Introduction to the Book "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?"
Hello everyone, welcome back to the reading club. Our world is filled with numerous events every day. Have you ever thought about what is right, what is justice, or if there is a way to measure them? Today, I want to introduce you to a book that has become one of the most popular courses in Harvard University's history. It is "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?" by philosophy professor Michael Sandel. The Chinese translation is "Justice: A Journey of Debate."
The beauty of this book lies not in giving you a simple answer but in guiding you into a world of challenging and inspiring thinking. Sandel uses real-life scenarios and classic thought experiments in his lectures, such as the famous "trolley problem." In one situation, you have the option to pull a lever to sacrifice one person on track A to save five people on track B. In another, if you are on a bridge, would you push a fat man to stop the runaway trolley and save those people? What are the differences in moral judgment between these two cases?
Exploring the Philosophy of Justice
The author uses these examples to prompt us to reflect on the principles and values that underlie our moral intuitions. This book aims to explore the philosophical foundations behind our concepts of justice and doing the right thing. Today, we will delve into some of the core ideas and see how they interact with each other and how they can be applied in our lives.
Utilitarianism
One of the most influential and seemingly appealing ideas is utilitarianism. Its representatives include the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Bentham proposed the principle of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number." According to this principle, the only criterion for determining whether an action or policy is just is whether it can bring the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure to the largest number of people while minimizing pain.
However, the author challenges this principle with a real-life shipwreck case in 19th-century Britain. Four sailors were stranded at sea with limited food and water. To survive, three of them killed the weakest 17-year-old cabin boy, Parker, and ate his flesh and drank his blood. Eventually, they were rescued. From a purely utilitarian calculation, sacrificing one person to save three seems to maximize overall benefit. But our intuition may not agree. Without the boy's consent, can his life be simply regarded as a resource to be sacrificed?
This case reveals some potential problems with utilitarianism. Firstly, it may sacrifice individual rights for the sake of the whole. For example, if a large number of citizens in ancient Rome were excited to watch Christians being devoured by lions, how could utilitarians morally oppose such a cruel act? Does the greater number of happy people and the higher degree of their happiness justify everything? Secondly, utilitarianism attempts to reduce all values, including life, dignity, and friendship, to a single measure of pleasure and pain. The author cites a tobacco company's research suggesting that people's deaths can save the government on medical and pension costs, which is beneficial to the country's overall finances. Although the company later apologized, this kind of thinking that monetizes life is an extreme manifestation of the utilitarian calculation model. Another example is the Ford Pinto explosion case. The company calculated that the cost of compensating the victims was lower than the cost of installing safety devices in each car, so it decided not to change the design. These examples make us question whether justice can be so simply calculated.
Libertarianism
If utilitarianism makes you feel uneasy, the second main approach introduced by the author, which emphasizes individual autonomy, is libertarianism. The core belief of libertarians is self-ownership. Everyone fully owns their own body, labor, and property obtained through their own efforts and legal means. Based on this premise, justice is to firmly protect individual freedom and the right to make choices. The role of the government should be limited to enforcing contracts, protecting private property, and maintaining peace, and it should never interfere with individual freedom of choice.
Therefore, libertarians strongly oppose three common government policies. Firstly, they oppose paternalistic laws, such as mandatory helmet-wearing for motorcyclists or seatbelt - wearing. They believe that as long as their actions do not directly harm others, the government has no right to prevent them from taking risks because their bodies belong to them. Secondly, they oppose moral legislation, such as banning homosexual behavior. They argue that as long as it is a consensual act between adults, even if the majority deems it immoral, the government should not use legal coercion to promote a particular moral concept. Thirdly, and most controversially, they firmly oppose any form of wealth redistribution. They believe that taking money from the rich to fund welfare programs for the poor, such as medical care, education, and housing subsidies, is essentially equivalent to theft, an infringement on the right of the rich to freely dispose of their legally acquired property. The author uses the example of basketball star Michael Jordan. Suppose the initial social wealth distribution is fair, but many fans use their money to buy tickets to watch Jordan play, making him extremely wealthy. Libertarians would say that this wealth distribution result is completely just because every step is based on individual free choice. If the government taxes Jordan heavily to help the poor, it is forcing him to work for others, which is similar to forced labor.
Kant's Moral Philosophy
If utilitarianism focuses on results and libertarianism overemphasizes individual choice while ignoring social responsibility, is there another way of thinking? The author then introduces the moral philosophy of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. This theory has had a profound impact on later generations and is the ideological source of many modern human rights concepts.
Kant believes that the key to whether an action has moral value does not lie in its consequences, whether it conforms to people's likes or interests, but in the motivation behind the action. Only actions done out of a sense of duty, that is, actions that are done because one believes they are right and should be done, have true moral value. The author gives a classic example. A shopkeeper does not cheat a naive child. If the shopkeeper refrains from cheating only because he is afraid that cheating will damage his reputation and future business, then his honesty has no moral value; it is just a shrewd calculation. But if he believes that honesty is a moral duty in itself and should be adhered to regardless of the consequences, then his honesty is worthy of respect.
Kant further proposed a standard for judging moral laws called the categorical imperative. One of the most important expressions is that you should always treat people, whether yourself or others, as ends in themselves, and never merely as a means to an end. This is the famous "humanity as an end" principle. This principle means that everyone has inherent dignity and value and cannot be sacrificed or used for the so-called overall benefit, such as the "greatest happiness" advocated by utilitarianism. Therefore, Kant would oppose throwing Christians to lions, not only because it is cruel but more importantly, because it treats Christians as a means to satisfy the public's entertainment, without respecting their dignity as human beings. Kant also has a strict attitude towards lying. He believes that even in the face of a murderer asking about the whereabouts of your friend, you should not lie because lying itself violates universal moral laws and will erode the foundation of trust between people. Although this view is highly controversial, it reflects Kant's insistence on the absoluteness and universality of moral principles.
Rawls' Theory of Justice
Following Kant's thoughts, the author introduces another American philosopher, John Rawls, who has had a significant impact on 20th-century political philosophy and his work "A Theory of Justice." Rawls attempts to answer a fundamental question: On what principles should a just society be built?
To answer this question, he designed a very ingenious thought experiment. He asks us to imagine that we are going to come together to establish the basic principles of justice for the society in which we live. However, during the formulation process, each of us is behind a "veil of ignorance," which makes us temporarily unaware of our specific identities and situations in society. We do not know whether we will be male or female, rich or poor, healthy or sick, intelligent or ordinary, belong to the mainstream or a minority, or even what religion we believe in and what our life goals are. In this completely equal, original position where no one has a special advantage, what kind of principles of justice will a group of rational people who are only concerned about their own interests but do not know what their specific interests are choose?
Rawls believes that in such a situation, people will not choose utilitarianism because they may become the sacrificed minority. Nor will they choose pure libertarianism because they may end up being poor and have no social security. Rawls infers that people will choose two basic principles of justice. The first is the principle of equal basic liberties. Everyone should enjoy the same broad range of basic liberties as others, such as freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, and freedom of assembly. These basic liberties have priority and cannot be sacrificed for the overall social benefit. The second principle, which includes two parts, is the principle of dealing with social and economic inequalities. Firstly, social and economic inequalities must be arranged to be most beneficial to the least advantaged members of society. This is the famous difference principle. Secondly, the positions and offices associated with these inequalities must be open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
Rawls particularly emphasizes that his theory of justice challenges the traditional meritocracy. He believes that even if society provides equal educational opportunities, a person's talent, background, social origin, and even the willingness and ability to work are largely affected by morally arbitrary factors and are not completely within an individual's control. Therefore, the distribution of social resources should not be based solely on the results brought about by these talents or efforts. Instead, a system should be designed to ensure that even those with poor talents and disadvantaged backgrounds can receive due respect and a reasonable standard of living in social cooperation. Rawls' theory provides a powerful defense for modern welfare states.
Aristotle's Conception of Justice
After introducing several main viewpoints of modern liberalism, the author brings our attention back to ancient Greece and explores the justice concept of the philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle's way of thinking is very different from that of modern philosophers. His concept of justice is related to virtue and the purpose of the community. Justice means giving everyone what they deserve. But what exactly is "deserved"? Aristotle believes that this depends on what we are distributing and the purpose or essence related to that thing.
The author gives a vivid example. Suppose we are going to distribute a batch of high-quality flutes. Who should get them? Aristotle would say that they should be given to those with the best flute-playing skills. Why? Not only because this can produce the most beautiful music and make everyone happy, but more importantly, the purpose or essence of the flute is to be played beautifully. Only the best flute players can best fulfill this purpose.
Similarly, Aristotle believes that to understand the distribution in a political community, we must first ask what the purpose of the political community is. It is not just to protect individual rights or promote economic development but to cultivate citizens' good character and achieve a good life. Therefore, in the distribution of political power and honor, those who possess civic virtue and can contribute the most to the community should be given priority.
The author uses two thought-provoking modern cases to illustrate this way of thinking. The first is about a high school girl with cerebral palsy who wants to join the cheerleading team. Should the school require her to do the same stunts as other team members? To answer this question, we need to think about the purpose of cheerleading. Is it necessary to be able to do flips and jumps, or is it more important to be able to inspire the spirit? If the latter is the core purpose, then even if she is in a wheelchair, as long as she can effectively achieve this purpose, she should be eligible to join. The second example is about a professional golfer who, due to a leg disability, applied to use a golf cart during the game but was rejected by the PGA Tour. The core issue that the judges of the US Supreme Court had to decide was the nature or purpose of the sport of golf. Is walking an essential part of golf? If not, then refusing to let him use a cart may constitute discrimination. These examples show that Aristotle's way of thinking from the perspective of purpose still has a strong resonance in modern social disputes. It reminds us that the distribution of justice is often closely related to our understanding of the nature, purpose, and value of a particular social practice.
Conclusion
Michael Sandel, through his wonderful analysis and comparison of different viewpoints such as utilitarianism, libertarianism, and other theories, does not intend to directly tell us what is absolutely correct justice. His purpose is to stimulate our critical thinking and make us realize that there are many different, and sometimes even conflicting, reasonable answers to the question of "what is the right thing to do." This book provides us with a roadmap and intellectual tools for this journey of debate. It forces us to break out of our existing thinking patterns, re - examine our moral intuitions and social values, and understand the complex world we live in with a more profound and comprehensive perspective.
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