Ariadne's Thread on Justice
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Qualifications

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Vera Speaking
I want to add some qualifications here.

Even if you could develop a theory of justice that would specify a group of high level principles and relevant conditions, there would have to be some limitations on its application. These principles couldn't be applied everywhere and all of the time.

Even many traditional Anglo-American moral philosophers have pointed out that justice seems to apply within a certain range of cases. 

  • Justice seems not to apply when something is available in unlimited amounts. Like air, for example.
  • Justice seems not to apply in conditions of extreme scarcity.
  • Justice seems not to apply in cases of extreme intimacy -- say, between husband and wife.
  • Justice seems not to apply in catastrophic circumstances.

 

Again, we have got to be careful not to try to universalize any rules of justice that we come up with.
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