Module 12: A Personal Reflection

In this module, we want to bring the questions we have been asking about justice to bear on our own lives. We are going to start by asking what is a ‘just’ person? What is a ‘just’ Canadian? Is there a relationship between being a good person and being a good citizen? How about between justice and living the good life? And what is the good life? Is it determined by morality? Or perhaps by experience? Is it subjective to you or are there some objective standards we can measure it by? Or is it defined by meaning and purpose? After looking at the ‘just’ person, we will turn to a discussion of a ‘just’ society. In this section, we will briefly recap the broad themes covered in this course: utilitarianism, libertarianism, egalitarianism, and Aristotelian theories of justice. The purpose of this recap is to ask you to look at Canada and assess if it is a ‘just’ society. If it is, how? Why? If it is not, why not? And what should we be doing differently? Finally, we will close the module with a brief look at whether we have duties beyond our borders. Should Canada’s obligations be limited to its citizens or should Canada’s obligations extend to issues of human rights, human suffering, international development, and humanitarian intervention?

How does the question of justice relate to us as individuals? Not hypothetical ‘people’ who have been universalized in terms of space and time, but you and me, here and now. What does it mean to be a ‘just’ or good person? What does it mean to be a ‘just’ or good Canadian? Leo Strauss looks to Aristotle to try and answer this question, beginning with the distinction between the good person and the good citizen. The good citizen is the patriotic person. For some, this means the person who supports their state regardless of who is in power or what form the government takes. For others, being a good citizen is relative to who is in power and the form of their particular government. It is argued that the good citizen should speak truth to power when the state is acting or is constituted unjustly. For example, what does it mean to be a good citizen under the regimes of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Kim Jung-Un in North Korea, or the military junta in Myanmar?

Wouldn’t the good citizen be the one working against such dictatorial regimes? In either case, the argument can be made that the good citizen is the person who remains loyal to their ideal of the homeland. They are acting justly vis-à-vis the state. But is the good citizen unquestionably the good person? For Aristotle, this only holds true when the good citizen is living in the good state. In such a case, each is virtuous and therefore reinforces each other in seeking the good life. This introduces another and perhaps more meaningful metric to think about what it means to be a just or good person: living the good life.

But what does it mean to live the good life? One position is that living the good life means living a moral or pious life. This is someone who chooses to consistently act virtuously, to dedicate their time and energy to worthwhile pursuits. Someone who consistently chooses to act in the societal interest or who is dedicated to their god, and not only to their own pleasures. Think here of perhaps the idealized version of Mother Theresa or of Nelson Mandela.

People who dedicated their lives to something larger than themselves. Plato argues people will choose to sacrifice pleasure and to lead a moral life because the morally good person possesses inner harmony while the immoral person will suffer from inner turmoil. However, this can be taken to an extreme position. For example, in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates responds to Polus that it is better to have one’s eyes gouged out and to be tortured to death than to be a wealthy but corrupt person. Admittedly, this is a pretty tough standard of the good life to live up to.

Plato’s position is not shared by all of the ancient Greek philosophers. Epicurus, for one, would strongly disagree with this more extreme position, as would the utilitarian thinkers who followed him like Bentham and Mill. The Epicurean understanding of the good life focuses on subjective experience. The good life is connected to those experiences that ‘feel good’. This is not an open invitation to debauchery since this could counter-intuitively lead to decreased pleasure by harming our health or preventing us from enjoying higher pleasures. But it does embrace a hedonistic lifestyle. This idea of the good life is deeply embedded in contemporary western culture. How many times have you heard someone say YOLO (you only live once) or ‘buy experiences not things’?

The good life is seen as doing justice to yourself by taking advantage of all the world has to offer. People who live this good life are idolized for their experience. In this way, living the good life is equated to recreational pleasure versus the suffering that may be necessary in pursuing Platonic virtue – for example having your eyes cut out and being tortured to death as suggested by Socrates.

Aristotle agrees a good life is measured by happiness, but it is very different from Epicurean hedonism. As we discussed in module 9, Aristotle sees the good life as achieving eudemonia or the self-actualization of our potential for excellence. For the individual, this is achieved by coming to possess over the course of a lifetime those things that are objectively good for us: bodily goods, external goods, and most important goods of the soul: knowledge, skill, love, friendship, self-esteem, and honour. When we not only know what is good for us but through the development of moral character and moral society, we live it – we have achieved the good life. The attainment of such a good life does justice both to yourself by being all you can be and to society by actively participating in the deliberations of communal virtues.

Alternatively, the good life can be defined as a meaningful life. A life of purpose, where it feels like what one does matters. That can be a devotion to your family, raising moral children, or continuing a familial tradition. That can be a dedication to your vocation, whether that be artistic excellence, scientific enquiry, or commerce. That can be a commitment to your community through volunteering, mentorship, or fundraising. It can be the pursuit of a worthy cause, such as protecting human rights, civil rights, animal welfare, women’s rights, or the environment. The good life, therefore, is the pursuit of something perceived to be consequential. And by pursuing such a life of meaning, we are contributing to a better community and ultimately to justice for all.

But let us bring it back to you and me and the here and now. What does it mean to be a just individual? A just Canadian? Do we expect patriotism and unquestioning loyalty to the state? The position that Canada and Canadians will always come first. Or do we expect the critical patriot who will speak truth to power? Owning both the shame and pride of collective Canadian actions. Celebrating multiculturalism while at the same time seeking to make amends for Residential Schools, Japanese internment camps, and contemporary issues of inequality. Or do we expect moral citizens, who are willing to sacrifice their own pleasure to fulfill their obligations? Perhaps demanding robust commitments to community service organizations? Or should we be more realistic and embrace Epicurean hedonism? Is the good life being measured by the places we have seen, the things we have tried, and the scope of experiences we have lived? Or is Aristotle right and we should be looking to objectively actualize our potential and contribute to a virtuous polis? Seeking to balance our virtues while openly deliberating on how to define the good life in Canada. Bringing private views into public discourse on issues of sexual orientation, the privatization of health care, religious accommodation, gun laws, safe injection sites and even whether we should be able to transport alcohol across provincial borders. Or should we be fostering a society of meaning? Rewarding and encouraging each Canadian to seek out that which provides purpose to their lives. Are these even questions we should be asking ourselves and each other?

How does justice relate to our country? Our society? What does a ‘just’ Canada look like? In many ways, this entire course has been directed towards the question of defining justice in society. In this section, we are going to very briefly cover the main points made thus far, and then, much like our discussion of justice and the individual, you will be asked to think about what justice looks like, or should look like. We started our discussion of justice with the utilitarian arguments of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. From a utilitarian perspective, a ‘just’ society is one that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people. It looks to the consequences of the actions and policies put in place while being unconcerned about the particularities of those actions and policies.

It operates on a cost/benefit analysis that is quite prevalent in contemporary decision-making. Think to our own lives. If we do not know what to do in a given situation, friends may advise us to make a list of pros versus cons. To do a cost/benefit analysis. At the governmental level, a cost/benefit analysis is a common means to test the desirability of particular public policy choices. This analysis can be undertaken at a national level or more parochially at the party or individual politician level. Questions on whether the state should approve a pipeline, legalize marijuana, or reform the electoral system. But the question being posed to you today, is this a means to achieve a ‘just’ society in Canada?

From a libertarian perspective, a ‘just’ society is one that maximizes individual liberty by protecting individual rights. These are inherent rights derived from simply being human. Libertarians are therefore deeply skeptical of any infringement on these rights, particularly by the state. Of particular concern to libertarians are paternalistic policies based on morality or wealth distribution; for example, anti-drug laws or income tax. These are viewed as state coercion: anti-drug laws impose societal norms on individuals and taxation deprives sovereign individuals of their rightful property, their wealth. Conversely, libertarians view the individuals as the basic unit of social analysis and the free market as the ‘just’ way to mediate interaction between people. Individuals are rational agents and when able to exercise free will, they make decisions best suited to their needs and wants. Importantly, the outcomes of such decisions, whether good or bad, are necessarily ‘just’: they represent the outcome of individual choice. The state becomes a neutral placeholder within which individuals seek their own destiny. At the most basic level, libertarians equate justice to liberty as defined by the space created for individuals to exercise free will. Does this suggest a meaningful way towards achieving a ‘just’ Canadian society?

Kant and Rawls on the other hand, seek a universal metric to define a ‘just’ society. Kant examined the concepts of freedom, duty, human dignity, universality, and the capacity of human reason. He believed a moral person and by extension a ‘just’ society is best achieved by adherence to the categorical imperative: that an action or policy is just if you can both will it into being a universal law, and if you have treated humanity as an end in and of themselves, rather than as a means to an end. Rawlsian egalitarianism builds on Kant’s insight. He posits that if we are honest about our desire to truly construct a ‘just’ society, we have to be honest about what that would cost. If we imagine ourselves in ‘the original position’, behind the ‘veil of ignorance’, any rational person would conclude that justice requires both the ‘equal liberty principle’ and the ‘difference principle’. The first demands that the individual freedom of each is maximized without imposing on the freedoms of another. The second demands that any inequality in society is only justified to the extent that it benefits the least advantaged. Finally, for a truly egalitarian society, we must treat the distribution of talents, even natural talents, as a common resource to be used to the benefit of all. From a Kantian and Rawlsian perspective, a ‘just’ society is one where we share each other’s fate. Is this how Canadian society is constructed? Should it be? Or is it even possible?

From an Aristotelian perspective, and a view with which Sandel has sympathy, the impulse towards political neutrality is misguided. A ‘just’ society cannot be achieved by avoiding or accommodating different views on contentious issues. Doing so may in fact force such issues underground, leading to a societal backlash. Rather, the argument here is that justice is contextual, tied to deliberation in particular communities seeking to define the good life.  It is tied to questions of purpose, or telos, and honour. It is tied to questions of who deserves what. Ultimately, questions of justice are inherent questions about rewarding virtue or just deserts. However, this also unavoidably leads to contested ideas on the purpose of social institutions, on what to honour, and on the definition of the good life. One of the roles of politics is to address such debates. However, for Aristotle, the true purpose of politics is to cultivate the virtue of citizens, to allow them to develop their human capacities. These capabilities include the ability to deliberate about the common good. If the political system can produce virtuous people, they will be able to make virtuous and just laws, just constitutions, and just societies. From this more communitarian perspective, a ‘just’ society is a function of societal norms and traditions, arrived at and through intense deliberation by the virtuous members that constitute the polis. Is this how we can achieve a ‘just’ Canadian society? Do we need to engage in deliberation over the tough questions?

Again, if we bring this discussion back to us in the here and now, what would a ‘just’ Canadian society look like? Should we value a society that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people? Employing a cost/benefit analysis to do so? Even if in so doing we may be allowing the pleasures of the majority to subjugate important values or beliefs of the minority? Or perhaps a ‘just’ Canadian society could be best achieved by maximizing individual liberty and allowing the exercise of free will? Even if in so doing we may be creating and/or legitimating inequality? How about Canada as a more egalitarian society? Where we act on universal principles of justice to seek meaningful equality? Even if in so doing we surrender the benefits of our natural attributes to the common good? Or, finally, should we bring our private and perhaps divergent beliefs into the public sphere? Must we as Canadians deliberate on a shared understanding of the good life? Even if such deliberation would occur between individuals of disparate influence and power? Even if this legitimates societies that contain inequalities?

What duties does a ‘just’ state have beyond its borders? What about a state like Canada? To answer this question, we need a bit of an introduction to the privileged position that the state holds in international politics. Conventionally, the modern state is said to have emerged from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The treaty ended the devastating religious wars of the 15^th century. It also recognized the territorial boundaries between imperial states in the Holy Roman Empire and the right of each imperial prince to independently determine the faith to be practiced. This has been interpreted by some as a nascent form of sovereignty: the supreme authority of a governing body over a given polity, in a defined territory, without interference from external actors. From this emerged a Europe constituted by states that did not recognize any higher authority.

These state borders hardened in Europe and through the processes of imperialism and colonialism, the Westphalian state system was exported around the world. States have now come to occupy a privileged position in the international system. They have legal personality with international rights and responsibilities and are the primary subject of international law. It is the state that has the authority to draft and sign international agreements. And it is the state, or organizations that states have created, that enforce these agreements. In the 20^th and 21^st centuries, other actors have come to play an increasingly important role in international politics, including multinational corporations, international organizations, and civil society groups to name a few. But the state remains the core of the system. This means that the character of the international system is a reflection of both the actions and the will of the states that constitute it. In this context, what role does a country like Canada play in promoting global justice?

The answer to this question is largely decided by the answer to another question. Do states have duties beyond their borders? For some, the primary duty of the sovereign state is limited to its own citizens. An international system constituted by sovereign states is by definition anarchical: there is no higher authority to appeal to. In an anarchical system, states have to compete with other states to achieve the national interest as they define it. But states also have to be prepared for self-help since there is the ever-present threat of conflict in such a system. For some, this position is analogous to the Hobbesian state of nature, with the ever-present threat of a war of all against all. In such a condition, it can be argued the state is acting morally or justly by looking to the defence of its borders and the welfare of its citizens. The state has no obligation of solidarity to anyone else. Moreover, to significantly take on duties beyond its borders could weaken the state by allocating resources that could be put towards defence or the national interest more broadly defined. As an example, think of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to argue an individual would be acting justly in the use of such a weapon. But it can be argued President Truman was acting justly as he was preventing the many American deaths that would have resulted from a full-scale invasion of Japan. In an anarchical world, Truman’s moral obligation was limited to American citizens.

Others fundamentally disagree with this position. Many, if not most, will admit the state has a primary obligation to its own citizens but argue it also has an obligation to those beyond its borders. These obligations can take the form of protecting human rights, alleviating human suffering, contributing aid or development assistance to the impoverished peoples of the world, and perhaps most controversially humanitarian intervention. The idea that the state has obligations beyond its borders has been facilitated in part by the increasingly interconnected web of international treaties, international law, and international institutions that set normative standards of what states ‘should’ do.  It has also been facilitated by the growing number of civil society actors that have advocated on behalf of the globally marginalized and impoverished. However, while many from this side of the debate will agree duties beyond borders exist, there is less consensus on both what those duties are to what extent they should be held. For example, what duty do states have in addressing the Syrian crisis? The scale of this crisis in terms of human suffering is almost unimaginable. It is one thing to volunteer to help with refugees or to make diplomatic statements opposing the Government of Bashar al-Assad. It is another to commit to military action to defend the human rights of the Syrian people. To put your nationals in harm’s way to protect the rights of people far removed from yourself and the material interests of your state.

This is a particularly keen dilemma for a country like Canada. Canada does have significant resources at its disposal, both in terms of wealth and expertise, with which it could take on considerable duties beyond its borders. And it has done so in the past: contributing to World War Two and the construction of the post-war institutions of global governance; involvement in United Nation sanctioned interventions in the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, and Afghanistan; taking on leadership roles in combatting South African Apartheid, promoting the International Criminal Court, opposing Antipersonnel Landmines, and advocating for the Responsibility to Protect. However, Canada is not a great power and does not play a very determinative role in global politics. Any duties that Canada takes on will, for the most part, be within the structure determined by larger actors, institutions, and processes. On the one side of the argument are those who say that the Canadian government should put Canada first. That our foreign policy should focus on securing our borders, increasing our wealth, and protecting our nationals abroad. Such a position is ‘just’ in that Canada has no obligation to those beyond its borders. On the other side of the argument are those who say Canada has a duty to play a more significant role in addressing issues of global conflict, poverty, and inequity. Canada not only has the resources to do so, and therefore an obligation to do so, it also benefits from the global economic and political system. Therefore, many argue Canada should do ‘more’. However, what exactly ‘more’ means is debatable. But there is a strongly held opinion by many that a ‘just’ Canada should contribute more to global peace, poverty alleviation, and even for humanitarian intervention.

This module concludes POLS 112 – Justice. It is hoped that you have deepened your knowledge of justice and allowed you the means to see how questions of justice play out in the world around us. At times, this course can be frustrating. It asks many more questions that it answers. And perhaps, by now, you realize this is by design. The goal of this class has been for you to ask these questions of yourself, of your society, and of your country. It has been for you to get a brief glimpse of past philosophers and their thoughts on what defines justice and a just society. Ultimately, this class asks you to stand on the shoulders of giants and develop your own thoughts about what justice means and how this can be applied to your world. In this last module, you were asked to do just this. You were asked to think about what it meant to be a ‘just’ person, to live in a ‘just’ society, and to what duties are owed outside national borders. If you found these questions engaging, consider one of the many political studies and international studies courses that delve much deeper into these issues. Courses that examine Canadian politics, theories of international politics, and those that take a much deeper look at political philosophy. We hope that you will join us in our investigation of the many issues we face and the politics happening at the local, national, and international levels to deal with them.

 

Figure 12-20: Permission: © University of Saskatchewan