Contents:
Clearly one more element is needed to prevent the quick disintegration of the rules of justice so artificially constructed by interpersonal agreement. This is the power of sovereign authority. We need laws codifying the rules of justice; and they must be so vigilantly and relentlessly enforced by absolute political power that nobody in his right mind would dare to try to violate them.
One of the most crucial problems of political philosophy is where to strike the balance between personal liberty and public order; Hobbes is, perhaps, more willing than most of us to give up a great deal of the former in order to secure the latter. As we have with earlier thinkers, let us see how Hobbes applies this theory of justice, as a prelude to evaluating it critically.
Its rationale is to enforce obedience to the law itself and, thus, to promote security and public order. The severity of punishment should be relative to the severity of the crime involved, since its rationale is to deter future violations of civil law Leviathan , pp. While this is a decent consequentialist theory of crime and punishment, the more general view of justice from which it is derived is far more problematic.
It does stand in sharp contrast to the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It does revive something like the Sophist theory to which they were all advocating alternatives. And it does reflect the naturalistic approach represented by the new science. However, all the foundational elements supporting it are quite dubious: Without these props, this theory of justice as artificially constructed by us and purely a function of our interpersonal agreements seems entirely arbitrary.
But in addition to its being insufficiently justified, this theory of justice would justify too much. For example, what would prevent its involving a justification of slavery, if the alternative for the slaves were death as enemies in a state of nature? Even apart from the issue of slavery, in the absence of any substantive human rights, minorities in civil society might be denied any set of civil liberties, such as the right to adopt religious practices to which they feel called in conscience. As a transition between Hobbes and Hume, brief mention can be made of John Locke, the most important political philosopher between them.
The reason he is not being considered at length here is that he does not offer a distinctive general theory of justice. In order to protect such property rights, people agree to a social contract that moves them from that state of nature to a state of political society, with government established to enforce the law.
Another great social contract theorist between Hobbes and Hume who is worth mentioning here again he gives us no distinctive theory of justice is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In The Social Contract , he maintains that, in a well-ordered society, the general will rather than the will of any individual or group of individuals must prevail. True freedom in society requires following the general will, and those who do not choose to do so can legitimately be forced to do so. A human being is allegedly so transformed by the move from the state of nature to that of civil society as to become capable of such genuine freedom as will allow each citizen to consent to all the laws out of deference to the common good.
Like Hobbes, Hume is a radical empiricist and a determinist who is skeptical of justice as an objective, absolute virtue. Any virtue, he maintains, is desirable in that it provides us with the pleasant feeling of approval; and any vice, including that of injustice, is undesirable in that it provides us with the painful sense of disapproval. Hume offers us a unique and fascinating argument to prove his point. He imagines four hypothetical scenarios, in which either human nature would be radically different utterly altruistic or brutally selfish or our environment would be so with everything we desire constantly and abundantly available or so destitute that hardly anyone could survive , allegedly showing that, in each of them, justice would not be a virtue at all.
His conclusion is that justice is only a virtue because, relative to reality, which is intermediate among these extremes, it is beneficial to us as members of society. He holds a very conservative view of property rights, in that, normally, people should be allowed to keep what they already have acquired. The rationale for such principles of international justice is that they reduce the horrors of war and facilitate the advantages of peace.
Yet the rules of justice that are normally conducive to public utility are never absolute and can be legitimately contravened where following them would seem to do more harm than good to our society. Whether that is or is not the case in specific circumstances becomes a judgment call. Hume is important here because of a convergence of several factors. First, like the Sophists and Hobbes, he makes justice a social construct that is relative to human needs and interests.
Second, like Hobbes, he associates it fundamentally with human passions rather than with reason. Third, the virtue of justice and the rules of justice are essentially connected to the protection of private property. And, fourth, he considers public utility to be the sole basis of justice. This theory would prove extremely influential, in that Kant will take issue with it, while utilitarians like Mill will build on its flexibility.
While it may be attractive to allow for exceptions to the rules, this also creates a kind of instability. Is justice merely an instrumental good, having no intrinsic value? If that were the case, then it would make sense to say that the role of reason is simply to calculate the most effective means to our most desirable ends.
But then, assuming that our ends were sufficiently desirable, any means necessary to achieve them would presumably be justifiable—so that, morally and politically, anything goes, in principle, regardless how revolting. Is this the best we can do in our pursuit of an adequate theory of justice? As justice is both a moral and a political virtue, helping to prescribe both a good character and right conduct, the question of how such obligations arise is crucial. But, then, what is the logical link here? Why should we, morally speaking, act for the sake of agreeableness and utility?
For Kant, the reason we should choose to do what is right has nothing to do with good consequences. It is merely because it is the right thing to do. Then we shall consider the utilitarian response to this, as developed by the philosopher who is, arguably, the greatest consequentialist of modern times, John Stuart Mill, who, as an empiricist, like Hobbes and Hume, will make what is right a function of what is good.
Even though he was not convinced by it, Kant was sufficiently disturbed by it that he committed decades to trying to answer it, creating a revolutionary new philosophical system in order to do so. This system includes, but is far from limited to, a vast, extensive practical philosophy, comprising many books and essays, including a theory of justice.
It is well known that this practical philosophy—including both his ethical theory and socio-political philosophy—is the most renowned example of deontology from the Greek, meaning the study or science of duty. Justice categorically requires a respect for the right, regardless of inconvenient or uncomfortable circumstances and regardless of desirable and undesirable consequences. On this view, matters of right will be equally applicable to all persons as potentially autonomous rational agents, regardless of any contingent differences, of gender, racial or ethnic identity, socio-economic class status, and so forth.
If Kant can pull this off, it will take him further in the direction of equality of rights than any previous philosopher considered here. It is a test we can use to help us rationally to distinguish between right and wrong; and he offers three different formulations of it which he considers three different ways of saying the same thing: For the dignity of all persons, rendering them intrinsically valuable and worthy of respect, is a function of their capacity for moral autonomy. In his Metaphysics of Morals , Kant develops his ethical system, beyond this foundation, into a doctrine of right and a doctrine of virtue.
The former comprises strict duties of justice, while the latter comprises broader duties of merit. Obviously, it is the former category, duties we owe all other persons, regardless of circumstances and consequences, that concerns us here, justice being a matter of strict right rather than one of meritorious virtue.
In his Metaphysical Elements of Justice , which constitutes the first part of his Metaphysics of Morals , Kant develops his theory of justice. To say that we have duties of justice to other persons is to indicate that they have rights, against us, that we should perform those duties—so that duties of justice and rights are correlative. Three conditions must be met in order that the concept of justice should apply: Kant approvingly invokes three ancient rules of justice: Kant distinguishes between natural or private justice, on the one hand, and civil or public justice, on the other.
He has an intricate theory of property rights, which we can only touch upon here. We can claim, in the name of justice, to have rights to a physical property, such as your car, b the performance of a particular deed by another person, such as the auto shop keeping its agreement to try to fix your car, and c certain characteristics of interpersonal relationships with those under our authority, such as obedient children and respectful servants. Someone who steals your car or the auto mechanic who has agreed to fix it and then fails to try to do so is doing you an injustice. Children, as developing but dependent persons, have a right to support and care from their parents; but, in turn, they owe their parents obedience while under their authority.
Children are not the property of their parents and must never be treated like things or objects; and, when they have become independent of their parents, they owe them nothing more than gratitude. Similarly, a master must respect a servant as a person.
While the master has authority over the servant, that must never be viewed as ownership or involve abuse. This all concerns private or natural justice, having to do with the securing of property rights. Next let us next consider how Kant applies his theory of justice to the problem of crime and punishment, in the area of public or civil justice, involving protective, commutative, and distributive justice, the requirements of which can be legitimately enforced by civil society. When a person commits a crime, that involves misusing freedom to infringe the freedom of others or to violate their rights.
Thus the criminal forfeits the right to freedom and can become a legitimate prisoner of the state. This extends to the ultimate punishment, the death penalty: A third application to consider here is that of war. Unlike Hobbes, he does not see this as a basis for all moral duty. It does account for the obligation we have to the state and other citizens. But states have duties to other states, so that there is an international law of nations. Even though different states, in the absence of international law, are in a natural condition of a state of war, as Hobbes thought, he was wrong to think that, in that state, anything rightly goes and that there is no justice.
War is bad, and we should try to minimize the need for it, although Kant is not a pacifist and can justify it for purposes of self-defense. Thus we see Kant applying his own theory of justice in three areas: What shall we critically say about this theory? First, it argues for a sense of justice in terms of objective, non-arbitrary right—against, say, Hobbes and Hume.
To focus the issue, ask the question, why should we be just? For Plato, this is the way to achieve the fulfillment of a well-ordered soul. For Aristotle, the achievement and exercising of moral virtue is a necessary condition of human flourishing. For Hobbes, practicing justice is required by enlightened self-interest.
For Hume, even though our being just may not benefit us directly all the time, it is conducive to public utility or the good of the society of which we are members.
But for each of these claims, we can ask, so what? If any combination of these claims were to turn out to be correct, we could still legitimately ask why we should therefore be just. His theory as we have considered it here is a paradigmatic example of the view of justice being advocated in this article, as essentially requiring respect for persons as free, rational agents.
Kant represents the very sort of bourgeois conception of justice against which Marx and Engels protest in their call, in The Communist Manifesto, for a socialistic revolution. Marx explains the ideal of socio-economic equality he advocates with the famous slogan that all should be required to contribute to society to the extent of their abilities and all should be allowed to receive from society in accordance with their needs. John Stuart Mill, a nineteenth-century English philosopher, was aware of the call for a Communist revolution and advocated progressive liberal reform as an alternative path to political evolution.
Whereas Kant was the first great deontologist, Mill subscribed to the already established tradition of utilitarianism. Near the end of his life, Mill observed that it was the closest thing to a religion in which his father raised him.
And, if he was not the founder of this secular religion, he clearly became its most effective evangelist. In Utilitarianism , his own great essay in ethical theory, Mill gives his own statement of the principle of utility again employing a curiously religious word: This presents the deceptive appearance of a remarkably simple rubric for practical judgment: But what is deceptive about this is the notion that we can sufficiently anticipate future consequences to be able to predict where our actions will lead us.
Notice, also, that unlike Kantian deontology, which makes what is right independent of good consequences, utilitarianism makes the former a function of the latter. We have already discerned what the former concept means and now need to elucidate the latter. Mill lays out five dimensions of justice as we use the term: People commonly associate all of these with justice, and they do seem to represent legitimate aspects of the virtue. Therefore there purportedly cannot be any genuine conflict between utility and justice.
If there ever were circumstances in which slavery were truly useful to humanity, then presumably it would be just; the reason it is typically unjust is that it violates utility. The main goal here is to reduce justice to social utility, in such a way as to rule out, by definition, any ultimate conflict between the two. Thus, the social role played by our sense of justice is allegedly that it serves the common good.
The problem Mill sets for himself here is where to draw a reasonable line between areas in which society can rightly proscribe behavior and those in which people should be allowed the freedom to do as they will. It is not acceptable to use power against others to stop them from hurting only themselves. Mill candidly admits that this principle is reasonably feasible only with regard to mature, responsible members of civilized societies—not to children or to the insane or even necessarily to primitive peoples who cannot make informed judgments about their own true good.
He seems confident that utility will always require that freedom be protected in these areas ibid. Let us now see how Mill applies his utilitarian theory to three problems of justice that are still timely today. First of all, the issue of punishment is one he considers in Utilitarianism , though his discussion is aimed at considering alternative accounts rather than conclusively saying what he himself thinks we might also observe that, in this short passage, he attacks the social contract theory as a useless fiction ibid.
As a utilitarian, he favors the judicious use of punishment in order to deter criminal activity. In , as an elected member of Parliament, he made a famous speech in the House of Commons supporting capital punishment on utilitarian grounds. Although it is clear that he would like to be able to support a bill for its abolition, the lawful order of society, a necessary condition of societal well-being, requires this means of deterring the most heinous crimes, such as aggravated murder. He even thinks it a quicker, more humane punishment than incarcerating someone behind bars for the rest of his life.
Thus his utilitarian theory provides him with a basis for supporting capital punishment as morally justifiable. A second famous application of his utilitarian theory of justice Mill makes is to the issue of equal opportunity for women. Here, again, we have an issue of social justice to which his utilitarian theory is applied, generating liberal conclusions. Our third issue of application is that of international non-intervention. Although defensive wars can be justifiable, aggressive ones are not.
It can be justifiable to go to war without being attacked or directly threatened with an attack, for example, to help civilize a barbarian society, which, as such, allegedly has no rights. All of this is presumably a function of utilitarian welfare. Once more, a still timely moral issue has been addressed using the utilitarian theory of justice.
These applications all plausibly utilize the values and reasoning of utilitarianism, which, by its very nature, must be consequentialist. Surely, the premium he places on human happiness is admirable, as is his universal perspective, which views all humans as counting. The problem is in his assumptions that all values are relative to consequences, that human happiness is the ultimate good, and that this reduces to the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain. From its founding, American political thought had an enduring focus on justice.
After considering the formidable contributions of Rawls to justice theory and some of its applications, we shall conclude this survey with a brief treatment of several post-Rawlsian alternatives. A key focus that will distinguish this section from previous ones is the effort to achieve a conception of justice that strikes a reasonable balance between liberty and equality.
This led to a greatly developed book version, A Theory of Justice , published in , arguably the most important book of American philosophy published in the second half of the last century. He also makes it clear early on that he means to present his theory as a preferable alternative to that of utilitarians. If you must decide on what sort of society you could commit yourself to accepting as a permanent member and were not allowed to factor in specific knowledge about yourself—such as your gender, race, ethnic identity, level of intelligence, physical strength, quickness and stamina, and so forth—then you would presumably exercise the rational choice to make the society as fair for everyone as possible, lest you find yourself at the bottom of that society for the rest of your life.
He emphasizes the point that these principles rule out as unjust the utilitarian justification of disadvantages for some on account of greater advantages for others, since that would be rationally unacceptable to one operating under the veil of ignorance. Again, this is anti-utilitarian, in that no increase in socio-economic benefits for anyone can ever justify anything less than maximum equality of rights and duties for all.
Thus, for example, if enslaving a few members of society generated vastly more benefits for the majority than liabilities for them, such a bargain would be categorically ruled out as unjust. Rawls proceeds to develop his articulation of these two principles of justice more carefully. The lexical priority of this first principle requires that it be categorical in that the only justification for limiting any basic liberties would be to enhance other basic liberties; for example, it might be just to limit free access of the press to a sensational legal proceeding in order to protect the right of the accused to a fair trial.
For example, the office of the presidency has attached to it greater social prestige and income than is available to most of us. It can be, assuming that all of us, as citizens, could achieve that office with its compensations and that even those of us at or near the bottom of the socio-economic scale benefit from intelligent, talented people accepting the awesome responsibilities of that office.
Most of us today might be readily sympathetic to the first principle and the equal opportunity condition, while finding the difference principle to be objectionably egalitarian, to the point of threatening incentives to contribute more than is required. Rawls briefly suggests that his theory of justice as fairness might be applied to international relations, in general, and to just war theory, in particular ibid. Rawls applies his theory of justice to the domestic issue of civil disobedience.
No society is perfectly just. If the severity of the injustice is not great, then respect for democratic majority rule might morally dictate compliance. Ultimately, every individual must decide for himself or herself whether such action is morally and prudentially justifiable or not as reasonably and responsibly as possible.
The acts of civil disobedience of Martin Luther King to whom Rawls refers in a footnote seem to have met all the conditions, to have been done in the name of justice, and to have been morally justified ibid. A just society must protect basic liberties equally for all of its members, including freedom of thought and its necessary condition, freedom of expression.
But, in a free society that protects these basic liberties, a pluralism of views and values is likely to develop, such that people can seriously disagree about matters they hold dear. These may be religious like Christianity or philosophical like Kantianism or moral like utilitarian. Yet a variety of potentially conflicting comprehensive doctrines may be such that all are reasonable.
In such a case, social unity requires respect for and tolerance of other sets of beliefs. It would be unjust deliberately to suppress reasonable comprehensive doctrines merely because they are different from our own. Thus, for example, a Christian Kantian and an atheistic utilitarian, while sincerely disagreeing on many ethical principles, philosophical ideas, and religious beliefs, can unite in mutually accepting, for instance, the American Constitution as properly binding on all of us equally.
This agreement will enable them mutually to participate in social cooperation, the terms of which are fair and reciprocal and which can contribute to the reasonable good of the entire society. Near the end of his life, Rawls published The Law of Peoples , in which he tried to apply his theory of justice to international relations.
Given that not all societies act justly and that societies have a right to defend themselves against aggressive violent force, there can be a right to go to war jus ad bellum. Yet even then, not all is fair in war, and rules of just warfare jus in bello should be observed: After hostilities have ceased, just conquerors must treat their conquered former enemies with respect—not, for example, enslaving them or denying them civil liberties.
More generally, Rawls applies his theory of justice to international relations, generating eight rules regarding how the people of other societies must be treated. While we do not have time to explore them all here, the last one is sufficiently provocative to be worth our considering: What is most interesting here is what Rawls refuses to say. While different peoples, internationally speaking, might be imagined in an original position under the veil of ignorance, and Rawls would favor encouraging equal liberties and opportunities for all, he refuses to apply the difference principle globally in such a way as to indicate that justice requires a massive redistribution of wealth from richer to poorer societies Peoples , pp.
His views on international aid seem so well worked out that, ironically, they call into question part of his general theory of justice itself. It does not seem plausible that the difference principle should apply intrasocietally but not internationally. The problem may be with the difference principle itself. It is not at all clear that rational agents in a hypothetical original position would adopt such an egalitarian principle.
Thus we could satisfactorily specify the requirements of an essentially Kantian conception of justice, as requiring respect for the dignity of all persons as free and equal, rational moral agents. While less egalitarian than what Rawls offers, it might prove an attractive alternative.
To what extent should liberty be constrained by equality in a just society? This is a central issue that divides him from many post-Rawlsians, to a few of whom we now briefly turn. They will represent six different approaches. We shall consider, in succession, 1 the libertarian approach of Robert Nozick, 2 the socialistic one of Kai Nielsen, 3 the communitarian one of Michael Sandel, 4 the globalist one of Thomas Pogge, 5 the feminist one of Martha Nussbaum, and 6 the rights-based one of Michael Boylan. As this is merely a quick survey, we shall not delve much into the details of their theories limiting ourselves to a single work by each or explore their applications or do much in the way of a critique of them.
But the point will be to get a sense of several recent approaches to developing views of justice in the wake of Rawls. Both are fundamentally committed to individual liberty. First, anyone who justly acquires any holding is rightly entitled to keep and use it. Second, anyone who acquires any holding by means of a just transfer of property is rightly entitled to keep and use it.
It is only through some combination of these two approaches that anyone is rightly entitled to any holding. But some people acquire holdings unjustly—e. So, third, justice can require the rectification of unjust past acquisitions. People should be entitled to use their own property as they see fit, so long as they are entitled to it. Whereas capitalism supports the ownership and control of the means of producing and distribution material goods by private capital or wealth, socialism holds that they should be owned and controlled by society as a whole.
If Nozick accuses Rawls of going too far in requiring a redistribution of wealth, Nielsen criticizes him for favoring individual liberty at the expense of social equality. His sharper departure from Rawls can be found in his second principle, which is to replace the difference principle that allegedly justified socio-economic in equality.
Sandel, as a communitarian, argues against Rawls and Nozick that the well-being of a community takes precedence over individual liberty and against Nielsen over the socio-economic welfare of its members. More specifically, it not only accepts the difference principle but wants to apply it on an international level as well as nationally. But, as applied internationally, it is not.
While Rawls does believe that well-off societies have a duty to assist burdened societies, he rejects the idea of a global application of his difference principle. What Pogge is proposing is a global egalitarian principle of distributive justice. If it uses those extracted resources itself, it must pay the tax itself. If it sells some to other societies, presumably at least part of the tax burden will be borne by buyers in the form of higher sales prices. Corporations extracting resources such as oil companies and coal mining companies would pay their taxes to their governments which, in turn, would be responsible for transferring funds to disadvantaged societies to help the global poor.
At any rate, they should be channeled toward societies in which they could improve the lot of the poor and disadvantaged. Of course, less well-off societies would be free to refuse such funds, if they so chose. But, one might wonder, would well-off societies only be motivated to pay their fair share by benevolence, a sense of justice, and possible shame at being exposed for not doing so?
No, there could be international sanctions: All of these capabilities are essential to our functioning as flourishing human beings and should be assured for all citizens of a just society. But, historically, women have been and still are short-changed with respect to them and should be guaranteed their protection in the name of justice Sex , pp. There are two levels of basic goods. The most deeply embedded of these, such as food, clothing, shelter, protection from physical harm, are absolutely necessary for any meaningful human action. The second level of basic goods comprises less deeply embedded ones, such as basic knowledge and skills such as are imparted by education, social structures that allow us to trust one another, basic assurance that we will not be exploited, and the protection of basic human rights.
Next, there are three levels of secondary goods. The more deeply embedded goods are as conditions of meaningful human action, the more right to them people have. Boylan follows Kant and Rawls in holding an ultimate moral imperative is that individual human agents and their rights must be respected. This is a matter of justice, distributive justice involving a fair distribution of social goods and services and retributive justice involving proper ways for society to treat those who violate the rules.
A just society has a duty to provide basic goods equally to all of its members, if it can do so. But things get more complicated with regards to secondary goods. A just society will try to provide the first level of secondary goods, those that are life enhancing, equally to all its members. Yet this becomes more problematic with the second and third levels of secondary goods—those that are useful and luxurious—as the conditions for meaningful human action have already been satisfied by more deeply embedded ones.
The need that people have to derive rewards for their work commensurate with their achievement would seem to militate against any guarantee of equal shares in these, even if society could provide them, although comparable achievement should be comparably rewarded. Finally, in the area of retributive justice, we may briefly consider three scenarios. First, when one person takes a tangible good from another person, justice requires that the perpetrator return to the victim some tangible good s of comparable worth, plus compensation proportionate to the harm done the victim by the loss.
Second, when one person takes an intangible good from another person, justice requires that the perpetrator give the victim some tangible good as adequate compensation for the pain and suffering caused by the loss. And, third, when one person injures another person through the deprivation of a valued good that negatively affects society, society can justly incarcerate the perpetrator for a period of time proportionate to the loss Society , pp. In conclusion, we might observe that, in this rights-based alternative, as in the previous five the libertarian, the socialistic, the communitarian, the globalist, and the feminist we have considered, there is an attempt to interpret justice as requiring respect for the dignity of all persons as free and equal, rational moral agents.
This historical survey has tracked the progressive development of this Kantian idea as becoming increasingly prominent in Western theories of justice. Western Theories of Justice Justice is one of the most important moral and political concepts. Aristotle After working with Plato at his Academy for a couple of decades, Aristotle was understandably most influenced by his teacher, also adopting, for example, a virtue theory of ethics. Augustine Aurelius Augustine was born and raised in the Roman province of North Africa; during his life, he experienced the injustices, the corruption, and the erosion of the Roman Empire.
Early Modernity Although only half as much time elapses between Aquinas and Hobbes as did between Augustine and Aquinas, from the perspective of intellectual history, the period of modernism represents a staggering sea-change. Hobbes Whereas Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas all offer accounts of justice that represent alternatives to Sophism, Thomas Hobbes, the English radical empiricist, can be seen as resurrecting the Sophist view that we can have no objective knowledge of it as a moral or political absolute value.
Hume As a transition between Hobbes and Hume, brief mention can be made of John Locke, the most important political philosopher between them. Contemporary Philosophers From its founding, American political thought had an enduring focus on justice. References and Further Readings a. Baumgarth and Richard J. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Vol. Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, David Fate Norton and Mary J. Robson and Bruce L. University of Toronto Press, World Publishing Company, The next stage of corruption is impurity.
A person with an impure will does not attempt to perform morally right actions just because these actions are morally right. Instead, she performs morally right actions partly because these actions are morally right and partly because of some other incentive, e. Someone with an impure will performs morally right actions, but only partly for the right reason.
Kant believes that this form of defect in the will is worse than frailty even though the frail person does wrong while the impure person does right. Impurity is worse than frailty because an impure person has allowed an incentive other than the moral law to guide her actions while the frail person tries, but fails, to do the right thing for the right reason Kant , Bk I, 25— The final stage of corruption is perversity, or wickedness.
Someone with a perverse will inverts the proper order of the incentives. Instead of prioritizing the moral law over all other incentives, she prioritizes self-love over the moral law. Thus, her actions conform to the moral law only if they are in her self-interest. Someone with a perverse will need not do anything wrong because actions which best promote her self-interest may conform to the moral law.
But since the reason she performs morally right actions is self-love and not because these actions are morally right, her actions have no moral worth and, according to Kant, her will manifests the worst form of evil possible for a human being. Kant considers someone with a perverse will an evil person Kant , Bk I, Whether, and to what extent, a person, or her will, is evil seems to depend on details about her motives and the harms she brings about and not just on whether she prioritizes self-interest over the moral law.
For instance, it seems far worse to torture someone for sadistic pleasure than to tell the truth to gain a good reputation. In fact, it seems reasonable to suppose that the first act sadistic torture indicates an evil will while the second act telling the truth for self-interest indicates a will that is merely lacking in moral goodness. But for Kant, both acts indicate wills that are equally evil for attempts to address this criticism see Garcia , Goldberg , and Timmons Kant makes several other controversial claims about the nature of evil in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.
One of these claims is that there is a radical evil in human nature. By this he means that all human beings have a propensity to subordinate the moral law to self-interest and that this propensity is radical, or rooted, in human nature in the sense that it is inextirpable. Kant also believes that we are imputable for this propensity to evil Kant , Bk I. Richard Bernstein argues that Kant cannot coherently hold both of these theses since we could not be responsible for a propensity that is in us originally and that we cannot be rid of Bernstein , 11— See also, Bernstein and Goldberg In his Confessions , Saint Augustine tells us that one day he stole some pears for the sole sake of doing something wrong Augustine, Confessions , II, v-x.
Kant rejects the idea that human beings can be motivated in this way Kant , Bk I, sect. For Kant, human beings always have either the moral law or self-love as their incentive for acting. Only a devil could do what is wrong just because it is wrong. For more about Kant and diabolical evil see Bernstein , 36—42; Card and , 36—61; Allison , 86—; and Timmons , — Secular analyses of the concept of evil in the narrow sense began in the twentieth century with the work of Hanna Arendt.
Instead, Arendt uses the term to denote a new form of wrongdoing which cannot be captured by other moral concepts.
For Arendt, radical evil involves making human beings as human beings superfluous. This is accomplished when human beings are made into living corpses who lack any spontaneity or freedom. Her analysis does not address the character and culpability of individuals who take part in the perpetration of evil. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil , Arendt turns her attention to individual culpability for evil through her analysis of the Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann who was tried in Jerusalem for organizing the deportation and transportation of Jews to the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
For a discussion of the controversy see Young-Bruehl For instance, social psychologists Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo have attempted to explain how social conditions can lead ordinary people to perform evil actions. Some theorists focus on evil character, or evil personhood, as the root concept of evil See, e. These theorists consider the concept of evil action to be a derivative concept, i. But just as many theorists, or more, believe that the concept of evil action is the root concept of evil See, e.
These theorists consider the concept of evil personhood to be a derivative concept, i. Some theorists who believe that evil action is the root concept believe that only one or two component properties are essential for evil action, while others believe that evil action has a multitude of essential components.
This section discusses different views about the essential components of evil action Zachary Goldberg has recently argued that there is more to understanding the nature of evil actions than knowing their essential components [See Goldberg forthcoming]. This position will not be discussed in this entry. Most philosophers, and laypeople, assume that wrongfulness is an essential component of evil action See e. It seems that, to be evil, an action must, at least, be wrong. However, this claim is not universally accepted Calder The central question for most theorists is: One controversial answer to this question is that nothing more is required: This position is resisted by most evil-revivalists who claim instead that evil is qualitatively, rather than merely quantitatively, distinct from mere wrongdoing See, e.
To determine whether evil is qualitatively distinct from mere wrongdoing we must first understand what it is for two concepts to be qualitatively distinct. According to some theorists two concepts are qualitatively distinct if, and only if, all instantiations of the first concept share a property which no instantiation of the second concept shares Steiner ; Garrard , ; Russell, Todd Calder disputes this understanding of what it is for two concepts to be qualitatively distinct, arguing instead that two concepts are qualitatively distinct provided they do not share all of their essential properties.
Thus, evil actions are qualitatively distinct from merely wrongful actions provided the essential properties of evil actions are not also the essential properties of merely wrongful actions but had to a greater degree. Calder argues that on plausible theories of evil and wrongdoing, evil and wrongdoing do not share all of their essential properties, and thus, evil and wrongdoing are qualitatively distinct. For instance, Calder argues that it is an essential property of evil actions that the evildoer intends that his victim suffer significant harm while it is not an essential property of wrongful actions that the wrongdoer intend to cause harm.
For instance, cheating, lying, and risky behaviour can be wrongful even if the wrongdoer does not intend to cause harm Calder Hallie Liberto and Fred Harrington go even further than Calder in arguing that two concepts can be non-quantitatively distinct even though instantiations of the two concepts share properties Liberto and Harrington According to Liberto and Harrington, two concepts are non-quantitatively distinct provided one of the concepts has a property which determines the degree to which that concept is instantiated that does not determine the degree to which the second concept is instantiated.
For instance, Liberto and Harrington suggest that both altruistic and heroic actions have the following essential properties: However, the degree to which an action is altruistic is determined by the degree to which it is performed for the sake of others and not by the degree to which it is performed at some cost or risk to the agent while the degree to which an action is heroic is determined by the degree to which it is performed at some cost or risk to the agent and not by the degree to which it is performed for the sake of others.
Importantly, if Liberto and Harrington are right that two concepts can be non-quantitatively distinct by being quality of emphasis distinct, then Calder is wrong to think that two concepts can be non-quantitatively distinct only if they do not share all of their essential properties. Liberto and Harrington argue further that evil and wrongdoing are non-quantitatively distinct in the sense of being quality of emphasis distinct.
Liberto and Harrington argue that using this theory we could say that degrees of evil are determined by degrees of harm, while degrees of wrongdoing are not. If so, evil and wrongdoing are non-quantitatively distinct by being quality of emphasis distinct. Most theorists writing about the concept of evil believe that evil actions must cause or allow significant harm to at least one victim see, e.
However, three sorts of arguments have been used to contest this claim. First, some theorists argue that evil actions need not cause or allow significant harm because we can perform evil actions by attempting or seriously risking to cause harm, even if we fail. For example, on this view, it would be evil to attempt to detonate a bomb in a room full of innocent people, even if the attempt is thwarted by the police See Kramer , —; Russell 52— Some people would call this act of sadistic voyeurism evil even though it causes no additional harm to the victim we can imagine that Carol is not aware that Alex takes pleasure in her suffering so that the witnessing of her suffering does not aggravate the harm.
Paul Formosa suggests that sadistic voyeurism is only evil because the voyeur allows the harm to occur and thus is partly responsible for the suffering Formosa , If so, evil actions need not cause or allow harm. However, others dispute this contention. These cases constitute the third sort of argument against the claim that evil actions must cause or allow significant harm.
For example Eve Garrard has suggested that schoolyard bullies perform evil actions even though they do not cause very much harm Garrard , 45 , while Stephen de Wijze has argued that torturing and killing what you know to be a lifelike robot would be evil even if the robot has no conscious life De Wijze , Two sorts of responses can be given to these sorts of cases. First, we can argue that, while the action in question is evil, it does, in fact, involve significant harm.
This sort of response seems appropriate for the bullying case See Kramer , This sort of response seems appropriate for the robot case. Furthermore, in response to all three arguments for the claim that evil actions need not cause or allow significant harm i. For example, we can argue that failed attempts seem evil because attempting to perform an evil action is an indication that the agent performing the action has an evil character and not because the action itself is evil See Calder a, Similarly, we can argue that given their intentions, motives, and feelings, sadistic voyeurs and robot torturers are evil persons even though they do not perform evil actions for more about evil character see Section 4.
Assuming that harm is an essential component of evil, the question then becomes how much harm is required for evil? In the Roots of Evil John Kekes argues that the harm of evil must be serious and excessive Kekes , 1—3. Claudia Card describes the harm of evil as an intolerable harm. By an intolerable harm, Card means a harm that makes life not worth living from the point of view of the person whose life it is. Examples of intolerable harms include severe physical or mental suffering as well as the deprivation of basics such as food, clean drinking water, and social contact Card , For further discussion of the harm component see Russell , 64— Most theorists writing about evil believe that evil action requires a certain sort of motivation.
Once again, this claim is somewhat controversial. In the Atrocity Paradigm , Claudia Card makes a point of defining evil without reference to perpetrator motives. She does this because she wants her theory to focus on alleviating the suffering of victims rather than on understanding the motives of perpetrators Card , 9. However, while Card claims that the atrocity paradigm does not have a motivation component, part of the plausibility of her theory comes from that fact that it restricts the class of evil actions to those that follow from certain sorts of motives.
While this account of evil allows for a wide range of motivations, it does specify that evildoers must foresee the harm they produce and lack a moral justification for producing the harm. In other words, for Card, evildoers are motivated by a desire for some object or state of affairs which does not justify the harm they foreseeably inflict. Other philosophers have suggested that evildoers desire to cause harm, or to do wrong, for more specific reasons such as pleasure Steiner , the desire to do what is wrong Perrett , the desire to annihilate all being Eagleton , or the destruction of others for its own sake Cole When evil is restricted to actions that follow from these sorts of motivations, theorists sometimes say that their subject is pure, radical, diabolical, or monstrous evil.
This suggests that their discussion is restricted to a type, or form, of evil and not to evil per se. While some philosophers argue that certain motives, such as malevolence or malice, are necessary for evil, others focus instead on motives or desires that evildoers lack. For instance, Adam Morton contends that evildoers are crucially uninhibited by barriers against considering harming or humiliating others that ought to be there Morton , A metaphysical silencer is a reason which is so weighty that, objectively speaking, it takes away the reason-giving force of some other consideration.
When this happens we say that the less weighty consideration has been metaphysically silenced. By contrast, a psychological silencer is a reason which is so weighty for an individual that, subjectively, it takes away the reason-giving force of some other consideration. When this happens we say that the consideration has been psychologically silenced for the individual. If we came across a child drowning in a shallow pond, the need to rescue the child would be so morally important that it would metaphysically silence the desire to keep our clothes clean as a reason for acting or not acting.
That is, when a child is in urgent need of rescue, considerations about keeping our clothes clean lose all of their reason-giving force. They cease to be reasons for acting or not acting. For many people, especially for virtuous people, considerations about keeping their clothes clean are also psychologically silenced by the urgent need to rescue a child drowning in a shallow pond.
In other words, virtuous people are completely unmoved by considerations about keeping their clothes clean when presented with children in urgent need of rescue. According to Garrard, the evildoer has a particularly despicable motivational structure. She psychologically silences considerations that are so morally weighty that they metaphysically silence the very considerations which move her to act Garrard , For instance, it would be evil to psychologically silence the urgent need to rescue a drowning child as a reason for acting because we desire to keep our clothes clean. Yet it seems that John would do evil by allowing a child to drown for those reasons.
Some theorists believe that to do evil we must feel a certain way or have certain emotions at the time of acting. For example, Laurence Thomas believes that evildoers take delight in causing harm or feel hatred toward their victims Thomas , 76— Hillel Steiner goes even further by contending that there are just two components of evil: Critics argue that it is not necessary to take pleasure in doing wrong to perform an evil action since it is sufficient to intentionally cause significant harm for an unworthy goal such as self-interest Calder Imagine that a serial killer tortures and kills his victims but that he does not take pleasure in torturing and killing.
It seems that this serial killer is an evildoer even though he does not take pleasure in doing wrong. It is universally accepted that to perform an evil action an agent must be morally responsible for what she does. Although hurricanes and rattle snakes can cause great harm, they cannot perform evil actions because they are not moral agents. Furthermore, moral agents only perform evil actions when they are morally responsible for what they do and their actions are morally inexcusable see e. It is particularly controversial whether these conditions are met in three sorts of cases: Psychopathy is a syndrome that consists in lacking certain emotional, interpersonal, and behavioural traits and having others Hare Some of the defining characteristics of psychopathy include shallow emotions, egocentricity, deceitfulness, impulsivity, a lack of empathy, and a lack of guilt and remorse.
For instance, a delusional schizophrenic who believes that her neighbour is a demon is not responsible for harming her neighbour since she does not understand that she is harming an innocent person; she believes she is defending herself from an inhuman malicious agent. Motivational internalists believe that it is conceptually impossible to believe and thus to know that an action is morally wrong and yet be completely unmotivated to refrain from doing the action.
That is, for the internalist, there is a conceptual connection between believing that an action is wrong and having a con-attitude toward the action. The internalist believes that one may be able to knowingly do what is wrong because, all things considered, she cares more about something that is incompatible with refraining from wrongdoing, provided she is at least somewhat inclined to refrain from doing what she knows to be wrong. Since psychopaths seem to be completely indifferent to whether their actions are right or wrong, motivational internalists believe that they do not truly believe, or understand, that what they do is morally wrong.
At most, they might believe that their harmful actions break societal conventions. But it may be one thing to believe that one has broken a societal convention and quite another to believe that one has broken a moral rule. Philosophers who reject the internalist thesis, i. According to motivational externalists, moral knowledge only requires an intellectual capacity to identify right and wrong, and not the ability to care about morality. Since psychopaths are not intellectually deficient, motivational externalists do not think there is any reason to believe that psychopaths cannot tell the difference between right and wrong.
For more about how the internalist and externalist theses relate to the moral responsibility of psychopaths see Brink , 45—50; Duff ; Haksar ; and Milo See also Rosati It is beyond the purview of this entry to survey this literature. The degree to which deviant behavior is caused by bad upbringings rather than genetic starting points or individual choices is a difficult empirical question. Assuming that there is a strong causal connection between bad upbringings and deviant behaviour, there are two main arguments for the claim that we should not hold perpetrators morally responsible for behaviour that has resulted from bad upbringings.
The first argument contends that since we do not choose our upbringings we should not be held responsible for crimes which result from our upbringings See, e. Susan Wolf offers a variant of this argument. According to Wolf people who have had particularly bad upbringings are unable to make accurate normative judgements because they have been taught the wrong values. Wolf likens people who have been taught the wrong values to people suffering from psychosis because like psychotics they are unable to make accurate judgements about the world. For example, Wolf has us consider the case of Jojo, the son of Jo, a ruthless dictator of a small South American country.
Jo believes that there is nothing wrong with torturing or executing innocent people. In fact, he enjoys expressing his unlimited power by ordering his guards to do just that. Jojo is given a special education which includes spending much of his day with his father. Wolf argues that we should not hold Jojo responsible for torturing innocent people since his upbringing has made him unable to judge that these actions are wrong.
The second argument for the claim that we should not hold people morally responsible for crimes that result from bad upbringings begins with the supposition that we are morally responsible for our crimes only if we are appropriate objects of reactive attitudes, such as resentment Strawson According to this argument, perpetrators of crimes who have had particularly bad upbringings are not appropriate objects of reactive attitudes since there is no point to expressing these attitudes toward these perpetrators.
A proponent of this argument must then explain why there is no point to expressing reactive attitudes toward these perpetrators. As a child, Harris was an affectionate good-hearted boy. Family members say that an abusive mother and harsh treatment at corrections facilities turned him into a malicious cold-blooded murderer. Sometimes ignorance is used as an excuse for putative evildoing Jones , 69— The argument goes something like this: In this way ignorance can be a legitimate excuse for causing unjustified harm.
However, since Aristotle, theorists have recognized that ignorance is only a legitimate excuse for causing unjustified harm when we are not responsible for our ignorance, i. One sort of culpable ignorance which has received a fair bit of attention from philosophers writing about evil is ignorance that results from self-deception. In self-deception we evade acknowledging to ourselves some truth or what we would see as the truth if our beliefs were based on an unbiased assessment of available evidence.
Some tactics used by self-deceivers to evade acknowledging some truth, including 1 avoiding thinking about the truth, 2 distracting themselves with rationalizations that are contrary to the truth, 3 systematically failing to make inquiries that would lead to evidence of the truth and 4 ignoring available evidence of the truth or distracting their attention from this evidence Jones , Several theorists writing about evil have suggested that self-deception plays a significant role in the production of evil actions and institutions Calder and ; Jones ; Thomas This entry will follow this convention.
For example, John Kekes holds an action-based regularity account Kekes , 48; , ; , 2 , while Todd Calder holds a motive-based dispositional account Calder , 22— According to regularity accounts, evil persons have evil-making properties habitually, or on a regular basis. According to dispositional accounts, evil persons need never have evil-making properties. It is sufficient to have a disposition to have evil-making properties. Action-based accounts contend that evil-making properties are certain sorts of actions—evil actions. Affect-based accounts contend that evil-making properties are certain sorts of feelings—evil feelings.
Motivation-based accounts contend that evil-making properties are certain sorts of motivations—evil desires. Some theorists argue for more than one sort of evil-making property. For example, Luke Russell argues that both evil actions and evil feelings are evil making properties Russell , , while Daniel Haybron argues that evil feelings and evil motivations are evil-making properties Haybron b, Most theorists writing about evil personhood hold action-based accounts See, e. According to action-based accounts, evil persons perform evil actions often enough, or are disposed to perform evil actions.
Critics argue that the problem with action-based accounts is that it seems sufficient for evil personhood to have evil feelings or motivations, and thus, evil persons need not perform, or be disposed to perform, evil actions. For instance, it seems that a harmless sadist who relishes in the suffering of others but who is not disposed to perform evil actions, could still be an evil person. Similarly, a cowardly or incompetent sadist who strongly desires to cause others suffering but who is not disposed to perform evil actions, is still an evil person Calder , 23; Haybron b, According to affect-based accounts, evil people have certain sorts of feelings or emotions.
There is some initial plausibility to this view since sadism and malicious envy are paradigms of evil. However, while it is undoubtedly true that some evil people are sadistic or maliciously envious, there is reason to believe that feelings of pleasure in pain or pain in pleasure, or any other sorts of feelings, are neither necessary nor sufficient for evil character.
The problem with thinking that certain sorts of feelings are necessary for evil character is that an evil person might routinely cause serious harm to her victims without any accompanying feelings. For instance, someone who routinely runs down pedestrians out of indifference for their well-being, and without any accompanying feelings, seems to qualify as an evil person Calder , He should be pitied rather than condemned. According to motivation-based accounts, to be an evil person is to be motivated in a certain sort of way. For instance, Todd Calder argues that to be an evil person it is sufficient to have a regular propensity for e-desires.
According to Calder, significant harm is desired for an unworthy goal if a state of affairs consisting of the achievement of the goal together with the harm would be less valuable than if the goal was not achieved and the harm was avoided Calder and See also Card, , 21 for a similar view. A problem for motivation-based accounts is to explain why we should judge someone as evil based solely on her motivations. In other words, why judge someone as the morally worst sort of person for having certain desires if these desires do not result in significant harm?
Why not judge people as evil only if they actually cause significant harm?
According to regularity accounts, evil persons have evil-making properties frequently, or on a regular basis See, e. An advantage of regularity accounts is that they explain the intuition that evil persons deserve our strongest moral condemnation Russell , For if evil persons have evil-making properties frequently, or on a regular basis, then it makes sense to say that they are the worst sorts of people and deserve our strongest moral condemnation. However, one problem with regularity accounts is that they do not seem to be able to make sense of the fact that some evil persons only very rarely if ever have evil-making properties.
For instance, Luke Russell argues that we should reject regularity accounts because they cannot accommodate the intuition that a brooding spree killer could be evil Russell , The brooding spree killer does not perform evil actions frequently or regularly.
She plans and fantasizes about her attack, and then performs evil actions sporadically or all at once. Thus, Russell argues, if brooding spree killers can be evil, as we think they can be, then we should reject regularity accounts. So the question becomes, are there persons who are comparable to brooding spree killers in that they have evil feelings or desires sporadically or infrequently rather than on a regular basis?
It seems that there might be cases of this sort when opportunities for evil feelings and desires are scarce. For example, we can imagine that an evil person might fail to have evil feelings and desires because she has been stranded on a deserted island. After many years without potential victims and needing to focus all of her attention on survival, she might lack evil feelings and desires due to a poverty of stimulus.
This would mean that she is no longer an evil person on affect and motivation based regularity accounts. However, it seems that we should say that she is still an evil person if she is still disposed to have evil feelings and desires in the sense that her evil feelings and desires would immediately return if she were presented with a victim. If so, we should reject affect and motivation based regularity accounts. Most theorists writing about evil personhood adopt dispositional accounts See, e.
Broadly speaking, dispositional accounts contend that someone is an evil person if, and only if, she is disposed to have evil-making properties. A potential problem for dispositional accounts is that they seem to conflict with the intuition that evil persons are rare since most of us are disposed to have evil-making properties in certain sorts of situations Russell , For example, assuming for the moment that evil actions are evil-making properties, Stanley Milgram has shown that most of us are disposed to perform evil actions specifically, administering potentially lethal electric shocks to innocent people when in certain experimental conditions i.
But if most of us are disposed to perform evil actions in these situations then it seems that on the dispositional account of evil personhood, most of us are evil, and thus, evil is not rare. To make sense of the rarity of evil personhood, Luke Russell proposes a restricted dispositional account according to which someone is an evil person if, and only if, she is strongly disposed to perform evil actions in only autonomy-favoring conditions Russell , 72—