SİYASAL DÜŞÜNCE

The idea of justice that can be traced back to the ancient world is seen as a virtue of man and society in ancient Greek philosophy. Such an understanding of justice can easily be observed in the Republic, a well-known work of Plato, in which the central issue is “justice” discussed in relation to the concept of “virtue”.

It is important to be aware of that “neither Plato nor Aristotle held that justice was a matter of individual rights” (Ryan, 1993, p. 3). The introduction of the concept “rights” to the issue of justice took seven centuries after Aristotle. In the corpus of Roman Law, it is the first time in the history of political thought that justice was defined in relation to individual’s rights.

Scottish philosopher David Hume paved the way toward the idea of utilitarianism. In his famous work, An Enquiry Concerning the Principle of Morals, he defended the idea of public utility, claiming that “public utility is the sole origin of justice”. Briefly saying, together with Hume, we started to consider the concept of fairness and public utility as the essence of justice.

Adam Smith has written in his eminent work, An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, around the well-quoted concept of “invisible hand”. Smith pointed out that by pursuing their own interests, everyone could consistently contribute to the overall utility of the society more effectually than when they only intend to promote that of themselves.

The libertarian view puts forward its own conceptualization on social justice around individual responsibility and entitlement towards acquiring, transferring and holding private property, which all of them illustrate an approach of social justice in terms of individual’s merit and desert. It rejects the intervention to the spontaneous order of market that is assumed to work so as to distribute all desired and undesired goods perfectly just on its own. The main characteristic of just society is considered as the one in which everyone is equally entitled to the rights of acquisition, transfer and holding private properties. If a person earns much more than others through drawing on such equal rights, this is a legitimate inequality since all of them were equal at the beginning of the process in being entitled to these rights.

Rawls identifies five categories of primary goods. These are pointed out as basic rights and liberties; freedom of movement and free choice of occupation; powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of authority and responsibility; income and wealth; and the social bases of self-respect.

Rawls’ idea of justice as fairness is a comprehensive political idea of justice that has taken a great interest from quite a number of political scientists in our era. Among others, Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate economist and philosopher, also discussed on the Rawlsian idea of justice extensively and pointed out several criticisms. Sen criticizes Rawls with giving priority to the liberal rights over the economic ones. Sen asks, “why should we regard hunger, starvation and medical neglect to be invariably less important than the violation of any kind of personal liberty?”

“Bivalent collectivity” is the main concept of Fraser’s approach through which she points out that those who suffer from injustices in a society experience a form of disadvantage that is not only associated with their economic status but also cultural misrecognition of their identities.

Thomas Hobbes’ famous work of Leviathan (2009 [1651]) can be pointed out as one of the first fruits of the plenteous ground of 17th century’s political thought where new authentic ideas towards the idea of justice and equality found an opportunity to flourish.

The focal point of justice, the essence of justice in the contemporary utilitarian perspective is also the aggregate utility. Roughly speaking, it is the total utility or happiness that is taken into account. Civic, political and social rights of individuals, on the other hand, are considered secondary.

legislation

equality

division of labour

right proportion

public utility

utilitarianism

Libertarianism

free choice of religion

capability

Dworkin’s