Unit 4 Flashcards
Contributive Justice
Regulates the distribution of goods
Reckons the healing of the social order when it has been jeopardised by criminal offences
Measures what is owed to each
Essential social virtue; without it, no human society can live well
Commutative Justice (or Contractual Justice)
This is also referred to as individual justice. It deals with obligations between individuals in one-to-one relationships. It involves agreements between people in accordance with a strict respect for their rights, including property rights, paying debts, and fulfilling contractual obligations based on trust and confidence that the other person will respect the agreement. Without commutative justice, no other form of justice is possible.
Legal Justice/Social Justice (or Contributive Justice)
The relationship of the individual to society or the state (a community of people living in a defined territory and organized in a way to maintain sovereignty)
This is also referred to as social justice and involves obligations individuals have toward their community or to society, beyond the keeping of the law (i.e. not only the right to vote, but the obligation to vote).
Distributive Justice
Distributive justice deals with the obligations that the society has toward all its members, and the role of governments, corporations, communities, and individuals in the just distribution of society’s resources.
Ecological or Environmental Justice
This involves obligations we have towards God’s creation as the stewards of the earth.
JOHN RAWLS
→ liberal democracy (“the central focus of Rawls’s two principles of justice in the “original position” is balancing rights and freedoms with societal needs)
importance of equality and greater benefit for ALL
Rejected utilitarianism, which allows the right of some people to be sacrificed for the greater benefit of others, as long as the total happiness is increased
Argued that a hierarchy of rights, where in basic rights are guaranteed, should replace utilitarianism
2 principles:
1st: everyone should equally have the most extensive system of rights and freedoms (e.g. speech, conscience, protest)
arose from liberalism, which is a worldview based on the assumption that humans are naturally good and entitled to the maximum level of freedom attainable in the economic, political and civil arenas of life.
Favors the free actions of individuals within a society. This principle can never be violated. However, these basic rights can be traded off against each other for the sake of obtaining the largest possible system of rights (e.g. background checks on teachers)
2nd: economic and social inequalities are acceptable if these inequalities benefit all people, especially its most disadvantaged members
e.g. if doctors were paid the same as everyone else, then there would not be enough people wanting to become doctors
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
→ democratic ( “general will,” where individuals collectively decide on laws to preserve freedom + equality)
John Locke →
hypothetical state of
nature as peaceful and harmonious (or enlightened and cultured)
Property is acquired through labor and personal effort in the hypothetical state of nature
Advocates for limited government that respects our rights
The role of the government in Locke’s political philosophy is to protect private property and uphold fixed rules for conduct
Protection of property is considered the starting point of Locke’s theory of civil government
Limits upon freedom
Social Limits - those limits imposed by family, school & governments; testing these usually takes the form of protest
Moral Limits - those derived from norms, rules, proverbs, laws & commandments; these help to guide and structure our freedom through the choices we make.
Natural Limits - our freedom needs to work with the limits set by our bodies, nature, the genetic code, climate and the Earth.
Thomas Hobbes
pessimistic description of the human nature
Imagined what humans would be like without rulers and law enforcement
Everybody would seek to have power over others for fear of being over-powered themselves
Hobbes characterizes human beings as competitive and individualistic in terms of their pursuit of personal power
Hobbes was convinced that all human beings possess something that they can offer in the market
In Hobbes’s views, the fear of death is the fundamental human motivation that leads individuals to accept the sovereignty of a ruler
Hobbes describes the life of individuals in the state of nature as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, without rules or law enforcement
The commodification of talents suggests that as owners of our gifts and talents, we have the right to put a market price on them.
Society is a transfer of rights and an acceptance to limit one’s power to a ruler, such as the king, in exchange for protection from death. From this need for protection comes the obligation to obey the ruler.
The Harmful Effects of Discovering that you’re free
Individualism
Growing Atheism
The Isolation of the Individual
The Rise of Autonomy
Consumerism
Moral Relativism
Consequences of Freedom
Makes us morally accountable for our actions
Makes us unique in the animal kingdom insofar as we are made in the image of God who is free
cardinal virtues
Prudence: the ability to reason well in moral-decision making
Temperance: the ability to remain moderate in the exercise of emotions
Fortitude: the ability to remain courageous in the face of life’s difficulties
Justice: the ability to act well in relation to others
kant
Kant rejected an ethics such as proposed by Aristotle and Aquinas, which emphasized happiness as a byproduct of doing good.
Kant argued that people who dare to take up the baton of reason will do good because it is their duty to do so.
Kant’s God is a God who is also held to duty.
Kant’s God has to make certain that human beings can indeed achieve the supreme good.
In contrast with Aquinas’s view, this supreme good is no longer the self-gift of God to us, but a necessary condition of reason.
Faith, hope and charity lose their place in Kant’s ethical theory.
The only good is good will.
Good is only really good if it provides no personal gain.
An act is not moral if you enjoy doing it.
Reason dictates what is good.
Moral acts come out of a duty or obligation to perform them.
St.Thomas Aquinas
You and your “purpose” are directly linked, and these work together to achieve your ultimate, personal good.
People were made for happiness.
God, as the Trinity, is the ultimate good.
The ‘good life’ is lived by virtuous people.
The ‘fullness of the good life’, or ‘blessedness’ is not found on earth, but in a ‘loving vision of God’, through resurrection.
He emphasized 4 virtues of successful people: (p. 132) prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice (the Cardinal virtues)
The second moral level of a good life includes the virtues of faith, hope & charity, which come as a gift to us from God.
St. Thomas Aquinas, like Aristotle, believed that the good was inscribed in all nature by God.
He noted that at the core of each person was a desire for the good. There is this light of understanding placed in us by God and through it we know what must do and what we should avoid.
