Conclusion: In modern society, law is not a judge of
morality but a negotiation of
conflicting personal interests.
1. The concept of justice and fairness is entirely relative to the
individual, not the community (i).
a. Law is the unanimous rule of “obedience”
an individual is expected to live by (244).
i. Rules are a “prior agreement” and not
necessarily something that molds to the desires of every individual (i).
b.
Our self-interested
culture prevents basic issues to be rationally judged (244).
c. “A community is composed of individuals,
each with his or her own interest, who then have to come together and formulate
common rules of life (250).”
2. What a person considers politically “fair” and “unfair” is based on
his social and economic position. (245).
a.
For example,
redistributive taxation is either unjust or just depending on a taxpayer’s
personal values (245).
i.
An individual may believe raising taxes is an injustice to his
hard-earned livelihood (244).
ii.
An individual may think not raising
taxes is an injustice to the condition of the poor and deprived (245).
iii.
“The price for one
person…receiving justice is always paid by someone else (246).”
b.
Thus, a community cannot
decide that “entitlement” is more or less moral than “need”—it is an individual
determination (i).
3. Justice
is neither moral nor immoral (i).
a. John Rawles: Justice is the equal
redistribution of “needs” to help the disadvantageous (249).
i. The rational form of justice as long as
a person has a “veil of ignorance” and is completely detached from the
knowledge of his own self-interest (i).
b. Robert Nozick: Justice is what you
earn and are “entitled” to (247).
i. When you directly acquire something
from its “original” source (247).
ii. When you acquire something by
trading or buying (247).
c. Premise 4a and 4b are false.
i. No one is ever under a veil of
ignorance (249).
ii. No one is a legitimate heir of
anything—everything has been stolen or taken by force at one point in history
before it was inherited by anyone (251).
d. “The metaphor of ‘weighing’ moral claims
is not just inappropriate, but misleading (246).”
e. Justice is an intermediary between the
extreme views of Rawles and Nozick (i).
4. Justice is a compromise within a community (i).
a.
Society can never reach
a moral consensus (252).
b. “[Laws] play the role of [a]
peacekeeping or truce-keeping body by negotiating its way through an impasse of
conflict (253).”
c. Therefore, laws are not lessons of
morality; they are compromises between what person A and person B finds
personally virtuous (i).
d. Regardless of what an individual thinks
is good, a law is only relevant if it is good for the entire community (i).
I liked the argument outline, I thought it flowed well and you made some fascinating points that contributed to the points in the reading. I really agreed with your second point about what is politically fair or unfair based on a person’s social and economic position. I think that is why government issues and political positions are such important heated topics because everyone has a different opinion because everyone is in such a different economic and social state. In point b though I don’t necessarily know if entitlement is the right word to use because I honestly don’t think anyone is entitled to anything.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI feel that you gave a very informative outline. Firstly, I think that you put the "fair and unfair" portion in laymen's terms--it was a little bit unclear in the readings when I first read it. Additionally, the role of the individual versus the community in establishing justice is the overwhelming theme that I understood the reading to be about. Although this did not technically make it into your overall conclusion, I think that your conclusion covers the main parts of it. The reading asserted some bold claims (i.e., justice cannot be tied to morals) as well as some very vague ones (justice is relative--okay, how is this so called consensus reached? Oh, sorry, that's impossible.) All in all I feel that you gave a good summary and absolutely hit all the right points.
ReplyDeleteI feel this outline was very well written, although some parts were a little complicated where they could have been simplified. I thought the subpremise under a in premise 1 could have just been combined with the subpremise it belonged to in order to make things a little clearer and less complex. Premise 3 seemed to be a little confusing in its title, and subpremise e didn't seem to make a distinction to what Justice was. Lastly, your final premise successfully led to the drawing of your conclusion, and your two final subpremises were worded in very understandable ways to help focus your argument in on your conclusion.
ReplyDelete