I
think that I agree that justice is opposed to arbitrary decisions. But
I want to register two concerns.
First, all of you keep talking about rules and principles that
somehow determine justice. As I said before, this sounds a little bit like a certain idea
of natural science in which there are lower level laws and higher
level laws. The lower level laws are subsumed under the higher level
laws. In the end we have a beautiful structure that logically
follows from a few first principles. The ideal here is a kind of
universality or universalism.
But is that the way justice works? (Or science for that matter?)
Can we really apply the law-like model? I think philosophers call it
the nomological model. Does it work when we're talking about morality
in general or justice in particular? I'm not at all sure.
Second, it seems to me that there may still be arbitrariness left
in justice as you describe it. You may be able to eliminate
arbitrariness in the application of your rules, and you may be able to
create consistent, logical theories of justice. But what about the
foundations? When you finally get to the highest principles, the
ultimate values on which the system is based, can you still eliminate
the arbitrariness? Perelman didn't think so. Keep that in mind.
|