The Fallacy in "Social Justice"

Gotta love Deneen.

...I am constantly struck by the strain implied in the combination of the words "social" and "justice." Justice, according to the ancient definition, is according to each what is due (whether desert or punishment). Justice thus - as the word suggests - requires judgment and discrimination. By this definition, justice is a thing pertaining to individuals - according to your actions you can and will be judged.

By contrast, adding the word "social" to justice implies that justice is a collective quality. Justice, it would seem, consists of treating everyone equally.

About 2o years ago, I was in a.....umnnnhhh..... discussion!!..... with a well-known senior priest (a good man, by the way, and orthodox) over precisely the confusion of which Deneen speaks. That priest, following JPII, was declaiming 'evil structures' in society. I demurred, objecting that 'structures' were not evil; only people could be evil.

Or perhaps better phrased, with the same end: a deficiency of "goodness" pertains only to people. Structures are easily defeated, or re-arranged, by good people for good ends. But those structures can remain obstacles only when good people choose to ignore the problem (or when bad people prevail.)

Here's the nub, articulated by Deneen:

Many... "justice issues" imply (without reflection on what justice is) that justice has the aim of achieving equality, particularly material equality. By implication, social justice incorporates the commitment to treating unlike things equally, and thus contradicts the classical definition of justice simpliciter. It's interesting to raise the question of what would be lost by removing the word "social" to the language of justice. It could be suggested that the addition of the word "social" allows one the appearance of a commitment to justice while in fact rejecting its substance

Of course it does. Marxist theory, feminist theory, "queer" theory, racial theory; all do precisely that. Whether rich/poor, female/male, homo/hetero...you get the idea.

It's just too much real WORK to work for "justice", rightly defined. (Even Plato couldn't resolve the question, as Deneen observes.) So rather than do all that hard work, just add "social"!!

That way, in the words of G K Chesterton, we can 'define the comparative without ever defining the superlative,' meaning that "justice" needs continual legislative and judicial refinement.

It's a jobs-program for politicians and judges, folks...