kurt vonnegut said:
Bob_Ag said:
I'm not arguing semantics in the slightest, but if you want to, here is a useful definition.
The word just, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary: based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair.
Describe how a society can have justice when morality, or right and wrong, is relative? Describe how its possible to have a rule of law, which is the implementation that allows for civil society, if justice is not based on objective morality?
In your own words, define injustice.
I think I want to first distinguish 'ultimate justice from God' from a more accessible legal definition of justice - which is the thing that permits for civil society. Since you've asked about the latter, I'm going to not address ultimate justice from God.
Every society on this planet can be described as a group of people with differing view of morality living with shared common laws which are intended to serve as the objective standard against which legal justice is measured? There is no society that I am aware of that allows for all of its individuals to govern themselves based on their own subjective sense of right and wrong - nor has anyone in this thread suggested that societies ought to be set up that way.
Societies like ours implement rule of law by appealing to the collective views of its citizens to create those laws. 'Legal' justice can be defined as the implementation of said law. Citizens need not appeal to the same source for their objective morality - what is important is that the objectives are generally agreed upon. For example, I think murder is wrong. You think murder is wrong. We both think murder is wrong, even though we appeal to different source to arrive at that conclusion. Our society is built of people who generally consider murder to be wrong and who have reached that conclusion through various paths. There may be some people in society that think murder is okay. You'll never have a society where everyone agrees on everything.
I don't know if I can define injustice without a little bit of context. In a legal context, injustice is a violation of the enacted law. In a more personal context, injustice can be defined as a violation of my personal sense of right and wrong. For example, someone that smokes weed in Texas has violated a law, but has not violated my sense of right and wrong. Enforcing the law and penalizing the person would be legal justice, but that doesn't appeal my personal sense of justice. Living in a society means compromise. Always has and always will.
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I want to point out that if you look at different dictionary definitions of 'justice', you will find a whole bunch of different definition variations. The vast majority of definitions of justice appeal to more secular legal definitions and it actually took a few minutes to even find the type of definition you are using.
Objectives need not come from God. We do this ourselves every day in our lives and our jobs. When I go to the store I set objectives based on what I need to buy. And when I work on a project at work, the project has set objectives for what needs to be accomplished. None of these objectives are absolutes or God given.
And is our legal system any different? We create a law saying that murder is illegal and set a penalty for violators. The law is created with an objective in mind and in some cases explicitly stated. Implementation of the law introduces subjectivity because you involve a jury or a judge or some other party that has to read the law, try to understand the objective and then apply the circumstances of the case toward meeting the objective. Nevertheless, laws are established with some 'objective'.
If the definition of justice invokes secular law, then the objective involved is that which is defined by the law and its human creators. If the definition of justice invokes God given objective morality, then there does not exist a legal system that can reflect Celestial, eternal God given judgement and standards.
In other words, the version of justice which requires objective morality is the type of justice that you think God provides. And if the absence of an objective moral standard means that this ultimate, universal, celestial justice is impossible. . . . then its impossible. Who says the world has to be just? It would be nice if it was, but that's not a reason to think it necessary.
I'm combining both of your responses.
Let's first remember that when we talk about justice, it has to presume something. Meaning, if I say something is just, it is referring to a thing and we are making a determination about that thing. Empirically in society, justice is a means of recompense for an action or deed. But we first have to decide something about that deed, i.e. whether it was good or bad, right or wrong. So before we go off on the ideas of law or justice, we first have to decide how a society determines what is right and wrong which is what we refer to as ethics. You can't put the cart before the horse.
And yes, the implementation of laws can be subjective like your saying. If someone commits a crime, there can subjective levels of punishment based on a jury or judge. However, justice will always involve whether an action was right or wrong. One person may get life in prison, one may get the death penalty, but both were determined to be breaking a law that is based on moral conduct in society.
Just like you said above, societies do create a rule of law based on a collective view of its citizens (where they got that collective view is the real debate). We all agree that murder is illegal and its illegal because murder is wrong morally.
The only way that can happen is if we have a standard to base that on or otherwise how we can argue against someone that thinks murder is ok?
We can't objectively say something is right or wrong if we all get to subjectively determine what is right or wrong.And that's exactly what we see play out in society. All civil societies generally have a similar set of ethical framework throughout human history.
Morality has to by definition be objective to exist. For something to be objective, it cannot be from within, it has to be external to us. Relative morality doesn't exist.