Abstract
I take social injustice to be injustice perpetrated on members of society by laws and public social practices. I take social justice to be the struggle to right social injustice. After explaining these ideas, I then address the question: why are so many people opposed to the very idea of social justice? I offer a number of explanations, among them, that to acknowledge that there is social injustice in one’s society often requires considerable change on one’s part.
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Notes
This statement requires a qualification that, on this occasion, I will not insert into the text. There are certain ways of depriving me of life such that I have the right against my fellow human beings to the good of their not depriving me of life in those ways. (This may be a prima facie right, not an ultima facie right, and it may be a right that one can forfeit.) So consider the good to which I have that right, the good of their not depriving me of life in those ways. This is obviously a good that pertains to my life, but it is not, strictly speaking, a good in my life. That is to say, it is not a state or event in my life that contributes positively to its estimability. It was a question put to me by Chris Eberle that led me to see the need for this qualification.
Third party rights constitute an exception to this principle: I may have a right against you to your treating Mary a certain way rather than to your treating me a certain way. This would be the case if you promised me that you would extend some benefit to Mary. Continually taking account of this sort of exception in the text would unnecessarily complicate the discussion.
A duty can also be imperfect in that one has a duty to treat a particular person in some way or other within a certain range, but not a duty to treat him in any particular way within that range. For example, I may have a duty to alleviate a particular person’s poverty in some way or other, without having the duty to do so in any particular way.
A right can also be imperfect in that one has a right against a particular person that he treat one in some way or other within a certain range—to alleviate one’s poverty in some way or other, for example—but not a right to his treating one in any particular way within that range.
Social justice can also take the form of defending laws and public social practices that secure justice when those laws and practices are threatened.
Reference
Wolterstorff, N. (2008). Justice: Rights and wrongs. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Wolterstorff, N. All Justice is Social but it’s not all Social Justice. Philosophia 41, 383–395 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9432-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9432-7