CHAPTER 1: JUSTICE AND INJUSTICE

 Apartheid South Africa: definition of a modern police state

o Employment was curtailed
o Deaths in detention and torture were systemic
o Surveillance, intimidation and police brutality were routine
o Sustained by a doctrinaire policy by a totalitarian bolstered by draconian legislation
 Broederbond
o Secret, Calvinist all male-society
o Prime Minister & State President of Apartheid were members
o Hendrink Verwoerd, architect of the policy
 Terrorism as defined by (Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 and Terrorism Act of 1657)
o Anything that might endanger the maintenance of law and order
 Apartheid Convention
o A crime is:
 Inhuman acts committed for the purpose of maintaining domination by one
racial group over any other and systematically oppressing them.
 Acts consist of:
 Murder
 Torture
 Inhuman Treatment
 Arbitrary Arrest
 Legislation that discriminates
 Separate residential areas
 Prohibition of interracial marriages
 Persecution of opponents of apartheid
 Occupy Movement
o Conspicuous global crusade against social and economic inequality.
o Pursues greater equity in the distribution of wealth with a particular emphasis on the
negative impact of the international financial system on democracy and justice.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

 To create a fair relationship between society and the individual

 Looks into the distribution of wealth and opportunity
 Looks into how people can best exercise and develop their roles in and expectations of society
 Theories should focus on how this is to be done; They differ
o Egalitarians: everyone get an equal slice of the pie
o Utilitarian: increasing overall happiness or welfare of the community
o Rawlsians: prefer the adoption of the difference principle, ensuring the least well-off are
protected
o Libertarians: oppose any set distribution and support the right if people to own what
they have legitimately acquired.
 o Desert-based theories: justice advocate the idea that people should ger what they
deserve as a result of their hardwork or need.

RIGHT AND WRONG

 Nelson Mandela: ‘Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or
patronizingly but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope
for the future.’
 Sophocles: ‘The golden eye of justice sees and requites the unjust man.’
 Joseph Conrad: ‘The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those
who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing
when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a
sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea – something you can set up
and bow down before and offer a sacrifice to.’
 Aristotle: ‘All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.’
 Heraclitus: ‘If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice.’
 Edmund Burke: ‘What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The
question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall
always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of
metaphysics.’
 Montesquieu: ‘There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of
the law and in the name of justice.’
 Samuel Johnson: ‘Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever
prevents my doing so.’
CHAPTER 2: JUSTICE AND VIRTUE

Alfred Whitehead remarked that the development of Western Philosophy is due to

influence of Plato.

Plato:

o Disenchanted with extreme individualism

o Republic: He described justice as a human virtue that secures order and generates both
individual goodness and social harmony.

Aristotle:

o Nicomachean Ethics: probed deeply into the moral and political virtue of justice
o Politics: examines the relationship between political justice and equality
o Justice for him means equality only for those who are equals
o Agreed with Plato that political democracy is inherently unjust because it seeks to treat
unequals as if they were equals
o Differentiated between numerical and proportional equality.
1. Everyone is treated as indistinguishable; they receive identical treatment in respect
to the goods they receive
2. Proportionality equality arises when the goods people obtain are proportional or
roughly equal to what they considered to be entitled to.
o Numerical equality is only fair only when people are equal in relevant respects.
o Cannot make everyone equal, since everyone is different
o To attempt to make us equal -> give every person an equal opportunity
o In democratic societies there is an unavoidable conflict between liberty and equality
o Based on the idea that liberty to do as one pleases is restricted by attempts to
create equality between individuals
o Truly free society should resist measures that seek to make people equal
o Libertarians:
o Oppose any redistribution by means of taxation which promotes equality.
o Ronald Dworkin:
 No necessary conflict between liberty and equality
 A genuine restriction on liberty occurs only when it affects someone
who has done nothing wrong.
o Approach to equality: Hierarchical view.
o Women and non-Greeks were inferior to male Greeks,
o Inferiors ought to be deprived some of political, legal, social and economic
rights.
o Fails to respect all individuals as rational and free -> concentration in
INEQUALITY resulted in failure to recognize the moral equality of all.
o Corrective Justice:
 o The justice the courts employ to redress crimes or civil wrongs
o Attempt to put things back in the position they were.
o Retributive Justice:
o Impose a proportionate punishment on those who commit crimes.
o Based on the moral idea that wrongdoers deserve to be punished for their
crime because it is just that they should be.
o Distributive Justice:
o Seeks to give each person according to his desert or merit.
o Emphasizes fairness in what people receive.
o “Economic Justice”
o Should be left to the legislature and will depend on the nature of the
government in question.
o Ethical Virtues
o How we ought to live
o Rational, emotional and social skills
o Central of his discussion of Virtue: GOLDEN MEAN (Doctrine of the Mean)
 If justice is a virtue, it must be a kind of mean; a halfway point
 Our lives are replete with moral dilemmas
 Our obligations cannot be frozen in one encompassing code
 Aristotelian ethics escapes the uncompromising forms of duty:
 Deontologist (duty): Immanuel Kant
 Consequentialists (outcomes): Jeremy Bentham
o Emphasizes both character and virtue:
o Character: a state of being
 E.g. Kind person = Have right feelings =Dictates our actions
 “What constitutes a good life”
 “What kind of person we ought to be”

POLITICAL ANIMALS

o Aristotelian politician: “is wholly occupied with the city-state and the constitution is a certain
way of organizing those who inhabit the city-state.”
o Inhabitants vs. Resident Aliens (Immigrants and Slaves)
o Citizen: one who has the right to participate in political or judicial office.
o Constitution: arrange offices of city-state, with different forms depending on nature of
state
o Political animals: wanting to live together.
o Forms of Rule
o Despotic Rule:
 Master-Slave relationship
 Justifies slavery: natural -born slaves lack the ability to make purposeful
decisions; needs masters to direct.
o Paternal and Marital Rules:
 Men and senior members possess a natural capacity for leadership
 o 6 possible constitutional arrangement:
o Democracy (dominant class: poor) is preferable to an oligarchy (wealthy).
o Polity (combination of democracy and oligarchy) is a system of rule that involves a mix
between moderately rich and the poor.

Just Deviant
ONE RULER Kingship Tyranny
FEW RULERS Aristocracy Oligarchy
MANY RULERS Polity Democracy
 Purpose of Political Life
o Create virtuous citizen and promote goodness in individual.
o Otherwise: it sinks into a mere alliance and law becomes a mere covenant instead of
being “a rule of life that makes the members of a polis good and just”

DEMOCRACY: the least worst system

 Worst: Tyranny
 Not merely the rule of the multitude.
 Democracy vs. Oligarchy:
o Democracy: majority: poor and free
o Oligarchy: minority (better born) exercise authority
 Cities and Regimes:
o Very wealthy
o Middle
 Most desirable
 Vital for stable and well-run government
 Does not hanker after power; lacks envy; neutral mediators
o Very poor
 Impartiality or Neutrality
o Significant element in most theories

DOING THE RIGHT THING

Whether one adapts a deontological or consequential moral position.

 Deontology:
o Certain acts are intrinsically right or wrong; regardless of consequences
o The moral worth of an action is logically independent of its outcome
 Consequentialism:
o Looks into the consequences of an act or rule to determine its moral value

ANSWERING ARISTOTLE

 More interested in good action than right action

 Purpose (telos) of social and political associations is to promote good action.
 Reach our complete human nature through politics.
CHAPTER 3: RIGHTS DIGNITY AND FREEDOM

IMMANUEL KANT

o Justice = Duty
 What is right as independent of what we consider to be good
 Requires respect for the right regardless of consequences
 People have right to be respected as individuals, as ends themselves
o Priority of Right
 Arises from freedom that individuals have in their relationships
 Justice and right comes before all other values -> stem from FREEDOM:
prerequisite of all human ends
o Duty-based view: good underlies moral worth, which not on our particular conduct but
on the principle upon which the act is done.

KANT’S IMPERATIVES

 Negative Duties
 Positive Obligations
 Categorical Imperative:
o Single fundamental principle of duty
o What we ought to do categorically; enabling us to distinguish between right and wrong
 Universalizability: we must attempt to do only what we could reasonably want
to become a universal law.
 Respect for all persons: we should always try to act in such a way as to respect
all persons, including ourselves, as innately valuable ‘ends in themselves’ and
never treat any persons merely as instrumental means to other ends.
 Principle of autonomy: we, morally autonomous rational agents, should try to
act in such a way that we could be legislating for a (hypothetical) moral republic
of all persons. This principle stresses the dignity of all persons, treating them as
intrinsically valuable and worthy of respect.
 Legitimate reason: under a DUTY
o Other motive = not acting morally
 Heteronomous acting (accordance to desires) vs. Autonomous (accordance to
personal morality)
o Value of conduct lies in intention or motive.
o Moral worth lies not in the consequences but on the act itself
o Suicide debases our humanity.
o Utilitarian approach; justice is measured whether most people benefit from policy
 Treats people as means to a particular model of happiness.
 Kant’s moral universe
 o We are rational agents; knows what we are doing = legitimately to held responsible of
actions
o Rational nature = accept categorical imperative: what applies to me should apply to all

LIBERTY, RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

 Immanuel Kant
o Defence of human rights is the notion of a community of rational individuals
autonomously determining the moral principles to establish the conditions for equality
and autonomy.
o Offers means to justify human rights as the foundation for self-determination.
 Isaiah Berlin
o Distinguished between positive and negative liberty
 Positive: role each of us to play in our government
 Negative: part of our lives that should be free from government
 Both deploy the language of rights
 Jeremy Waldron
o 3 approaches
 Right-based: opposition to torture is based on suffering of victim
 Duty-based: torture demeans the torturer
 Goal-based: regard torture as offensive only when it affects the interests of
those other than the torturer and victim
 Rights
o “Natural rights” first appeared in the Middle Ages
 Founded on the idea that rights are not given by state or government but are
fundamental and inalienable
o Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
 after horrors of Holocaust
o International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (1976)
 Bill of rights: key feature of modern democracies.
o Universal Human Rights
 Breach = validate international intervention
 Change of Rights through Time
o First Generation: negative civil and political rights
o Second Generation: positive economic, social and cultural rights
o Third Generation: collective, in Art 28 of the Universal Declaration which states that,
“everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights set forth in
this Declaration can be fully realized’
 Challenges against Concept of Human Rights
o Overuse of Human Rights
 Professor James Griffin: On Human Rights
 Human rights; nearly criterion less
  Unusually few criteria when the term is used correctly or incorrectly
 Overuse = dimmish utility = ridicule of the ideal
o Utilitarian hostility
 Founded on its wish to maximize the welfare of the general population
 The rights or interest of the individuals may be forfeited in the name of utility
 Liberty is only for maximizing general welfare of society
o Relativists
 Questions the universality of rights; to say they are is to overlook or neglect
local culture, social and political circumstances
o Communitarians
 Targets individualism of rights, which neglects community interest, civic virtue
and social solidarity.

QUESTIONING KANT

 David Hume
o Scottish Utilitarian
o Moral duties are not derived from statements of fact.
o Morality is not grounded in our rational judgements but in our emotions
o We require the inclination or desire to do the right thing.
o We may know rationally that it is the right thing but we still need to do it.
CHAPTER 4: UTILITARIANISM

Jeremy Bentham

o Utilitarianism
 Fundamental objective of morality and justice; happiness should be maximized
 “Hedonistic”
 “Felicific calculus”
 Checklist to calculate happiness factor of any act
 12 pains; 14 pleasures
 Significance relative to:
1. Intensity
2. Duration
3. Certainty/Uncertainty
4. Propinquity/Remoteness
 Conditions to measure:
1. Fecundity: chance it has of being followed by sensations of the
same kind
2. Purity: chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the
opposite kind
3. Extent: number of people affected by pleasure or pain
 Utility of an act = independent of its motive; determined by its consequences
 Denies there can be a good/bad motive
 Emphasizes on consequences
 2 Forms of Utilitarianism
 Act Utilitarianism: Rightness or wrongness of an act is judged by
consequences of act itself. (used more in majority)
 Rule Utilitarianism: depends on the goodness or badness of the
consequences of a rule that everyone should perform the action in like
circumstances
 Contemporary Utilitarianism
 Maximizing the extent to which people can obtain what they want.
 Satisfying people’s preferences = not imposing a conception of good
without incorporating individual choice

John Stuart Mill: What do we want?

 Recognizes centrality of the ‘greatest happiness’ doctrine of Bentham

 Rejects that one can qualify different pleasures
  Certain forms of pleasure differ qualitatively; higher pleasures (intellectual) are worthier even if
its lesser in intensity in comparison to lower pleasures (body).
 Pain or forfeiting pleasure, warranted only when it results directly in greater good.
 Allowed us to be generally directed by mortality:
o Moral principles – guidance for normal daily moral experiences
o Demanding cases – principle of utility
o We are driven by Internal sanctions (self-esteem, conscience & guilt)
o We all desire for happiness = we wish happiness for everyone
 Personal (individual) freedom increases happiness
 Advocate of freedom of speech and Right to dissent
o Truth can only be discovered by unrestricted circulation of ideas.

FUTILITY OF UTILITY

 Criticisms
o Utility neglects the separateness of persons (Everybody to count for one and nobody
more than one); reduces humans to means rather than ends in themselves
o Treats individual’s equality with no worth for their value is not as persons but as
experiences of pleasure or happiness.
 Defences
o No worth criticism:
 Commensurable values (those that can be compared and traded off against one
another) are also fungible values (those that are replaceable).
o An act is independent of its motive:
 Motive is independent of the morality of an action but it does have a great deal
to do with the worth of the agent.
 Doing the right thing is not conclusive evidence virtue; a good deed does not
necessarily testify to a virtuous character