A theory of Justice: Revised Edition

Methods of Ethics,
pp. 246–253, 499.
501
86. The Good of the Sense of Justice

---

anism may seem to be a more exalted ideal, but the other side of it is that
it may authorize the lesser welfare and liberty of some for the sake of a
greater happiness of others who may already be more fortunate. A ra-
tional person, in framing his plan, would hesitate to give precedence to so
stringent a principle. It is likely both to exceed his capacity for sympathy
and to be hazardous to his freedom. Thus however improbable the con-
gruence of the right and the good in justice as fairness, it is surely more
probable than on the utilitarian view. The conditional balance of reasons
favors the contract doctrine.
A somewhat different point is suggested by the following doubt:
namely, that while the decision to preserve our sentiment of justice might
be rational, we may in the end suffer a very great loss or even be ruined
by it. As we have seen, a just person is not prepared to do certain things,
and so in the face of evil circumstances he may decide to chance death
rather than to act unjustly. Yet although it is true enough that for the sake
of justice a man may lose his life where another would live to a later day,
the just man does what all things considered he most wants; in this sense
he is not defeated by ill fortune the possibility of which he foresaw. The
question is on a par with the hazards of love; indeed, it is simply a special
case. Those who love one another, or who acquire strong attachments to
persons and to forms of life, at the same time become liable to ruin:
their love makes them hostages to misfortune and the injustice of others.
Friends and lovers take great chances to help each other; and members of
families willingly do the same. Their being so disposed belongs to their
attachments as much as any other inclination. Once we love we are
vulnerable: there is no such thing as loving while being ready to consider
whether to love, just like that. And the loves that may hurt the least are
not the best loves. When we love we accept the dangers of injury and loss.
In view of our general knowledge of the likely course of life, we do not
think these risks so great as to cause us to cease loving. Should evils
occur, they are the object of our aversion, and we resist those whose
machinations bring them about. If we are loving we do not regret our
love. Now if these things are true of love as the world is, or very often is,
then a fortiori they would appear to be true of loves in a well-ordered
society, and so of the sense of justice too. For in a society where others
are just our loves expose us mainly to the accidents of nature and the
contingency of circumstances. And similarly for the sentiment of justice
which is connected to these affections. Taking as a bench mark the bal-
ance of reasons that leads us to affirm our loves as things are, it seems
502
The Good of Justice

---

that we should be ready once we come of age to maintain our sense of
justice in the more favorable conditions of a just society.
One special feature of the desire to express our nature as moral persons
strengthens this conclusion. With other inclinations of the self, there is a
choice of degree and scope. Our policy of deception and hypocrisy need
not be completely systematic; our affective ties to institutions and to other
persons can be more or less strong, and our participation in the wider life
of society more or less full. There is a continuum of possibilities and not
an all or nothing decision, although for simplicity I have spoken pretty
much in these terms. But the desire to express our nature as a free and
equal rational being can be fulfilled only by acting on the principles of
right and justice as having first priority. This is a consequence of the
condition of finality: since these principles are regulative, the desire to act
upon them is satisfied only to the extent that it is likewise regulative with
respect to other desires. It is acting from this precedence that expresses
our freedom from contingency and happenstance. Therefore in order to
realize our nature we have no alternative but to plan to preserve our sense
of justice as governing our other aims. This sentiment cannot be fulfilled
if it is compromised and balanced against other ends as but one desire
among the rest. It is a desire to conduct oneself in a certain way above all
else, a striving that contains within itself its own priority. Other aims can
be achieved by a plan that allows a place for each, since their satisfaction
is possible independent of their place in the ordering. But this is not the
case with the sense of right and justice; and therefore acting wrongly is
always liable to arouse feelings of guilt and shame, the emotions aroused
by the defeat of our regulative moral sentiments. Of course, this does not
mean that the realization of our nature as a free and rational being is itself
an all or nothing affair. To the contrary, how far we succeed in expressing
our nature depends upon how consistently we act from our sense of
justice as finally regulative. What we cannot do is express our nature by
following a plan that views the sense of justice as but one desire to be
weighed against others. For this sentiment reveals what the person is, and
to compromise it is not to achieve for the self free reign but to give way to
the contingencies and accidents of the world.
One last question must be mentioned. Suppose that even in a well-or-
dered society there are some persons for whom the affirmation of their
sense of justice is not a good. Given their aims and wants and the peculi-
arities of their nature, the thin account of the good does not define reasons
sufficient for them to maintain this regulative sentiment. It has been
503
86. The Good of the Sense of Justice

---

argued that to these persons one cannot truthfully recommend justice as a
virtue.
33
And this is surely correct, assuming such a recommendation to
imply that rational grounds (identified by the thin theory) counsel this
course for them as individuals. But then the further question remains
whether those who do affirm their sense of justice are treating these
persons unjustly in requiring them to comply with just institutions.
Now unhappily we are not yet in a position to answer this query
properly, since it presupposes a theory of punishment and I have said very
little about this part of the theory of justice (§39). I have assumed strict
compliance with any conception that would be chosen and then consid-
ered which one on the list presented would be adopted. However, we may
reason much as we did in the case of civil disobedience, another part of