the concept of justice is a concept of what people are do that I don't think is
debatable I think that is just what people take us to be talking about when
we use the word so there's a lot to argue about but what we argue about is
what people are do my own theory is that justice is more than one thing and that
the way that we should treat people depends upon the context the way that we
should treat people depends upon who they are what it is about them that we
should be responding to if we were talking about a daughter then we would
say how old is this daughter is this daughter 18 is this daughter four years
old that has a lot to do with what we owe her we might say at a certain age
what we oldrin is to be responsive to their needs that's what we aspire to as
a civilization is for children to get what they need and then we might say
well here's the trick is the endpoint of childhood is supposed to be adulthood
and the transition to adulthood from childhood is a transition from a stage
where a person's claims are based on their needs to a stage where their
claims are based on something else so when a child says hey it's my life for a
while the answer's no actually it isn't it's your we're in charge of you for now
and our obligation is to be in charge of making sure you have what you need even
if that isn't what you want but at some point we reach a stage in your life
where when you say it's my life we have to say god help us we love you we wish
we could protect you from from everything in the world including your
own choices but the fact is you now are an adult you have your own life to live
in some sense you're on your own in a way that you weren't on your own
when you were a child so we have to respect the choices that you make from
here because that's the kind of society that we want to live and we want to live
in a society where everyone feels comfortable standing or falling by their
own merit so so that's a transition to a different kind of stage in life where
the principles aren't need the principles are different equality
reciprocity and and dessert what people meaning what people deserve we need to
talk then about what the principles of justice are and we need to talk about
why we would believe that it's those principles and not something else that
would be at the heart of justice so we all know that in some sense equality is
is baked into the concept of justice there's something about justice which is
antithetical to thinking of ourselves as a class society thinking that oh you
want to sue me what you don't understand I'm upper class you're lower class you
lose it doesn't matter what your what the substance of your claim is the fact
is you're from the wrong class to be a winner you're you're a born loser that's
not what justice is justice is somehow the idea that we are going to be
citizens involved in a project of building a community and there isn't
anything about what I want that privilege is it over what you want so in
that sense we have to be equals and so in that sense if somebody says everyone
has a right to a day in court everyone has a right to to air their grievances
before an impartial judge that sort of thing everybody has in that sense a
status of citizen where no one has an upper class citizenship no one has a
lower class citizenship you're a citizen of a country and that puts all of you on
a par so that kind of equality is baked in now if we said well you should all
have the same income then I think we would raise some questions and and I
would then try to relate those questions to
something more fundamental but first questions might be so wait a minute if
we're all supposed to have the same income and so I have that income at age
18 are we saying that when I hit age 58 I should never have gotten a raise is
that the idea is the idea of equal income meaning not we shouldn't have
anything to look forward to and you say no that would be crazy that that would
not be something that any any sane person would want so that means that we
cannot think of that as the kind of equality that's baked into justice
because justice isn't crazy so it's some other kind of equality that's baked in
and it's the idea of equal citizenship so I want to say that I also want to say
that there are specific contexts and specific relationships that call forth
different principles of justice so if someone helps you you you're drowning
and someone pulls you out of the pool and saves your life what do you say you
say I owe you one and that is a profound thing to say that is a meaningful thing
to say if you said I will be there for you why well because you were there for
me now so that's reciprocity that is an idea of returning favors returning
favors you know the parts of justice have their own parts too so there are
different say flavors of that principle of reciprocity so sometimes you might
say my teachers did me a favor I need to respond to that I need to respect that I
need to honor that but I'm not doing that by having a retirement party for my
teacher that's not the way to go or maybe that's part of it but the other
part of it is to say something like that teacher gave her life to put the next
generation in a better position to flourish that included me what I've got
to do is pass the favor on they call it paying and paying it forward now and the
idea is that is that sometimes the right way to respond to a favor is to
pass it on so that's an important principle of justice and sometimes
people will say I wait a minute I was the person who crossed the finish
line first the rule says I get the gold medal right and so we say yes you
deserve that you were the one who who provided the performance that that award
that reward attaches to so yes you get that or when women start saying equal
pay for equal work you say well that's that is a principle of equality but it's
something else as well it's a principle of equality that responds to what people
have done who people have been it's to say well the reason we're paying you
this is because you did this you did the work that we said we would pay you this
much for we're not paying you half that we're not paying you twice that we're
paying what you had good reason to expect us to pay you on the basis of the
excellence of your performance so that's a principle of dessert and it's you know
hard to spell that in a way like does dessert you know you spell it with 1s
and people say desert but the idea is what people deserve so these are all
different flavors of of justice different principles of justice i call
them elements of justice and I call them elements to mark that I don't think it's
helpful conceptually to try to reduce these to something more fundamental so
my argument for these principles not proof just evidence is to say look at
what kind of life those principles enable us to live so why would we want
to give children what they need why give workers what they what they have earned
why why return favors to people who have gone out of their way to help us well
there's an answer to that which is to say look at the kind of lives that
people can build together when those are the principles that we live together
look at the lives that children can grow up to live justice is something that a
society he's better off with it than without it
get smarter faster with new videos daily at 5 a.m. Eastern