Q&A: Justice
Justice
Question
How would you define the concept of justice?
Is it relative, or is it like what you say about morality—that there is only one morality (moral realism)?
I’m trying to conceptualize and define it, for example, because some say there is no war more just than the one we are waging, while others say there is no justice in what we are doing to the Palestinians. How do we know what justice is, and who is right?
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. The justice you’re talking about is morality. So what’s the difference? There is no single agreed-upon criterion; otherwise there wouldn’t be arguments. The question of whether there is one justice or one morality, or not, is not connected to the question of whether it can be defined in an agreed-upon way.