murderers trying to frame the murder debate with things like "Doesn't nature murder too, so non-murder is unrealistic anyway" are not accepted as an equal alternative point of view.
Because this is not a neutral subject where everyone can have any point of view, and those doing good are padded on the back. It is a question of a moral dimension, where a sense of justice kicks in, and a sense is emotional and doesn't hold all piints of view as equal.
That is what framing something as justice is about: It assumes people have natural rights to something, and ignoring them is unjust.
"Climate justice" implies that polluting or not is not like giving alms or not (where you are not a bad person if you do not give a beggar money), but instead like stealing/murdering or not.
I find that this framing makes sense to me when it comes to climate or pollution.
I think this is right, and an appropriately charitable approach to the term.
Overall, despite my agreement with de Boer on the excesses of our surveillance society, and sympathy with the view that a problem with contemporary leftism views the 'state of nature' too optimistically (if we weren't actively being bad, then things would be fine), I wasn't impressed with this essay on a structural level. It has the feel of a hot take rather than an attempt to take the argument on its own terms (or to 'steelman' it), building the argument piece by piece.
This is a textbook illustration of what Thomas Sowell (also picked up by Pinker in his "Blank Slate" book) has called "the utopian vision" (as contrasted with "the tragic vision").
What is meant by those terms is a secular formulation of "the problem of evil": "why does evil exist and how to solve it?".
The "tragic vision" asserts that "evil" is the default state of things, demanding no explanation, and requiring positive intervention (by "saints" and "heroes") in order to bring about the "good".
The "utopian vision" asserts that no, the default state of things is a "good" one: humanity is naturally peaceful and prosperous, and when it isn't, this demands an explanation in the form of identifying who is to blame for disturbing that "good" state (a class, a race, an economic system, an ideology).
The intervention to bring about the "good" and restoring "justice" is a negative one: the elimination or at least the punishment of that class, race, economic system, or ideology.
It is simply assumed that once the obstacles are removed, the whole of humanity will naturally recognize 21st century Western urban progressive values.
In the "utopian" vision there is no room for "saints" and "heroes" because everyone is a "saint" and a "hero" unless prevented by the the evil classes and races, ideologically defending their privileges in the form of "unjust" economic and political systems.
On the other hand, someone like Sowell and Pinker would argue that even to speak of "injustice" makes no sense, because everything labelled "unjust" by the "utopians" is simply a continuation of behaviors inherited from our historical and evolutionary past, that are still very much a reality throughout the animal kingdom.
When the vegan activist asks "what gives you the right to milk the cow and take away the hen's eggs?", they are clearly starting from the position that humans wouldn't "naturally" be doing any of that. So naturally they conclude, humans who consume animal products are guilty of an "injustice".
Once you understand this dichotomy, everything in the language of the culture wars, and even the culture wars themselves, start to make perfect sense according to their own premises.
The 'justice' framing is an attempt to cut down on out of context people coming in and doing something that's mostly for themselves, and to instead make them think about who the injured party is and how to support their volition rather than just imposing your own solutions.
It also encourages not dumping the costs on the injured parties - the difference between environmental activism and climate justice is the attempt to make sure the people who are suffering the most from climate change don't end up having to bear the greatest costs for fixing it (which is generally an easier way to fix the environmental problem).
The justice framing is 'fix this, but not at the expense of the people affected, ideally at the expense of the perpetrators or beneficiaries of the broken situation' rather than just 'fix this'.
>You can’t “help the economy” or “save the poor” merely by harming rich people. Can you get “economic justice” this way? Depends who you ask, but I notice that “getting justice” for a murder involves punishing a suspect a lot more often than it involves resurrecting the victim.
Speaking of punishment and murder, here is a little talked about aspect of Stalin's policies. Stalinist/leninist policy was big on the retributive social and economic justice. The policies that resulted in the Holodomor were all justified as a way to bring justice. They were intended to punish the rich, landowning kulaks for being rich, landowning kulaks (peasant who owned more than 8 acres of farmland) and the punishment was "liquidation".
I’d suggest it’s because pursuing economic justice is easier than helping the poor. To pursue economic justice asks us to tell a story about the specifics of a particular situation and why it is intuitively bad. Telling stories is fun and easy. It focuses on individuals and requires verbal skills. Most people can do it. To help the poor requires us to figure out which practical policies will provide a net benefit to the poor in their practical implementation. This requires a lot of detailed analysis of tradeoffs, ideally quantitative. It focuses on systems and institutions and requires mathematical skills. Very few people can do it.
This is why, in my view, there has long been a trend in law towards preferring a rights based approach over balancing interests approach. As Eric Posner has pointed out in The Twilight of Human Rights Law, there are literally hundreds of human rights that have been recognized in international treaties. They cannot all be satisfied simultaneously—the right to freedom of expression can be restricted in the interests of social order. If couched in terms of rights, this gives rise to a clash of rights, where lawyers can tell stories about which right should prevail in a particular context. If couched in terms of balancing, this requires an empirical investigation of exactly how much a particular rule advances social order. Most lawyers are verbally adept, but are bad at math (which is why they went into law). Couching the debate in terms of rights privileges lawyers over economists, so of course lawyers prefer a rights based approach to a balancing approach. Rights based approaches are easy to sell to the public for the same reason.
I think the people who are the main progenitors and promoters of this framing (progressive thought leaders) are actually pretty explicit about why they think the justice framing is preferable. You hit on many of the reasons e.g. they believe and want to emphasise that they think action is obligatory, because owed, because they think someone (possibly 'the system' as a whole) has caused some harm, and they think action would therefore be a necessary correction, rather than something supererogatory we could do to improve a merely natural state of affairs and feel good about.
I think the thing that is somewhat obscured in your account is that these are, to a large extent, explicit reasons why people are arguing for a justice framing, not just something that people have unconsciously fallen into. If you just google 'justice not charity' you'll see innumerable examples of people explicitly arguing along these lines and, as an explicit slogan, "social justice not charity" goes back as the 1920s (https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-52477587).
I would agree though that some of the tendency to think or speak in these terms (particularly more recently, as the meme has become more popular and mainstream), is more unthinking and unconscious, and is downstream of these earlier more explicit arguments. i.e. progressive thinkers explicitly make these arguments, this filters down into other engaged progressives/journalists, and now other people broadly aligned with them pick it up as a tic, without much explicit reflection (in the same way that people start referring to "white supremacy", rather than simply "racism" because they grasp it's the done thing and sounds a bit stronger, but without a clear idea why).
"Justice not charity" is precisely the crux of the matter, why such nomenclature was adopted in the first place.
Chesterton quote coming up!
“It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.”
Giving to the deserving what is theirs is, as pointed out, justice not charity. So instead of dividing people into deserving and undeserving, instead of being the agents of charity who are superior in their virtue, we should/must be agents of justice who work to restore the balance of equality. The rich don't own their money or deserve it because (in this paradigm) they have unfairly appropriated resources which should be held in common. Economic justice is correcting this imbalance.
People like justice. It has connotations of fairness and correcting wrongs. So it's a great term to adopt, particularly for those who aspire to the academic critical theories of race/gender/class/whatever you're having yourself. It makes it sound respectable, well-thought-out, based on reason and the laws of the universe (just like science and we all know science is the most good!). 'Reproductive justice' is fighting for our rights to control our fertility, a right which has been usurped by tyrannical forces of social control. (Doesn't that sound a lot nicer than 'we want the right to prevent life'?)
Climate justice, economic justice, racial justice, this justice, that justice - they all have a common tap-root.
As a Catholic and an admirer of Chesterton, do you not think that Catholic social teaching fully *agrees* with early-20th-c. leftists that society's obligation to ensure an adequate standard of living for the poor is a matter of justice, not charity?
The universal destination of goods would seem to imply this.
Concerning utopia/dystopia:
I have the exact opposite interpretation. Helping the poor isn't utopian. It sure is the nice thing to do, and sometimes people do it even now - but it implies that there are poor people. That's the status quo and thus not utopian.
Going for economic justice on the other hand means attempting to abolish poverty (to me at least) - that's utopian.
Performing erogatory actions is burdensome, even unpleasant. Performing supererogatory actions is pleasant and builds a person's bond with society.
If a society requires constant moral anxiety for its upkeep I wouldn't call it utopian.
But that's why we should embed justice within the rules of social systems themselves. I just want to do work I'm good at and have some of the value produced taken to eliminate poverty without me ever having to think about it. Moral anxiety comes from the knowledge that society is unjust and I can't just live my life if I want to do good.
Yippee, time for me to play a theologian on the Internet!
And make no mistake, what we are talking about here *is* theology. The language of justice is a theological concept, and the social justice movement in its beginnings was influenced by Catholic religious thought:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice
"While concepts of social justice can be found in classical and Christian philosophical sources, from Plato and Aristotle to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the term social justice finds its earliest uses in the late 18th century, albeit with unclear theoretical or practical meanings. The use of the term was early on subject to accusations of redundancy and of rhetorical flourish, perhaps but not necessarily related to amplifying one view of distributive justice. In the coining and definition of the term in the natural law social scientific treatise of Luigi Taparelli, SJ, in the early 1840s, Taparelli established the natural law principle that corresponded to the evangelical principle of brotherly love—i.e. social justice reflects the duty one has to one’s other self in the interdependent abstract unity of the human person in society."
Yes, once again, Blame The Jesuits.
But what we are more concerned with here is Liberation Theology and its intersections with Marxism, which brings us to South America.
I don't know how many of you have ever heard of a book called "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed" but boy howdy was/is it influential in social sciences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed
"Dedicated to the oppressed and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis in his exploration of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. In the book, Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model of education" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. He argues that pedagogy should instead treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge."
Sounding familiar, that "co-creator" bit? And so it should sound. This is the language adopted by Social Justice activists; we've laughed at "feminist glaciology" but this is where the theoretical underpinnings come from.
In the 70s, Marxism was very trendy. Especialy in South America, which it is stereotyping but not completely inaccurate to say had a long tradition of revolutions and new oppressions needing new revolutions. At this time, you could take your pick of dictatorships right *and* left wing in various South American countries, hence for the intelligentsia Marxism was the cool fix-it solution to all problems.
This intertwined with Catholic social justice, and once again, Let's Blame The Jesuits! (As an aside, if anyone is wondering about Pope Francis' economic and political views, kindly remember he's a South American Jesuit so this influences him, though he is also considered right-wing because of his views on tradtional topics).
Liberation Theology - if you've ever heard the expression "the preferential option for the poor" (and if you're Catholic no matter what stripe, you certainly have), this is where it comes from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
I'm going to be jumping around timelines a bit, so forgive that. Okay, anyone else on here old enough to remember things like the American nuns killed in El Salvador?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_murders_of_U.S._missionaries_in_El_Salvador
This was a whole tangled mess of politics, with the situation in El Salvador being one of left-wing revolutionaries fighting a civil war against a right-wing military junta, and pretty much everyone being caught in the cross-fire. St. Óscar Romero had been murdered while saying Mass by someone considered to be acting on the orders of a right-wing political party because of his criticism of both sides, but particularly the government, for what they were doing.
The American nuns were also seen not alone as missionaries but as political activists, including by the Reagan Administration which was supportive of the El Salvadoran regime (remember, the USA was and is very concerned about Communist governments to its south):
"Unlike President Carter, succeeding U.S. President Ronald Reagan favored the Salvadoran military regime; he authorized increased military aid and sent more U.S. military advisers to the country to aid the government in quelling the civil/guerrilla war. His foreign policy advisor Jean Kirkpatrick declared her 'unequivocal' belief that the Salvadorean army was not responsible, adding that "the nuns were not just nuns. They were political activists. We ought to be a little more clear about this than we actually are."
Okay, let's get back on track. So given the general tenor of the times, with revolutions here there and everywhere and the displaced/in power governments fighting back just as brutally, the pressures on theology to respond saw the formation of Liberation Theology, which quickly started branching off into off-shoots which became more about Marxism and less about Catholic dogma, and then sub-dividing into things like Black Liberation Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Mujerist Theology, and the likes, and the descendants of these dropping the theology and going full-fledged secular social justice but retaining much of the language and the concepts underpinning the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
"Liberation theology is a Christian theological approach emphasizing the liberation of the oppressed. In certain contexts, it engages socio-economic analyses, with "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples." In other contexts, it addresses other forms of inequality, such as race or caste.
Liberation theology is best known in the Latin American context, especially within Catholicism in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, where it became the political praxis of theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor". This expression was used first by Jesuit Fr. General Pedro Arrupe in 1968 and soon after the World Synod of Catholic Bishops in 1971 chose as its theme "Justice in the World".
The Latin American context also produced evangelical advocates of liberation theology, such as Rubem Alves, José Míguez Bonino, and C. René Padilla, who in the 1970s called for integral mission, emphasizing evangelism and social responsibility.
Theologies of liberation have also developed in other parts of the world such as black theology in the United States and South Africa, Palestinian liberation theology, Dalit theology in India, and Minjung theology in South Korea."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_liberation_theology
"One of the most radical and influential aspects of liberation theology was the social organization, or reorganization, of church practice through the model of Christian base communities, also called basic ecclesial communities. Liberation theology strove to be a bottom-up movement in practice, with Biblical interpretation and liturgical practice designed by lay practitioners themselves, rather than by the Church hierarchy. In this context, sacred text interpretation is understood as "praxis".
The priest Camilo Torres (a leader of the Colombian guerrilla group ELN) celebrated the Eucharist only among those engaged in armed struggle against the army of the Colombian state. He also fought for the ELN.
Liberation theology seeks to interpret the actions of the Catholic Church and the teachings of Jesus Christ from the perspective of the poor and disadvantaged. In Latin America, liberation theologians specifically target the severe disparities between rich and poor in the existing social and economic orders within the state's political and corporate structures. It is a strong critique of the economic and social structures, such as an oppressive government supported by a conservative Church hierarchy and by First World economic interests, that allow some to be extremely rich while others are unable even to have safe drinking water.
Contemporaneously, Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti, the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil, and Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa are three organizations that make use of liberation theology."
Whew. Let's catch our breath before diving into the theology of justice, okay?
So why do I claim that the "Justice" movements described above, coming out of Social Justice broadly as they do, are in fact theologically-based (even if they may not realise this)?
Because about a decade ago, I wrote up something on Catholic views on mercy and justice, and a lot of the language is familiar if you go back far enough.
But let me develop my point first. It is not at all surprising that the concept and language of "justice" has replaced that of "heroes and saints and helpers and saviours". "Saints and saviours" are disreputable in society today, we mistrust and suspect them. "White Saviour" is a term of criticism, not of praise. Justice, however, is something we can do. It changes the equation from "Lady Bountiful descending upon the cottages of the poor tenantry to patronise them with lectures and hand-outs" to one of "there are Goodies and Baddies, and here is how you can be a Goodie". The poor, the oppressed, those denied their just rights in this view are not objects of pity or charity, they are equals and indeed leaders. We, the privileged, should shut up and sit down and listen and learn from them.
The theological virtue of Justice is, in this way, easily converted or even degraded, if you like, into the civil society legal version of Justice: the cops and robbers where punishment is more the focus than restoration of the victim, much less rehabilitation of the offender.
And it's seductive precisely because it puts the oppressed, the minorities, those under the heel of the law into the roles now of the cops, the ones with (moral) authority to punish the bad guys. It's even more seductive for the people in power: the academics, the 'white liberal guilt' writers and opinion-formers in the media, the 'just a few kids on college campuses', the mass movements which go out and protest on the streets.
Maybe they can't change society, short of burning it all down and starting over, but they can certainly punish the offenders. That kind of power is now in their grasp and it's a heady sensation that flatters your own sense of who you are: now you are fighting for justice, so any means may be justified by that end.
"X, Y or Z justice" co-opts that idea; there are clear rules, there are clear bad guys and good guys, and here is how you show you are a good guy, and even better - here is how you punish the bad guys. Do you actually *achieve* anything? That's not the point, the point is you are able to count up micro-aggressions or get plastic straws banned or any of the myriad ways of tallying the sins of others, venial and mortal. It's great to be an Inquisitor or a Witch-finder General.
And that gets us back to theology.
The theology of justice, that concept which lies under all this far, far back.
First, we have to disentangle justice from law, which I think helps explain what Scott is saying above about the 'vulgar criminal sense of criminal justice connotations'. To quote St. Thomas Aquinas, law is the object not of *justice* but of *prudence*.
Justice is a cardinal virtue. More gobbets of Aquinas from the "Summa" on the definition of justice:
- Now the essential character of justice consists in rendering to another his due according to equality
- It is proper to justice, as compared with the other virtues, to direct man in his relations with others: because it denotes a kind of equality, as its very name implies; indeed we are wont to say that things are adjusted when they are made equal, for equality is in reference of one thing to some other.
- Justice, as stated above (Article 2) directs man in his relations with other men. Now this may happen in two ways: first as regards his relation with individuals, secondly as regards his relations with others in general, in so far as a man who serves a community, serves all those who are included in that community.
- The common good is the end of each individual member of a community, just as the good of the whole is the end of each part. On the other hand the good of one individual is not the end of another individual: wherefore legal justice which is directed to the common good, is more capable of extending to the internal passions whereby man is disposed in some way or other in himself, than particular justice which is directed to the good of another individual.
So justice has to do with equity (hey, is that word sounding familiar to you as well from modern discourse?), with equality and equity between people as individuals and as members of society. Charity is love of God which conduces to love of our neighbour Mercy is the actions or active principle which derives from both, spurred to love our neighbour as ourselves by charity and to repair deficiencies by justice.
Quoting the Church Fathers, you can see how liberation theology got itself, in some instances, entangled with Marxism because the radical views of what is justice have deep roots:
- (As quoted by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa):
“Hence Basil says [Hom. super Luc. xii, 18]: “If you acknowledge them,” viz. your temporal goods, “as coming from God, is He unjust because He apportions them unequally? Why are you rich while another is poor, unless it be that you may have the merit of a good stewardship, and he the reward of patience? It is the hungry man's bread that you withhold, the naked man's cloak that you have stored away, the shoe of the barefoot that you have left to rot, the money of the needy that you have buried underground: and so you injure as many as you might help.” Ambrose expresses himself in the same way.”
“It is written 1 John 3:17: “He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shall put up his bowels from him, how doth the charity of God abide in him?”
- “You never give to the poor what is yours; you merely return to them what belongs to them. For what you have appropriated was given for the common use of everybody. The land was given for everybody, not just the rich.” St. Ambrose, 4th century bishop of Milan
- “The bread that is in your box belongs to the hungry; the coat in your closet belongs to the naked; the shoes you do not wear belong to the barefoot; the money in your vault belongs to the destitute.” St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, c. A.D. 370
- “Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to the one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.” St Gregory Naziansen, Bishop of Constantinople, late fourth century
- “Nothing is your own. You are a slave and what is yours belongs to the Lord. For a slave has no property that is truly his own; naked you were brought into this life.” Asterius, Bishop of Amasea, from “The Unjust Steward,” c. A.D. 400
So the *language* of justice trickles down and is disseminated amongst all the new movements, which are looking for respectability and latch onto the academic theories which allegedly drive them, the critiques of society on a theoretical and philosophical basis, and which have derived this concept of "justice" ultimately from theology, though they have divorced it from all religious overtones.
It's easier to quote dogma than actively change things, society has massive inertia. "Fighting for X, Y or Z justice" feels good, you're the goddamn Batman, you're out there marching and protesting and writing cancellation tweets and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the oppressed, you've unpacked your backpack, you are one of the Good Guys.
The helper/saviour role is much too suspicious to be donned today, because that will drag you down in immediate accusations of privilege and superiority and not stepping back, but being a justice fighter means you can have that cake and eat it too.
To end with what passes for a joke by St. Thomas Aquinas, this last quote on philosophy versus concrete action:
“(A)s [Aristotle] observes, for a needy man “money is better than philosophy,” although the latter is better simply.”
I don't think the Catholics (or any kind of Christians) have earned the monopoly on justice. The concept of codified laws had been in place almost since the beginning of humanity. The Code of Hammurabi is the obvious example here, but there are others all throughout history, all of which predate Catholicism. And, while most of them had been tied up with the notion of personal gods (e.g. Shamash or Jesus), others have been secular or quasi-secular (e.g. the Dharma or the Viking Althing). There's no denying that Christianity had introduced a lot of refinements to the legal system, from both the administrative and the theological points of view; but they did not by any means invent the concept of "justice". Rather, they built up on an existing idea; and, being the godless atheist that I am, I'd personally argue that the concept of "justice" derives naturally from a society of semi-independent agents, which we humans happen to be.
I'm not claiming Christians have a monopoly on justice, indeed justice as a cardinal virtue means it is equally a pagan as a religious virtue.
I am saying that the social justice movement has its roots in a philosophy shaped by Catholic thinkers during the discussion in the 18th and 19th century about the formulation of "social justice" as a distinct and particular thing, and that this religious underpinning still remains even when the secularised form split off and started fissioning into the various X, Y and Z Justices Scott mentions.
1. I question the assumption that "justice" naturally implies "criminal justice" (punishments). The first definition on M-W is "the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by [1] the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of [2] merited rewards or [3] punishments." The broader sense is impartially doing what is required and giving people what they are owed, which could be good or bad.
2. As an example of what "most" people naturally think of when they hear the word "justice," consider one of the most famous line in the most famous book in the world: Deut. 17:20 "Justice, justice shall you pursue." The immediately preceding verse (17:19) is "You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just." That isn't about criminal punishment; it's about fairness.
3. I think you have a point about economic "justice" suggesting "We have some kind of obligation to pursue it." In Hebrew, the word translated to English as "charity" is "tzedakah," which derives from "tzedek" - justice. In contrast, "charity" derives from Latin "caritas" - affection. Etymology is not destiny, but a standard Hebrew school lesson (which may carry some truth) is that "charity" suggests something that you might feel like doing when you're feeling ... charitable (or like a helper or savior). Because you care. But if you don't care, or don't feel charitable, you don't do it. Vs. giving tzedakah (justice) is something you must do because you are *obligated*, whether you feel like it or not.
4. And I think that's the broader reason for the shift to "justice." It's not about being cops meting out punishments, but rather emphasizing a framework of obligation to give people what they deserve, rather than a framework of voluntarily helping people because you happen to feel like it. A good secular example is Peter Unger's "Living High and Letting Die." I can't remember if he uses the word "justice," but the idea that you *must* do this (rather than "you'll feel good about yourself if you do this") is pervasive in it.
Scott, you're recovering your SSC edge. Well done, and this is really good food for thought.
i was thinking that when reading this article, in light of recent post where he worried he wasn't producing interesting new content anymore
You say we are a "weird superposition of criminals and cops" but I think those who insist on the manifold flavors of justice you mention see themselves as self-appointed judges who condemn the unworthy, the morally superior men or women who bring the miscreants and rule-breakers to heel, true warriors for justice who confront the evildoers and thus have something to feel good about.
Being censorious is both easier and more satisfying than just being good.
The best high is the moral high.
Have no data and this is just a gut feeling, but it seems like a response to the death of traditional religion. Something’s got to fill that void. Using a single word as a rallying cry seems like a kind of shibboleth. “Justice as religion” seems to do the trick nicely. A new religion whose icon is a woman wearing a blindfold, attempting to promote equality (holding a scale) via the sword.
> You can’t “help the economy” or “save the poor” merely by harming rich people. Can you get “economic justice” this way? Depends who you ask, but I notice that “getting justice” for a murder involves punishing a suspect a lot more often than it involves resurrecting the victim.
That's a way to see it, but another way to see it would be "saving the lives of potential subsequent victims". I don't know how effective is it in reality, but to me it is an important part of "getting justice".
Planet of Cops is a fun essay. (Cops, though, ≠ justice, necessarily.)
Most commenters here are noting that the justice idea is retribution-based, that is, ideologically driven ideas of what justice is. The planet of cops/drive toward justice—in whatever form—may be just 'civilization' at work. Norman O Brown always said that since we have to repress our animalistic nature to remain civil to one another, have a civilized society, and that Freud noted that repression results in insanity, all of being a civilized society results in insanity. Dwelling on justice, being a planet of cops, well, those are just symptoms of civilized society's insanity. As is the Planet of Cops essay.
The terms seem confusing to me. At a personal level if you make a mess, you should clean it up. But if you don't and there are enough people around who start to insist on the behavior they might use shame, create incentives or fines. As it scales up to things like the global climate we see a desire to get corporations to do something similar. We use fines and penalties as sticks and tout things like ESG money as a carrot. Universal Basic Income has been kicking around in no small part to the almost incomprehensible wealth and income gap in many parts of the US. But it is it really about justice? Or the money? There are lots of people who don't have the tools to "succeed" in a way that would provide them a decent life - home, food, healthcare. What do you want to do about that? Nothing? Move them? House them in little sheds in a Walmart parking lot? Draft them into public service so they can have a home, food and healthcare?
"Justice" conjures up aspects of "right" and "wrong" for many people and it complicates the question. Is it "just" for "hardworking folks like me" to have to give money to "provide for people who are just sitting around?" Then everyone gets angry.
This piece starts off strong, but I think Scott (uncharacteristically) loses the plot once he goes into the "climate justice" example and talks about how justice = criminal justice = retribution.
Scott's observation is true that "we should help the poor" implies something nice that you can do that is not obligatory, while "we need to pursue economic justice" implies that things are unjust, hence there is a moral obligation to fix the situation and moral culpability in letting it continue. So far, so good. But the obvious next question isn't "why the rhetorical shift", but "is the rhetorical shift correct". IS there economic/racial/social/environmental/climate/intergenerational injustice worth speaking of that we are obligated to resolve?
Let's stick with the "climate justice" example. The weird oversight in this paragraph is that "climate justice" is, rather obviously, a shorthand for "climate CHANGE justice". Talking about the Little Ice Age or pleasant climates is missing the point, which is that the downsides of climate change (sea level rise, dangerously high wet bulb temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, etc), are disproportionately felt by one group, while the behaviors causing it (energy-intensive behaviors) are disproportionately enjoyed by another. If you accept the standard models of anthropogenic climate change, we're basically saying "high energy consumers are taking future utils from people living in low-lying areas and hot climates, without consent or remuneration". Under almost any moral framework that sounds like an "injustice".
Each of the other examples should be thought of the same way: the thesis of the "X Justice Warrior" is "the current system is unjust in ways that impact X", and the job of the skeptical blogger is not to say "why are you saying 'justice'", but to formulate an argument on whether that thesis is true or false.
I certainly don't doubt that people misapply the concept of justice, as it is a powerful call to action. The important thing to note, though, is that the correct response is to evaluate whether their claim of an injustice being perpetrated is true or false -- not to cast doubt on the entire idea of X Justice.
It sounds like you agree with me that "I take climate-utils from you so I can gain energy-utils" (i.e., "I burn fossil fuels and you feel the consequences) is in fact unjust. And I agree with you that "I was born somewhere unpleasant and you were born somewhere pleasant" is not unjust. So it's really a case-by-case line-drawing exercise: imagine your minimally-tolerably just world and figure out where the real world doesn't measure up. For me, "people are forced to leave their homes because of aggregate consequences of other people consuming luxury goods" in fact DOES meet my definition of injustice, but I'm always happy to engage with people who disagree. The important thing is we are disagreeing over the facts and ethics of the case, not the very concept of climate justice.
This gets into a very tricky real world dilemma. It's a serious question, but one rife with complications and unintended consequences. Are people morally culpable for unintentional consequences of their actions? We could formulate that question a few other ways, such as changing "morally culpable" to "financially obligated" without losing the important framework of the question.
I'm sure there are people reading this right now that are thinking - "well yes, obviously people are morally/financially responsible for their actions" and are thinking about climate change or systemic racism or whatever. But is that a really generalizable position? What if it turns out that climate change is less negative (or even broadly positive) - would people trying to slow it down be "morally culpable" for the costs imposed in switching to green energy? Put more directly, should people be held morally and financially responsible for actions genuinely taken with the intention of improving the world? If that answer is yes, which is implied by a lot of the "X Justice" language, then I fear that generalizing the language will result in people being unwilling to support unpopular opinions even if they are correct. I also fear that incorrect opinions will continue to proliferate due to a lack of people willing to counter the claims. Then, when the mountain of evidence becomes overwhelming, the sea change shifts and those previously espousing incorrect views (honestly and with good intentions) will suddenly be subject to "justice" and held responsible for being wrong.
This dilemma is "solved" in the sphere of criminal/civil justice by the act of "drawing reasonable lines". What if a surgeon hits you with their car on their way to the OR to save somebody? Should they be held accountable for the damage they did despite their genuine desire to help people? What if they were driving 60MPH in a school zone in order to do so? What if the injury they caused you led you to reexamine your life and discover philosophy and actually led you to a happier life? We invent concepts like "negligence" and "reasonable person standards" because, while edge cases like these do exist, we believe that the value of solving the 95% case (most negligent drivers are pretty obviously negligent) is worth the cost and struggle involved in figuring out the ambiguity of the 5% case (and risk of getting it wrong).
Applying that same concept to "climate justice", you don't need to do anything so radical as punishing the high energy consumers, especially not retroactively. You can get 95% of the value of "climate justice" by doing a thorough, good faith, best effort analysis of the externalities per unit behavior, applying these (as a tax or cap-and-trade or whatever), and periodically coming back to this analysis periodically to update your tax or whatever.
I don't think this is an argument that *can* be true or false. Is it unjust that some people have more money than others? You can come up with facts that are relevant to this question, but overall it seems like you either have the moral intuition or you don't. My impression is that the job of the blogger is to point out that this is, in fact, a non-obvious moral claim and dissect what assumptions are involved in it.
Thanks for your response. I'll concede that whether "X is unjust" has a true or false answer depends on your attitude toward moral realism and is out of scope for this discussion.
I agree that "dissect[ing] what assumptions are involved" in declaring something to be relevant to "justice" sounds like a valuable role for the rational skeptic. However, I think in this case you are strawmanning the X-justice crowd: you define justice narrowly (basically only retributive, with "violations" and "villains", then in the only example you really delve into -- climate justice -- you make no mention of climate _change_, which could reasonably be construed to have "violations", and even, to some ways of thinking, "villains", as it involves disparate groups of people harming one another in disproportionate ways. Given the Wikipedia article for Climate Justice summarizes it as being about "equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens... and responsibilities to deal with _climate change_", I think this is a meaningful gap.
Similarly, when it comes to economic justice, there is a serious case to be made: proponents tend to believe that whatever system they rail against is truly unjust -- say, because it rewards capital owners at the expense of those without, directly or indirectly expropriating the latter with guns in order to enrich the former. If you disagree, the next step is to explain why you think either the facts of the case are different or the moral theory they are using is wrong. But to simply say "no victim, no violation, not a case for justice" misses the facts that many reasonable people DO see victims and violations, and that many reasonable theories of justice do not limit themselves to violations (e.g., pure utilitarianism making no distinction between the acting/failing to act dichotomy).
Uncritically reading this piece, a person would walk away believing that X-justice-warriors are grossly misapplying a concept for political gain. I think that is probably true in some cases, but tarring every application of X-justice with the same brush is misleading and detrimental to the discourse: if your response to an X-justice warrior is "X-justice is an incoherent concept" without tackling the meat of their argument, you will never change their mind (or let them change yours if they are right, as any good rationalist would)
I came too late to comment on this post... fortunately, you said most of what I wanted to say!
I fear I'm getting old: all the people I like reading are becoming more interested in complaining about millennials/students/woke than any other topic. The obvious solution would be to go and find a new generation of writers, but my irrational distaste for young people is just as strong...
Justice stands above democracy. Both in discourse and in law.
The other framings sound like policy choices, subject to things like electoral choice; a Justice framing is a constitutional framing. It implies a bureaucracy above political scrutiny (publicly-funded jobs for wordcels!). On the other hand, if you say something like "we want to solve climate change", this may attract solutionism (which would be jobs for shape rotators).
Your last point is spot on, I would add that the 'justice' movement doesn't just transition from other virtues but no longer makes justice a virtue practiced by the individual toward others but rather refers to justice as something that is due to us by 'right' from the state.
The whole movement is part of the reduction in face-to-face relations and the movement toward helping groups rather than individuals and the authoritarian instinct that originates from that.
Fr. James Schall of Georgetown has very good writings on justice (The Most Terrible of the Virtues).
"The origins of social justice lie in Machiavelli's rejection of the possibility of virtue.... good regime meant not that individuals are just but that the laws are just. Whatever the laws, if citizens obeyed — usually by force — they would be prosperous, happy, and peaceful. Law was will."
Whenever someone uses the word 'justice' for a cause they mean that they want to use the coercive powers of the state to achieve a structural outcome. Very different from the intentions of say a classical charity looking to help individuals directly.
https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/politics-and-the-church/social-justice.html
https://www.marketsandmorality.com/index.php/mandm/article/viewFile/397/387
"Whenever someone uses the word 'justice' for a cause they mean that they want to use the coercive powers of the state to achieve a structural outcome."
Didn't know Jesus was talking about the state when he said "Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for justice; you will be satisfied".
The Kingdom of God is not a state?
"Kingdom of God" is clearly metaphorical, as the eschaton being immanentized is not merely a material transformation, but a metaphysical one- the destruction of Original Sin and all evils to return Creation to the unsullied state it was originally intended to be in, with the Elect washed white in the blood of the Lamb and restored to the primordial state Adam existed in. There are no laws, no borders, no crime nor punishment- these are artificial constructs and crutches that do not and cannot apply to the Kingdom of Heaven.
This isn't exactly esoteric theology.
I think being regarded as a defender/upholder of justice is one of the greatest honors. "Justice League" is a fine name for a group of superheroes tbh
Justice is a subset of the topic of fairness. The problem with using the word fair is that we have different definitions of fairness. Using the word justice is one way people try to get out of that trap.
Here's my newsletter on fairness: https://fracturedrelationships.substack.com/p/its-not-fair?s=w
It seems like there's some Hegelian is/ought thing going on when you use justice as part of (say) 'economic justice'. There are normative premises that qualify justice/injustice.
Aside: Rawls wasn't the only philosopher to see justice as a crucial atomic term. Plato and Derrida used it as such.
Your use of the word "saints" is very accurate. I think some themes from Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age" are relevant here. He notes the shift in medieval Christianity (driven in part by the Protestant Reformation) from a "two-speed" religious system to an age of reform and "mobilization." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age#Part_I:_The_Work_of_Reform
In medieval Christianity, there was a recognition that ordinary people lived out their faith in a more limited "secular" way, but that some people aspire to a more demanding "religious" life. Not everyone could take on these demands, but everyone should venerate and respect those who do. A similar dynamic exists in Buddhism, especially Theravada Buddhism's distinction between the demands of lay life and monastic life.
The work of Reform, in Taylor's words, was an effort to smash the distinctions between lay and religious life. Reformers recognized that Scripture made no distinction between these two speeds and that all Christians were called equally. They decried both the lax morals and practice tolerated for lay people and the pride and self-righteousness of the clergy.
Taylor doesn't consider this an analogy - he draws a straight line from Protestantism to modern liberalism. It's the ongoing crusade of social reform, just with evolving beliefs about what that means. The language of "charity" you suggest is a "two-speed" system. The average person shouldn't be expected to do anything more than pursue their own interests most of the time, but some exceptional people rise above and are to be celebrated and venerated for it.
Reformers hate this distinction. The transformation of society means that everyone will have to sacrifice their self-interest, so those who do so should not be made into heroes. Instead, everyone has to be brought up to that level as a baseline. This results, just as the Protestant Reformation did, in a shift from a social religion built around venerating saints to one obsessed with justification and salvation.
I don't disagree that a motte-and-bailey exists. "Justice is preferable to *in*justice" is easily defensible; "the criminals must be punished" is more productive, a rallying cry which attempts to reach the Average Law and Order Enjoyer.
That said, quantity of Google search results is rather weak evidence. There was a [post on the Motte](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/t6ypmn/for_the_longest_time_theres_been_a_claim_floating/hzgqchx/) two weeks ago which tried to get people really upset at the economic-justice rhetoric around India. Specifically, that a claim is "particularly pernicious" because it has "more than three million results" on Google.
This figure is basically meaningless! Doing the suggested search for ourselves we get 1 page of relevant results before Google decides to include articles about American economics and climate politics. How relevant are the following millions?
Using search prevalence as it is here, to estimate vocabulary prevalence, is a better idea--the search term is more focused and results seem to stay on target. Percentage of usage would be more solid. If people are publishing articles using "climate villains" instead of, uh, "climate prisoner's-dilemma-defectors" or "climate degenerates," it probably says more about the alternatives.
Here's a fun experiment: Replace "Justice" with "Envy" and see if any of the proposed actions required to address them actually meaningfully change. They don't, because in the age of envy™ justice means not that people are suffering (this is good, double-plus-good if you're certain flavours of Christian) but that some people have the audacity to not suffer enough. Once no one isn't visibly suffering any less, we've reached justice utopos and can wind down the grand social experiment called society because we've achieved Marxism or something.
Even by the terminally low levels of charity given to social justice ideology here this is exceptionally bad.
For Christianity, suffering is not good in itself. Suffering happens as a result of our fallen state. What is good is if we take control of our suffering, or use suffering to promote virtue. To bear suffering in a cheerful state, if possible, rather than complaining uselessly, or to be moved to have compassion for others and wish to help them if we see them suffering.
There is the separate issue of penance and mortification, which can involve physical suffering or deprivation, and which is seen as beneficial. The notion that Christians want everyone to suffer because suffering in itself is good (and some are not suffering enough) is a mistaken impression.
Christianity's view on suffering was shaped by the pagan societies around them which viewed suffering and were *not* moved to compassion by it; suffering is a natural part of the world, if a slave or a conquered people or an inferior suffers, that is no business of mine and I am certainly not obligated to help them.
Perhaps you have read Justice as a larger loyalty by Richard Rorty. Regards, Alejandro Baroni, Montevideo, Uruguay
I think part of what's going on is that SJAs don't want heroes, they want routinized bureaucratic systems which produce the outcomes they want.
Routinized bureaucratic systems aren't necessarily awful-- it's quite pleasant to be sure that clean water will come out when you turn on the tap. Whether that approach makes sense for as much as SJAs want is another question.
(Yes, I know that not everyone, even in the US, has reliable access to clean drinking water.)
I think erasing the idea of the White Savior is wrapped up in this. Challenging the idea that white people can not be saints that improve racial inequities, because whites are also responsible for those inequities.
I'm sympathetic to that point of view because, when I was a little girl in church, I sometimes felt that church goers almost acted as if poor people existed as an opportunity for normies to prove how good they were, instead of asking why poverty existed in the first place. Sainthood can be very ego driven.
However, I agree that the current moral landscape is entirely too grim.
How long before 'incels' campaign for 'sexual justice'?
I wonder what society's response would be to that hated outgroup using language in the same way...
There are actually mainstream philosophers who've written on the subject of sex and incels from a justice framework. Amia Srinivasan (at Oxford) is probably the best known, and she has a whole book called The Right to Sex. I've listened to her interview with Ezra Klein (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-amia-srinivasan.html), which was interesting.
They already do, and the attitude is generally "you don't actually believe in social justice, you're just co-opting the language to argue for government-assigned sex partners"- the latter is tautologically true, and the former often is as well (the self-identified Incel community skews HEAVILY towards radical right-wing belief)).
I'll take your word for that, but the people I personally see complaining about not getting laid are AMAB lesbians. "Cotton Ceiling" and all that.
1. Yes, those people exist, and the attitude among most leftists by volume (in the sense of number) is "If you have a dick, a lesbian isn't interested in having sex with you, sucks but them's the breaks". Of course online those "cotton ceiling" people have them beat by volume (in the sense of sonic amplitude) but they're about as representative of their identity as incels are of theirs.
2. Incel communities tend to be self-isolating, mostly because the types of opinions you'll see in places like incels.is (note: might have immigrated to a new address by now, but this is what they used when I was an antisocial weirdo who was into e-drama) would make the Athenians look like the Society for Cutting Up Men.
Thanks, this is a good example of the way these terms encode assumptions, which comes across more effectively than anything I was trying to say in the post.
What the *leaders* of the activists - which group, I've noticed, often have a foot in two worlds - are feeling, besides the usual yen for power, and a safe sinecure away from dirty commerce or manual labor, is closest to mercy, to the feeling we ascribe, somewhat sourly, to a Lady Bountiful.
(It is easy, if you like, to be more generous than I, and view the impulse very favorably. Indeed, you probably should, a happy life and the benefits flowing to the world therefrom, in some way probably require that you do. To feel as I do about such things, and about people generally, is to inhabit a dark place, the only relief of which is going into nature, and that too is spoiled now ... well, for some of us.)
However, mercy and justice are necessarily opposed. There is no way to reconcile them. What these activists want can never answer to "justice". If you are in sympathy, you should give up the attempt. Your vast intelligence can't help you here.
"Mercy and justice are necessarily opposed"
Wrong, both are aspects of right action. It is just to show mercy to those who accept it, and merciful to enact justice to prevent future suffering.
Definitely have noticed this - justice is woke term which suggests government is needed and 'will be there to help the oppressed', liberty and freedom are antithesis and are my preferred adjectives.
Could declining belief in God be one reason for the popularity of the justice frame? Something like: We still have a Christian sense that we're all sinners (or even that we carry guilt for the actions of our ancestors) but we no longer have a deity to judge and/or forgive us. So we end up becoming the "weird superposition of criminals and cops."
I think that’s definitely the case: lacking transcendent morality, progressives need to root their causes in a secular morality. The concept of “justice” offers a vague but recognizable basis for such.
Claiming that something is "motte-and-bailey" is usually itself a motte-and-bailey fallacy. The motte is someone using one meaning of a phrase to make a provocative claim, then switching to another meaning when challenged. The bailey is a phrase being understood differently by different people (which is going to happen for any remotely complex concept that enters the popular consciousness).
Tell me your substatck deal is making you unfathomably rich without telling me your substatck deal is making you unfathomably rich.
Jokes aside, I think this kind of discussion of justice needs to be grounded in the idea of the social contract, lest you strawman the ongoing discourse with rhetorical questions like 'was the little ice age unjust?'
I don't see these novel uses of the term 'justice' as necessarily concept creep, but rather as earnest discussions regarding e.g. the economic or environmental implications of our stated political and moral values.
The idea of the social contract is vague and controversial, making it shaky as a grounding for just about anything. What is it, where did it come from, why does it apply to me (I didn't sign it!), and what obligations does it impose? Many have tried to answer these questions, perhaps some even successfully! But their answers are all different - and many doubt there is meaningfully such a thing as a "social contract" at all. So I think adding it into the conversation will make things murkier, not clearer.
Well the point isn't that the mere concept of the social contract is an ironclad argument bound to convert Scott to the idea of social justice; however, it does provide a more coherent explanation for those categories of justice than Scott engages with. I think this discourse is sufficiently important to be reflected upon charitably, and sentences like "What if I said that there’s a really high correlation between temperature and GDP" lead me to think Scott isn't approaching these concepts within a helpful frame.
Speaking of the social contract, let me quote from "The Ball and the Cross":
"The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady, monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying something like this:
“You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled.”
“It's no good chattering away, Monsieur,” said Hutton, for the Master was silent. “The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey our orders, and so have you.”
“The machinery is of the most perfect,” assented Durand, somewhat irrelevantly; “worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory.”
“Oh! I dare say,” said Hutton.
Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
...“The place is on fire!” cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror. “Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?”
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. “How did the French Revolution happen?” he asked.
“Oh, how should I know!” wailed the other.
“Then I will tell you,” said Turnbull; “it happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked.”
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract."
Thank you for sharing; it is always a pleasure to read about my countrymen's uncontested excellence when it comes to indignantly setting things on fire (fictional or otherwise).
Who else to cite back at you but George Bernard Shaw:
~~
THE CHIEF. Friends and fellow brigands. I have a proposal to make to this meeting. We have now spent three evenings in discussing the question Have Anarchists or Social-Democrats the most personal courage? We have gone into the principles of Anarchism and Social-Democracy at great length. The cause of Anarchy has been ably represented by our one Anarchist, who doesn't know what Anarchism means [laughter]—
THE ANARCHIST. [rising] A point of order, Mendoza—
MENDOZA. [forcibly] No, by thunder: your last point of order took half an hour. Besides, Anarchists don't believe in order.
THE ANARCHIST. [mild, polite but persistent: he is, in fact, the respectable looking elderly man in the celluloid collar and cuffs] That is a vulgar error. I can prove—
MENDOZA. Order, order.
THE OTHERS [shouting] Order, order. Sit down. Chair! Shut up.
The Anarchist is suppressed.
MENDOZA. On the other hand we have three Social-Democrats among us. They are not on speaking terms; and they have put before us three distinct and incompatible views of Social-Democracy.
THE MAJORITY. [shouting assent] Hear, hear! So we are. Right.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [smarting under oppression] You ain't no Christian. You're a Sheeny, you are.
MENDOZA. [with crushing magnanimity] My friend; I am an exception to all rules. It is true that I have the honor to be a Jew; and, when the Zionists need a leader to reassemble our race on its historic soil of Palestine, Mendoza will not be the last to volunteer [sympathetic applause—hear, hear, etc.]. But I am not a slave to any superstition. I have swallowed all the formulas, even that of Socialism; though, in a sense, once a Socialist, always a Socialist.
THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!
MENDOZA. But I am well aware that the ordinary man—even the ordinary brigand, who can scarcely be called an ordinary man [Hear, hear!]—is not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough for him; and in our business affairs common sense is good enough for me. Well, what is our business here in the Sierra Nevada, chosen by the Moors as the fairest spot in Spain? Is it to discuss abstruse questions of political economy? No: it is to hold up motor cars and secure a more equitable distribution of wealth.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.
MENDOZA. [urbanely] Undoubtedly. All made by labor, and on its way to be squandered by wealthy vagabonds in the dens of vice that disfigure the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. We intercept that wealth. We restore it to circulation among the class that produced it and that chiefly needs it—the working class. We do this at the risk of our lives and liberties, by the exercise of the virtues of courage, endurance, foresight, and abstinence—especially abstinence. I myself have eaten nothing but prickly pears and broiled rabbit for three days.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [Stubbornly] No more ain't we.
MENDOZA. [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [unmoved] Why should you?
THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs: from each according to his means.
THE FRENCHMAN. [shaking his fist at the anarchist] Fumiste!
MENDOZA. [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.
THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo, Mendoza!
MENDOZA. What I say is, let us treat one another as gentlemen, and strive to excel in personal courage only when we take the field.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [derisively] Shikespear.
~~~
(Man and Superman, beginning of Act III)
Not sure how we can even have this conversation, without focusing on the popularizer of the term justice: Father Coughlin. As leader of the National Union for Social Justice political party and the newspaper "Social Justice", today's SJW's truly stand on shoulders of giants. Does this meddlesome radio priest not deserve a steelman or even disclaimer?
Feels like a similar ideas as Laurie Anderson in O Superman- "When love is gone, there's always justice. When justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's only mom.
Hi mom"
The imposition of 'justice' is always a net-negative, by definition.
At best one might hope to sort of 'balance' the moral ledger which would be zero-sum, but algorithmic overhead on actually bringing about 'justice' mean it's always negative sum. 'Under-balancing' means justice hasn't been achieved for the victim(s). 'Over-balancing' the ledger is its own kind of injustice.
There's no such thing as 'justice' and there never was. It's a word we use to _avoid_ thinking clearly. As long as we speak in terms of "justice" we're condemning ourselves to unnecessary conflict. The concept of justice isn't even necessary to identify or solve the problems mentioned (those that are actually even problems).
The people that come up with these terms are just manufacturing problems so that they can sell you their solution.
Did you know that people JUDGE YOU for your wrinkly face? No, you're not just getting old, you're the VICTIM of WRINKLEFACE INJUSTICE. Call your congressman today and DEMAND that they use STATE VIOLENCE to COERCE EVERYONE to pay for our anti-wrinkle-ism cream. Patent pending.
One aspect I don't see in the post or its comments is how all the subjustices--climate justice, tech justice, etc., aren't intended to each be a paradigm, but rather a signal of alliance with the broader social justice movement. "Hi, I'm interested in tech issues, approach them from a social justice angle, and want to demonstrate my solidarity with the larger movement, so I'm going to call my program "tech justice."
Recognizing the branding and solidarity aspects also helps us see another aspect of the phenomenon. Remember that one of the axioms of modern SJ is that all oppressions are related and that all oppressed peoples share common interests. By maintaining the brand of "justice," activists reinforce the message that power works to oppress from many angles, and that all people affected must work as one to oppose them.
This seems reasonable - it could all just be branding to signal group membership, without much deeper content.
Where the issue is one I care about - the environment - I can truthfully attest that the introduction of "justice" into the thing - gums up the works very quickly, in addition to muddying the mission. Indeed, a hunan-centric focus has quietly superceded the chartered mission of the national conservation group into whose workings I have a window. It has been, essentially, illegitimate of the "Yankees" as I like to style them, to impose this crap without having the courage to change the founding mission statement of the organization, lest they alienate donors who believe they are contributing to preserving open space and wildlife.
https://youtu.be/sBsJ-fHPT6Q
I do not have any evidence for this, but my assumption (as some who does political polling for a living) is that this seems like something that started as poll-tested messaging from politicians and political advocacy groups. "Help the poor" doesn't poll as well as "economic justice." "Help minorities get ahead" is a weaker message than "racial justice." These messages have the dual benefit of being 1) active and 2) vague while seeming concrete.
You can *fight* for economic justice. You can pursue it. These are active words that people like to hear from politicians. And you can put whatever policy or outcome you want into the economic justice box or the climate justice box, even as every policy or outcome also falls short of being "economic justice" or "climate justice." And "justice" splits the world into good and bad, black and white, so even if there's no exact meaning behind "justice" it makes people feel like there's a clear distinction being made between the good guys and the bad guys.
A thoughtful and interesting essay. Thanks!
My reaction is to think that framing things in terms of "justice" allows you to do things -- like punishment, expropriation, a general use of force -- that would be morally questionable if it was framed as charity or being good. Mother Theresa can care for the poor, because she's on a mission of mercy, but she can't do it by stealing from the rich at gunpoint, because that's not consistent with being a saintly nurse. Whereas Robin Hood can totally rob a random rich baron at arrowpoint, because he's on a mission of righing wrongs -- of "justice".
So yes I do agree it's a sign of social moral decay that too many things are framed as "justice," because what it really says is that we seek to license violence, compulsion, and force, against people we don't like for reasons perhaps sufficient (they invaded Ukraine) or perhaps not (we're envious because they're rich and we're not). And we're hoping we can achieve the moral license to be violent by arguing it's all in service of some larger moral good. We're enlisting in a Crusade, and murdering innocent infidels is OK because it's necessary to found the City of God.
A community I know was victimized for decades by the polluting discharges of politically powerful hog farming conglomerates. I don't doubt that some people there wanted retribution against the bad actors, but as far as I could tell, most just *wanted it to stop*.
Isn't it fair to frame their struggle as an appeal to 'environmental justice'? Appeals to justice feel perfectly reasonable when individuals are victimized by wanton environmental degradation. To the (admittedly repressed) libertarian in me, this feels like a natural extension of property rights and natural law.
The insistence on framing novel 'justice' concepts strictly through the lens of retributive justice feels like a strawman which frames out-group activism as inherently vindictive and unreasonable.
Why? What's wrong with ordinary justice? If your description of the situation is accurate, then clearly those people were experience a tort -- an infringement on both statutory and traditional rights to the enjoyment of their own property -- and had a excellent civil case against the hog farmers. Why could they not go to court and gain relief? And if they can, then we have no need for any novel definitions of "justice", the old-fashioned definition, which encompasses "A may not infringe on the traditional and statutory rights of B without good reason" does just fine.
Right, environmental justice is justice! It’s about lawmaking and law enforcement; about harms and torts. That is why I find it frustrating to see Scott and others frame it as an incoherent strawman focused on retribution; this post is a sideswipe at the omnipresent Woke Outgroup, not a credible discussion of justice.
I wish it were so, but I disagree with you. I think plenty of people *do* use "X justice" for what they want to achieve that does *not* fit traditional definitions of justice.
For example, let's suppose in your community the hypothetical harm was that the pig farming conglomerate hired a bunch of out-of-towners at wages way higher than the prevailing standard, and these nouveaux riche priced the locals out of the housing market. There are definitely people who would say this is "unjust" by some novel definition of "X justice" -- since of course it's perfectly legal under traditional justice. And what they would want by that reframing is to achieve a moral argument for expropriating the pig farmer collective in order to redress the bad luck (or bad life planning) of the local population. Which by me is dressing up naked envy might-makes-right politics in a moral framework, a serious wrong.
I see what you mean, but Scott isn’t just bringing up some clear instance or mode of the word ‘justice’ being stretched (something which I, too, really dislike!). He’s loosely gesturing across a set of different usages and fields and sneering at them. I don’t think that’s particularly insightful.
I insist that reducing these categories of justice to some retributive instinct does not just lack nuance (which Scott justifies with a vague swipe at some undefined outgroup), but outright misrepresents the basis for these justice movements.
If Scott wants to complain about Woke people doing Woke dumb things and-isn’t-that-so-terrible, I think that’s ok. I would just find him more convincing if he did so plainly, without pretending that he’s writing about justice instead.
This is like if his post on ‘murderism’ was instead a half-baked rant about how racism probably doesn’t exist. I am grateful that he gave us a nuanced and thoughtful essay back then, and I suppose I long for more of *that*, instead.
Well, he's just one guy, and he does have a day job. I thought it was a very useful essay (in the old-fashioned meaning of "essay," which is well short of a treatise). I'm sure it could be made more pointed an detailed, on the one hand, but on the other if it were I dunno if I'd have time to read it.
Another good post Scott.
Imo, its also linked to Nozick' idea of "normative sociology": “Normative sociology, the study of what the causes of problems ought to be, greatly fascinates us all” https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/06/normative-sociology.html
X Justice is simply an euphemism, or a rhetorical device to implement Normative X for the activist class without concern for empirical realities. It may not help the "victims", but it does help create simple monocausal explanations around which to rally the comrades.
Here's a probably more accurate idea:
"Justice" here is used to mean "this trumps all other considerations". You're normally not allowed to hurt people, but you are permitted to hurt people for justice. You are normally not allowed to rob people, but if they owe you and it's *justice* to take things from them, well, that's different. I'm permitted to stay neutral on some political issue... but if it's not political, it's a matter of *justice*, I'm obliged to act, and merely staying neutral is a terrible wrong for which I deserve to lose my livelihood and reputation.
That's why people say "justice". It's an unlimited license to ignore the normal rules about being nice to people, and to do so righteously.
I'd be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to advertise one of my favorite podcasts, 2 Rash 2 Unadvised, which is a readthrough podcast of the Terra Ignota series. They are almost through book 3 if you want to listen along. https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/2-rash-2-unadvised-liam-nolan-waweru-kariuki-EsfnKi_mPOl/
Comment justice. It is unfair that Scott's blog gets more comments that other blogs.
I think what this piece is missing is looking at the issue from the perspective of those receiving the help rather than those giving it. Receiving charity is a handout from your betters. Getting justice is just getting what is your right. I think the social justice movement would look at the difference as supporting the existing social hierarchies in the first case, and working toward equality in the second. Whether there is any actual improvement in outcomes for either case, I don't know.
You just called it "help." "Help" is not what you get as a matter of justice, it actually is charity. That's why we use that word and not some other. I don't go to court to sue a company that defrauded me and call the compensation the court awards me "help." I might call it "compensation" or something, but not "help."
So that could be an unfortunate word choice, that doesn't reflect what you're trying to say, but it can also be read as that you're saying some people really do want actual "help" -- charity -- to be rebranded as "justice". And that linguistic fraud, like all newspeak frauds, is a problem.
No, I wouldn't call it fraud. I don't think the word "justice" is used to deceive, but describe what they believe to be right. Justice isn't something we are expected to take for ourselves, right? We don't want vigilante justice... We expect our institutions to provide justice based on our rights as outlined in law. So if one is campaigning for "economic justice," what they want is for our institutions to eliminate poverty, or reduce economic inequality, or whatever, because they believe that to be a human right in some way. They don't want to have to rely on charity. This is just my interpretation, though, and I may be wrong. And I don't fully endorse it, either.
I guess to put it more simply, justice is something you deserve, charity is something you get out of the kindness of another's heart (often with an expectation of thanks). But what people deserve is a question people disagree strongly about. One person's justice is another person's handout.
It's ethical language used to cover a very moralistic and emotional sense of righteousness. Same with 'equality', which in certain circles doesn't even resemble its original meaning.
One trend I've been keeping an eye on is the balance between referring to "rights" and "duties". These are fairly precisely symmetric terms: if one person has a right, that implies a duty of others with respect to that person. Google Trends suggests a better than 50 to 1 ratio in favor of rights.
Perhaps only for so-called "positive" rights (a "right" to free health care). For the traditional rights, e.g. a right to life, liberty, et cetera, it's a bit of a stretch. In principle my right to life imposes a "duty" on other people not to try to murder me, but, with possibly a few exceptions in my immediate family, people don't generally have to restrain themselves from murdering me anyway, so this isn't quite what we mean by imposing a "duty."
One could even interpret my right to life not as a duty for other people not to kill me but as a right for me or anyone else to kill them if they try.
When I read about "Latest Thing We Had To Give a Title To" I feel like someone's trying to manipulate me. Exploit and use me, rather than convince or educate me. It's like looking at a news website and seeing every article title is click bait. I'm just moving on.
The detailed semantics of "justice" is a red herring. "Justice" is a tribal identifier for the blue tribe, just as "liberty" is for the red tribe. That's why it's increasingly being attached, more or less arbitrarily, to other blue-tribe causes.
So you basically think there's too much justice. Do you also think there's too much free speech?
I think a big part of this is a shift in views in entitlement. There is a common view that people now have certain inalienable rights to health, wealth and other opportunities and it’s the states responsibility to provide these - so if you weren’t getting these you are a victim in need of redress, aka justice.
Previously The only area where you did have inalienable rights was if someone broke the law to harm you, requiring the state to act to punish the law breaker and seek justice. Whereas if you were poor and had no healthcare that was just tough luck, not injustice.
This makes it a bit of a mixed bag for me, racial justice - the idea someone is being wronged and deserves redress if they are treated worse purely due to their skin colour is pretty clear cut. But for other examples e.g. inter generational justice who is supposed to be responsible for ensuring everyone gets their entitlement?
Haven’t seen this mentioned (commenting late so might be covered in a thread)
I feel like you're interpreting "justice" as specifically meaning "retributive justice as executed by a state," and that's a very narrow use of the term. And the same people who talk about "food justice" or whatever are generally exactly the same people who point out that the retributive view of justice is in itself a problem.
In the broadest sense, "justice" is simply the sentiment that the world is supposed to be a certain way, but it currently isn't, and some kind of action is necessary to get it back the way it's supposed to be.
In some situations, this isn't particularly theoretically difficult—if, as a moral principle, everyone in the world should have food, but some people currently don't have food, then you can restore a state of justice if you just find those people and give them some food; easy.
The more complicated ones are where there's really no specific action you can take to restore the way the world's supposed to be. If someone's dead when they're supposed to be alive, there's no known means to make them no longer dead. At best, you can figure out why they died and fix that problem so that no more people die unjustly for the same reason. If they died because someone murdered them, then... well, you have to figure out how you "fix" a murderer. And there are no particularly good answers there, because nothing you do to the murderer is ever going to achieve actual justice (which, again, would be for the murder-ee to be no longer murdered).
It's that lack of any truly just resolution to a problem like murder that leads people into some of the goofy ideas that tend to get mistaken for justice. Like, instead of thinking that murder is unjust because there's a person who is no longer alive, they come up with some variation on the idea that murder is unjust because it shifts the Ultimate Cosmic Balance towards the Green Team by 10 points, and that you can fix it by murdering the murderer back, thereby shifting it back 10 points towards the Red Team. (The really nutty variations on this idea will try to accumulate extra Red Team points by murdering other people on the Green Team, like maybe the murderer's family, or maybe people who look or act vaguely like the murderer, or...)
And that kind of thing should not actually be mistaken for justice. It's an error that arises out of the effort to fill the cosmic void left by the impossibility of real justice, but it is not, in itself, justice.
"In the broadest sense, "justice" is simply the sentiment that the world is supposed to be a certain way, but it currently isn't, and some kind of action is necessary to get it back the way it's supposed to be."
I do not think that is correct. Consider the case of someone researching cures for a disease. The world would be better if fewer people died of the disease and his research is necessary for that. But I cannot imagine the researcher describing his objective as justice. Similarly for most other activities designed to improve the world not by changing what other people do but by increasing the total resources available.
This is a limitation of the conceptualization of "justice". The word "justice" should not mean "the wheels of law"- it should be a precise synonym of "righteousness"- After all, "jus" means both "that which is legal" and "that which is right".
Manichaean
The humanists seek to shine: Sniper is a humanist. Utopians are cogs in the machine of progress, each devoting to put every waking moment to that goal. And yes, I would take the oath.
The justice frame has one advantage. In ethics, a fundamental rule is that "ought implies can."
So while we can all agree that donating time or money to a charity is ethically good and laudable, it is not possible for every single person to do this. Therefore we cannot e.g., pass a law that requires everyone to do these things.
This is why our criminal law system does what Scott describes — if you comply, you are merely not a criminal. This approach obeys "ought implies can" because no matter what your life situation is, you can always *not* do things.
And so many important moral duties are phrased as negative obligations. If we can think creatively about ways to improve society by *not harming it* then that should be doable.
I am very late to the comments, but I have heard this problem described as the
"Lenin-to-Stalin Transition"
--When the original ideals and idealists are gone or fading, and the focus of the movement is increasingly on maintainin and extending its' (their, for the leaders/oligarchs) power.
The best and most absurd pure example of "mission creep" I have heard is the March of Dimes. Yes, even them.
BRetty
Perhaps part of the reason for this problem is the increasing dominance of Narrative as a means of political and social discourse. Narrative is a powerful tool for persuasion, but it does impose constraints. In particular, the most effective narratives by far are those with heroes and villains. Habitat for Humanity actually building homes for the homeless may be in some sense a heroic tale, but that's not enough. A story about greedy capitalist landlords throwing sympathetic victims out on the street has a *villain*, and that sells the narrative.
"Justice", is a term that in common usage implies a villain due their just deserts. So if a problem can be reframed as one of mumble-something Justice, the narrative is improved even if the identity of the villain is discretely unmentioned. The audience can usually find one easily enough.
Unfortunately, while there are forms of discourse which favor truth over falsehood, in cases where the root cause of a problem isn't human villainy, Narrative favors falsehood.
I'm a big fan of punitive justice: I just think that it often leads us to bypass the court systems in a way that impedes the presentation of evidence. Revenge is a basic human need. For example, when I've been wronged, I can't feel happy until I've obtained revenge. Until I get redress of my wrong (in the form of a harsh and vindictive punishment for the offender), the wrong eats away at me like a great big throbbing wound, making me angrier and angrier with each passing day.
Some people might say that this is unhealthy, but I would argue that the people who tell me this are evil selfish hypocrites. Who are THEY to know how I feel or what would make me feel better? Imagine the presumption, the utter arrogance, to think somebody else knows better than ME about the state of MY feelings. Only the person who has been wronged has the right to decide whether they want punitive justice or restorative justice. I'm not judging the people who want restorative justice - it makes very little sense to me, but to each their own. As the wronged party, it's their prerogative to decide upon the proper punishment for their offender. However, they have no right to push THEIR values upon people who prefer punitive justice, like me. When I've been wronged, *I* get to choose what form of justice I prefer.
Ultimately, I think that the biggest moral divide between liberals and conservatives is the preference between restorative vs punitive justice. But to suggest that one kind of justice is inherently better or worse is evil and arrogant. Ultimately, both restorative and punitive justice have their uses, and it's up to the injured party to decide which flavor they prefer.
You might also feel that shooting heroin is better for you than actually improving the material circumstances in your life and that anyone who refuses you heroin is evil for daring to tell you that heroin is bad for you, but that doesn't make it true.
Yes, yes, I'm an evil selfish hypocrite for expecting you to be an adult and learn how to control your feelings instead of lashing out in a destructive fit (or more accurately fantasizing about the government lashing out in a destructive fit on your behalf). I thought you identified as a conservative instead of as an SJW: isn't this what the right loves to accuse their politics as essentially boiling down to?
I think the reason is a shift in strategy by progressives. Since they realized that political battles are difficult to be won and take a long time, phrasing demands not as political, but as "legal" seems an easier argument. In my homecountry of Germany I observe this a lot: instead of arguing for an increase in child allowance of X€ because children deserve it and we as a society should be able to take care of our children etc. it is often framed as a legal issue: The constitution guarantees everyone dignified living conditions, with the current amounts children cannot live "dignified", hence it is a matter of justice, not politics, to take care of children better.
It thus becomes no longer about convincing or at least co-opting the political opponent, but about proving something legally, which then can seemingly not be contradicted anymore. Needless to say, this strategy does not seem more effective necessarily.
I have the feeling that Scott's post have become much more strawman-y recently. "The very laws of space and time are subject to spatial justice and temporal justice" seems either flat out wrong (the linked articles are in no way about the laws of space and time), or just humor I don't get and which turns into a motte-and-bailey. The same holds for the whole "What is climate justice" section. (Those are two examples that jumped out at me, without actively researching any of the topics.) It's a pity, because I always considered that taking others seriously was a key strength of the blog.
Or am I misreading this somehow?
The spacetime justice seemed quite funny to me.
Funny =/= accurate- you can laugh and chuckle your way into whatever position you want, but the result is that your ideology itself becomes a joke.
EDIT: in fact, the point of a strawman IS that it's funny: you reduce the other perspective into an absurd figure of fun, so that THEY are a bunch of stupid, laughable scarecrows in contrast to YOU, the cool, collected, witty, intelligent, very attractive Right Opinion Haver. See: every political cartoon post-1992, virtually any meme comparing literally any two positions.
What exactly is inaccurate about this joke?
There are hyperlinks, so you can verify that "spatial justice" and "temporal justice" are a thing, i.e. Scott didn't make it up. Before reading that text, you probably did not expect them to be a thing, and the first impression is silly -- which makes the joke funny. Then you realize that okay, there is probably a non-silly interpretation of each of them... but the main point of the article (proliferation of all kinds of "<adjective> justice") still remains valid.
The only misleading part is that the juxtaposition of "spatial justice" and "temporal justice", prefixed by words "the very laws of space and time", created a silly picture for a moment. But there are links you can click, which make it clear what it actually means.
I would be happy to live in a world where political memes contained hyperlinks to the pages of opponents where they explain the terms using their own words. In my experience, this is typically avoided on purpose.
Including the hyperlinks undercuts the joke, which rather makes my point that you can EITHER engage in actual, serious discussion of someone's ideas OR go "ha ha, look at how stupid Other Tribe is!" Given that this essay also includes "Climate Justice isn't real because there's just a really high correlation between temperatures and GDP", this article is pretty clearly the latter. What annoys me is that SA wrote this while pretending it's the former.
Justice is determining when it is righteous to harm another. That's why justice carries a sword.
I thought I'd have a go at this comment as well:
"A narrative of helpers and saviors allows saints. It allows people who are genuinely good, above and beyond expectations, who rightly serve as ideals and role models for others."
I think the problem here is that, if you think that western pollution is now badly harming poor countries, those "helpers" are just the nicest muggers in the gang. They're above expectations because they're not breaking the nose of the poor quite as hard as the rest of the droogs; but the idea that they should be ideals and role models is a bit crazy.
"A narrative of justice allows, at best, non-criminals - people who haven’t broken any of the rules yet, who don’t suck quite as much as everyone else."
Having a good world seems to me to be largely about everyone agreeing to follow rules. I'd much rather have a society where everyone knows the basic rules (like don't steal, don't kill, and don't fuck up another guy's weather) than a society where they don't know those rules, and as compensation I get a Mother Theresa and a Princess Diana to help me out when my legs get blown off by a climate landmine.
If the choice you're presenting is saints vs justice, I'll take justice any day of the week.
It feels like maybe a year ago that everything was "equity" instead of "justice" and that the George Floyd protests kicked off the big transition.
I'm not sure that there is great meaning to what positive word is in vogue to describe the various movements, but there may be meaning in the fact that they tend to change in sync. A large part of the current progressive philosophy is that all these disparate causes are unified and inseparable. Racial justice is reproductive justice is health justice is environmental justice. As part of that all the movements will share the same terminology to emphasize their shared ideological battle.
In this analysis justice takes over because it is particularly apt for the most salient of the progressive causes (BLM in June 2020) and then persists until a new cause catches the limelight and its preferred adjective takes over.
"which I think is the most important. A narrative of helpers and saviors allows saints. It allows people who are genuinely good, above and beyond expectations, who rightly serve as ideals and role models for others."
a narrative allows? what about real life? what do real life "expectations" allow?
think of discussions around "bootstrapping" and underemployed PhDs and rising requirements (AKA "expectations") for entry-level jobs and such. there is at least a perception that normal levels of effort are just worthless shit, that you need to exert saint-like superhuman efforts to even *hope* to achieve a minimum success (and then you fail anyways).
you say the "We are not helpers"/"no sainthood to aspire to" stuff is an effect (rather than a cause) of the justice framing. I think it might begin the other way around, right?
same for climate. people tried to help by doing their saintly recycling and whatever for years and years. but the climate is getting worse and worse. so they see their efforts as worthless, and themselves as demonstrably powerless.
discussions about racism and sexism might go the same way... though I won't argue these perceptions are always accurate. but i don't think some kind of framing about "justice" is the cause. if anything, i'd guess the explanation for any seeming disproportionality these days is more similar to the cliche: "the news" (which is now social media) always focuses on the negative, no matter how much crime rates are falling, etc (and social media virality etc. seems relevant here).
you can, of course, go full-relative: "well, climate might be worse than it was decades ago, but it would be even worse if it wasn't for our nice saints!". same for people's employment situations. this is good and important to keep in mind...but the non-relative absolute measure (or: time relative, compared to the past, rather than an alternative present) can indicate things are still not ideal, and in some cases getting worse. and if human activity is making something worse for other humans...that's kinda where the whole idea of justice comes in, pretty unavoidably i think?
proposing some kind of relativistic hero framing doesn't even undo the justice metaphor. because you could speak in both metaphors simultaneously: "the villains would have stolen even more than they did if you hadn't exerted saint-like effort to rescue as much as humanly possible".
"I do think that’s potentially a sign of a sick society."
maybe, but a sign like that can go different ways. so what does it mean? is society sick just because the "justice" framing is causing problems? or, is there an underlying sickness, and the framing on justice only arises in an attempt to fix it? is the sickness/problem the thing the activists say is a problem? or are the activists the (perhaps psycho-somatic) disease/diseased?
I'm pretty sure that most of these types of justice are just applying social justice to a specific topic, with the use of 'justice' directly borrowing from there. That is, "climate justice" is just the intersection of (social justice)*(climate change), et cetera. Possibly there's a deeper root in in the 1960s for this definition of 'justice', but either way - AIUI it's not any sort of general symptom of societal decline, it's just a signifier that you're talking about a topic from a woke point of view. Also a rhetorical tool, of course. ("Against? How can you be against justice?") But the existence of the social justice movement (or whatever you call it), and the fact that it uses a specific lingo, is not really new, and I don't think 'justice' is being used in that sense by anyone outside it.
"Justice" is constructed of pure unobtanium. "Law" is the best we can do in this sublunary sphere.
so is sainthood
Law:Justice::Diana Moon Glampers:Equality
You mean law is a poor method of enacting justice? I think equality was achieved pretty well in Harrison's world. The point of the story is moreso "equality is a bad goal" rather than "handicapping people is a bad way to achieve equality."
So maybe you mean that justice is a bad goal? Maybe. I think it's a good theory.
Maybe you mean law is a good way to enact justice? Although I think this guess is probably wrong. I don't think anybody out of context compares proposition X to the villain of a story to claim that proposition X is good.
Or maybe you mean Law achieves justice by giving special dispensations to certain people and refusing them from other people in a way that negatively correlates to their innate ability? I think that's a very apt comparison. Judges are consistently more lenient on people who are statistically predisposed to crime and lack leniency for the sorts of people we don't expect to commit crimes.
It is interesting how a phrase can resonate with someone so differently depending on when they encountered it and what they assume to be its origin.
I'm Catholic. Social justice for me is a Catholic concept. It comes out of Thomism (really the neo-Thomism of the 19th century carried on since at Louvain/Leuven), has been elaborated on by every Pope since Pope Leo in the 1890's, and is enshrined in Canon Law, that "The Christian faithful are ... obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor from their own resources."
Thomistic theologians, Pope John Paul II, Canon lawyers - none of these people are the misguided and squishy-thinking activists Scott associates with the term and movement. Consequently, the negative associations and implications Scott draws from the spread of the term - absolutely none of them occur to me or resonate with me, at all.
As I said, I share Scott's low view of this framing by many of these movements. However, that's simply because I think the framing does not work or obscures more than it illuminates. I see nothing pernicious in it, for those movements or society as a whole.
Indeed, the effort of those movements is not hard for me to decipher and requires none of the speculation of this piece - I always presumed it was an attempt to add legitimacy to claims/pleas for help that the activists (mostly correctly) believe politicians and the electorate won't support on pure charity/sympathy grounds (it's reasonable to try to have an answer to the obvious critique of why should we help those people, who presumably could help themselves?).
The effort mostly fails, but that can be concluded/argued without the logical leaps of this piece, in my view - many of which, given the actual/other origins of these terms and traditions, are as unfounded and unwarranted as the arguments they critique.
As a fellow-Catholic, I wholeheartedly agree. This is quite honestly the only essay Scott has ever written that I've felt so *deeply* frustrated by.
and we all know the other place where sainthood comes up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainthood_(album)
cf. C. S. Lewis:
"Are the gods not just?"
"Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were? But come and see."
I get the irresistible nature of the rhetorical flourish, but want to assure people that unless I’m much more out of touch than I think, the laws of space and time are safe from encroachment by justice warriors.
It is more correct (if less rhetorically compelling) to say that spatial justice and temporal justice respectively *reference* space and time.
(The first concerns allegedly unequal/inequitable distribution of social goods as a function of location. The second, *not* by analogy, concerns unequal/inequitable control over one’s time as experienced by different categories of people (he typed, while waiting forever for A033 to be called out at the local DMV😊))
You should be at least a third of the way through the DMV line by now, keep strong!
"shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars"
our media is full of larger than life heroes and stories of success.
we can only ever fall short. you don't need the framing of justice for that to be the case.
People have been telling each other of heroes immediately after they figured out they can tell stories.
You are supposed to fall short. If the pursuit is not satisfying and meaningful, something is wrong with the heroes you picked, not the process itself.
my final sentence was my point, which you aren't disagreeing with. sure, you could say "it also applies even long before modern media", and you can try to discuss a positive framing of falling short (which i already mentioned), but all of that is not relevant to my point, and off-topic in this comment section.
Excessive use of the word 'justice' in the naming of a cause should be a sign that the people using it are operating in bad faith. It's basically the same as calling one's views 'progressive', as if by definition their views are "progress" and opposition to "progressive" views is opposition to "progress". Perhaps its became so commonplace its not knowingly used in a bad faith way, but "justice" has not reached that stage and extreme scepticism is an appropriate approach to people who use it.
During the Great Awokening, activists add the word "justice" to phrases to imply "white people must pay."
E.g., "Environmental justice" means race-based environmental compensation. For example, the Biden Administration wants to hand out money to neighborhoods damaged by pollution. But Biden is being criticized for using the term "environmental justice" while taking into account the amount of pollution in a place but _not_ taking into account the race of the people in the place. E.g., from yesterday's Los Angeles Times:
"Op-Ed: How can the White House fix environmental injustice if it won’t take race into account?
"BY ALVARO SANCHEZ AND MANUEL PASTOR
"MARCH 18, 2022 3 AM PT
"In mid-February, when the White House unveiled the beta version of its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, it was met by sharp criticism from environmental justice advocates: A mapping tool designed to identify disadvantaged communities neglected to use race as a criterion.
"The screening tool, when finalized, will govern President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which requires that at least 40% of federal investments in climate-change mitigation and clean energy benefit neighborhoods and communities that are, in the administration’s words, “marginalized, underserved and overburdened by pollution.”
"Working at the census tract level, the Justice40 screener sets vulnerability thresholds in eight categories. In general, if a community scores above an economic and environmental threshold in one or more category, it will be prioritized for federal aid.
"But race never factors in the tool’s calculus, an omission that runs counter to science. It turns out that the No. 1 predictor of whether you live perilously close to a polluting facility is race."
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-03-18/race-environmental-justice-justice40-screening-tool-joe-biden-california
Or, you know, rather than _predict_ the distance from a polluting facility, you could just measure the pollution level.
I have some inside insight here. I was working as an environmental activist 8 years ago when some folks from the David Suzuki Foundation briefed us on their Environmental Justice project. Their motivation was this: every time they ever made any progress on the environment, they risked losing it later, and they had to do that same fight over and over again on each issue. If, however, they could convince governments to recognize the environment as having legal rights, then they could win once and for all.
I think it's this finality people are craving. If you say that something is a bad idea, people might always change their mind later. If you can establish that it is unjust — especially by official arbiters — then the question is settled.
The trouble with that, however, is that justice doesn't work well for subtle problems. It works best for simple "stop this" or "do this" propositions, such as "put this man in jail," or "free this man from jail." I always think of a car. Justice is good for solving simple problems like, "this car is illegally parked: put a boot on it" or "it is unjust that this car lacks gas: fill it up." It doesn't work well for, "we think this car might not be running because it has a broken sprocket, but it might be the alternator." Fixing a broken car is a matter of details and competence. Saying "it is unjust that this car is broken" doesn't fix the car.
The justice framing is great for social movements — when it makes sense — because it offers people a simple yes/no proposition to demand, something to yell in a crowd. The Civil Rights movement was successful framing problems in terms of justice because it was the kind of problem justice can fix: stop excluding people from bathrooms, buses, and jobs.
Addressing the proportion of minorities in science is a whole different kind of problem. Shifting societal CO2 emissions is a different kind of problem as well. I think Suzuki had things totally wrong trying to make the environment a justice issue. These things require attention to detail, competence, long-term pressure to improve systems, etc. When people try to frame things in terms of justice, it really is a problem, in my experience as an advocate. It forces people to try to simplify issues to a yes/no proposition, which means they resist discussing policy details.
Caballistically this is an reflection of the relation between Gevurah (justice) and Chesed (doing something out of love/mercy, to help or save someone).
I think the shift in frame is an acknowledgement of injustice, indeed - but I'm not sure thats bad? I don't read it as a "mea culpa" kind of guilt, more that "helping the poor" often is a lot of virtue signalling - ie the 19th century industrialist who is fine with employing children in terrible working conditions but every month he and his wife attend a charity dinner at the club to donate to the poor, unwashed masses (and also, of course, look down on them and feel superior). Framed as "economic justice" it becomes about saying "we live in a society where if you are born to poor, uneducated parents, you will likely end up poor and uneducated yourself, and thats unjust." And then, ideally, go and actually do something about that, because just saying it is just as much virtue signalling, but I digress. Point is, regarding the utopia/dystopia perspective - "helping the poor" adresses the symptoms, and is a net gain over not helping the poor, but to get closer to utopia, we need to adress the root causes and effect systemic change.
Now, there obviously is a lot more to both, from effective altruism to wokeness and the layers and layers of virtue signalling on every single step, on either side, but ultimately I think thats the gist of it - that its not actually all that virtuous to help the poor if you are merely giving back a small part of what you exploited out of them in the first place. That we need to change systems for the better if we want to progress toward utopia.
If the system of law is still working, and relatively fair, it becomes the only way to obtain agency. If politicians and media are ‘influenced’ by the wealthy few, then only the law can hold the system to account. Not sure how long this will last as I suspect this path to agency is being ‘worked on’ as we speak.
Only a few paragraphs in and he is already using a GDP to climate correlation in order to make an argument against justice? I had to stop reading.
A number like GDP is of little value to anyone unless they are making calculations about a state's sovereign debt. It is not useful to reduce entire nations to single numbers.
I am largely sympathetic to the point here about semantics. The framing of everything important in metaphors of cops, judges, or criminals portends only the worst, most sterile and bureaucratic outcomes.
However Scott and others in this space are so reliant on economics for every part of their discourse. They give superficial examples based on ideas like GDP without even cursory examination. If you are talking about language and framing, what is the point of using an economic metric? How is that utopian or idealistic? Isn't that more of the same creep you mean to critique ?
Why do we worry about Justice Creep but not Banking Creep? Concepts originally designed to help lenders have crept into every aspect of our lives. They are used to explain almost every larger trend that enters our purview. Banking logic has infected intellectual pursuits in a way that makes us all seem miserly and sad, especially when it serves no purpose.
I've decided that instead of pursuing rationality by writing my own blog and gaining readers, I'll pursue "rationality justice" by convincing people to stop reading Scott. Shoo!
Like Alfalfa used to say, "Justice chickens in here."
One of my favorite passages of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a timeless examination of the psyche of the justice-seeker, and seems quite relevant here: http://piratesandrevolutionaries.blogspot.com/2009/04/on-tarantulas-nietzsche-thus-spoke.html
The quintessence of wokeness was already captured by him 150 years ago:
Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"—thus do they talk to one another.
"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"—thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
"And 'Will to Equality'—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"
...
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
"This is mostly a semantic shift - instead of saying “we should help the poor”, you can say “we should pursue economic justice”. But different framings have slightly different implications and connotations"
The framings are intended to shift the burden of action to a third party and away from oneself. "We should help the poor" means 'someone else should help the poor' and can be countered easily by "I help the poor, by [doing x]. What are you doing?"
I think you're conflating things here.
I agree with your some of your criticism which can broadly be applied to modern movements, but I disagree with your idea that "justice" has this negative connotation.
"justice" implies fairness.
"Economic justice" isnt the same as "charity" it implies people are poor or wealth is uneven (or more then should be) because of unjust things.
I agree with this, and its hard to have any serious, honest ethical view of the world which says that people's relative wealth or poverty is purely a result of either their own actions or some neutral arrangement of things.
Does anyone seriously think that people in countries like Africa aren't poor at least partially because of things that would be considered unjust reasons?
"Climate justice" seems on the surface more iffy- but when you consider the negative impacts of climate change will far disproportionately affect poorer nations who have not by and large benefited from the carbon enabled economy to the degree rich countries have, "climate justice" makes sense.
Its saying "its not just that these things are bad, they are fundamentaly unfair, and thus unjust, and attempts to remedy them is just."
I don't really agree that this means people cant be heroes- but it does perhaps imply rectifying these things is a duty, not some special act of heroism.
Again, I think you are conflating the negative aspects of wokeism, like the absence of any positive vision, with something that is connected but not in the exact way you are expressing it.
They are not unrelated, but it's not a one to one connection, its more complicated.
The use of "justice" goes back before current times, the civil right movements talked of justice. Since the civil rights movement was both succesful and an inspiration, many people have repeated its language and its framing.
But many modern left movements depart from those in significant ways you mention.
Its a bit like how there was a successful campaign by feminists to alter more tolerant attitudes towards rape by the slogan, "rape isnt sex, irs violence."
By changing the way people think about things- poverty isnt just a bad thing, its an unjust thing- it does have effects on the way people respond.
Imagine there was an island that for some weird physical reason was surrounded by an invincibility forcefield, full of humans who were uncontacted by the outside world.
Lets imagine the field came down, and these humans were revealed to be very nice people but extremely poor- always on the brink of starvation, no resurces, living exposed to the elements, disease etc.
Now it would be a bad thing that they were poor, but it wouldnt be UNJUST.
No other people caused these people to be poor. Helping them would be a good thing, but it would be charity.
However, this is not the situation of any human living in poverty.
People are connected socially through globalism. Everyone's economic status is because of other people and actions and systems and previous actions.
Many people indirectly benefit from others lower status.
For example, Americans benefit from the poverty of other peoples by being able to compensate them substantially less for their labor in less safe and work local conditions.
This leads to more things being more affordable for more americans.
If you've owned anything with a computer chip prior to the last decade or so, the odds are prety good hey materials in that chip were mined by literal slaves.
Many people would say it is UNJUST to benefit this way from slave labor- particularly as there are complex degrees of responsibility in which entities, countries, corporations, have contributed to, directly benefit from, or reinforce those conditions.
IMHO 'Justice" is gaining use because its opposite is unjust - it is addictive in use because it communicates the impossibility of disagreeing with the person speaking for 'justice' without being unjust aka evil aka bad.
It is a nice rhetorical moment that others anybody who disagrees with you when you speak for "<???> justice!"
Correct.
It's like we realized the aliens have come,
and they were us!
Don't forget about epistemic justice!
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001/acprof-9780198237907
It's all very Alinskyesque. The use of the term "justice" added the end of whatever cause is deployed to increase the rhetorical effect because of our ever-increasing appetite for "progress." (The arc of which seems to always bend leftward--a function of the narrative being controlled by one side for decades).
It's why every time there is some new victory in the name of [fill in the blank cause] the very next chorus you hear (from the right and the left) is "there is so much more work to be done." It would be terrible to be on the "wrong side of history," you see. When you ask, there is no end game, no vision of what "done" actually looks like, without massive redistribution, re-education, relocation, and ultimately death/violence.