Justice
 

As a freshman at college, my university (Xavier) requires everybody to take core classes, 6 credits of which are philosophy. In the intro philosophy class, we are studying Plato, Aristotle, and several other ancient philosophers.

The main question I want to ask of you all, as the basis of the course was:

What is justice?

Fairness as defined by those forces that govern society (this includes society itself.

According to Plato, justice is "The harmony of the soul" but I don't buy it.

I think Rawls may be closest with his Veil of Ignorance theory. The basic idea is that if you were in control of deciding the social structure of the world, without knowing who you were whatsoever (no gender, race, religion, social status or anything) you would choose the best possible situation for everyone. In this situation, some inequities would be present, such as physical strength, beauty, and ability, but these inequities would be balanced with the maximin principle. The maximin principle is the idea that the gap between the "highest" people and the "lowest" people on the social scale would be as small as possible. Also, the people at the top would use their ability to help benefit the lowers.

Or perhaps justice is not something that can be defined, as it is just an abstract idea that we happen to base our governments and law systems upon.

Depends what you mean by justice. True justice is not possible as there is no one alive objective enough. You would almost need to be God like for real justice. So one might argue that real justice is nature. Or in other words Karma.

Justice as the government uses it is quite simple. The powerful dictate what types of behavior will be met with a certain punishment.

"There's no justice here, there's just us."

- Lt. Al 'Gee' Giardello

i agree with Zeraph.
Justice cannot and never will exist.

Justice is the the balance between good acts and bad acts-I could see karma and a workable definition for it. But the thing about justice is that it doesn't necessarily have to be a tangible retribution for something - in other words, justice is more than just punishment and rewards. Justice can be visited upon the cheater in the form of guilt or later unpreparedness. Justice can come to the good Sumaritan when he goes to bed happy and self-confident. It can also be more overt, when a murderer is put in jail or murdered himself, or even inconvenienced a little. The problem with justice is that we don't understand the magnitude of all things, so what we might think is unjust punishment might derive from a crime that wasn't cosmically as severe as we thought.

Justice is an idea invented by humans to attempt to impose aesthetic - sometimes referred to as "ethical" - sets of standards on events.

Justice is the ideal of fairplay, or rather, the attempt to apply the ideals of fairplay and equality to a natural system. We talk of level-playing fields, equal opportunity and rights, and play by the rules. Justice is the ideal behind, and simultaneously, the enforcement of the 'rules'. Karma is another term for it. Note people's desire for natural justice, where people receive their 'just rewards' without the intervention of those in authority.

I believe justice to be a part of the cycle of life, especially in groups of people whether large or small. For instance, most civilizations I have researched have some form of law, governing council, and justice force.

Justification of actions.

Justice is the reconciliation of perceived actions of individuals with perceived values of society.

I tend to go with the karma idea, that justice is getting what you deserve, be it good or bad, for the way you've lived your life and the choices you've made.

but karma is only half the answer...

who decides what is punished and what is rewarded? how much reward or punishment is fair for a given action? who says you deserve it and what is their claim upon you?

i don't think you can define justice without answering those questions.

There can be man views of what justice is, in our own minds. We can develop a sense of justice based on the acnient phoilosophers, or you can use more recent philosphers to justify a sense of justice.

I think simply it comes down to justice is in the eyes of the victor.

If I win a competition by all the correct rules an manners I consider it a victory, but my competitor may not see it in the same way. he man not think there was justice in that situation