There are people who learn, who are open to what happens around them, who listen, who hear the lessons. When they do something that is not wise, they do not do it again. And when they do something that works a little bit, they do it even better and harder the next time. The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or non-leaner. All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents. Contemporary radical criticisms of the liberal paradigm of justice carry less weight than they might because they fail to offer absolute alternative framework for reasoning about justice. Some authors do indeed offer principles of justice or images of the just society which they claim will help justify a political practice aiming to alter fundamentally the basic institutions, especially the economic institutions, of our society. Such efforts, however, lack grounding in a critically oriented framework of reasoning about justice. Lacking such grounding, proposals for radical egalitarian or socialist conceptions of justice constitute little more in the way of an alternative absolute theory of justice than do mere criticisms of the dominant framework. I argue that formulation of questions of justice exclusively in distributive terms tends toward conceptual confusion and fails to be basic enough. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

I also argue that the sort of criticism of traditional theories of justice that Milton Fisk, who believed justice is relative to the different interests of dominant and subordinate classes, leaves us with apparently impossible task of developing a theory which can make universalistic claims without abandoning or disguising the historical embeddedness of its origins and application because it collapses into something that is unacceptable and appeals to brute interest. This is because he cannot say which justice we should choose as the right one, or perhaps, indeed, that we choose at all. As Fisk argues, dominant and subordinate classes will tend to accept different principles of justice because of their conflicting interest. To solve these problems with traditional theories of justice, I offer some suggestions for alternative framework for theorizing about justice. To outline a theory of justice, I develop certain elements of the communicative ethics which Jurgen Habermas has proposed. Human rationality is a necessary outcome of successful communication. There are intuitively mastered rules for reaching an understanding and conducting argumentation, possessed by subjects who are capable of speech and action. The goal is to transform this implicit “know-how” into explicit “know-that,” for instance, knowledge, about how we conduct ourselves in the realm of moral-practical reasoning. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

In particular, I take up Habermas’s unelaborated suggestion that the ideal speech situation, which he argues any act of speaking presupposes, expresses the ideal of justice. I argue that the ideal speech situation offers the potential foundation for a framework of theorizing about justice which focuses not primarily on distribution, but on more fundamental questions of institutional relations and domination. I argue, further, that the application of the ideal speech situation to particular social configurations constitutes a means for solving the problem of how to construct an objective and critical conception of justice which does not merely reflect actual social circumstances at the same time that it remains historically specific. Since Adam Smith, almost every theory of social justice has focused primarily on questions of how social benefits should be allocated among members of the society. Insofar as it entails a theory of justice, utilitarianism is a paradigm of this distributive focus. Utilitarian methodology calls for treating all values as greater or lesser “bundles” of goods and comparing alterative distributions of bundles. Contemporary criticisms of classical utilitarian theory as ignoring the most important questions of justice—merit, desert, rights, and so forth—many be apt. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Most contemporary critics of utilitarianism, however, continue to formulate the question of justice primarily as a question of distribution. This distributive paradigm of questioning about justice so dominants philosophical thinking that even critics of the traditional liberal framework continue to formulate the focus of justice in exclusively distributive terms. A distributive focus on theorizing about justice is so much a part of our moral conceptualization that it does not appear possible to have any other to find. To such another focus we must look back to the ancient conception of justice, in particular that enunciated in the Platonic dialogues. For the ancients, justice refers to the whole of virtue insofar as it concerns relations with others. For Plato the question of justice does not concern primarily the proper distribution of social benefits and burdens. Rather, justice concerns first the organization of the community as a whole. We develop a conception of justice by constructing a vision of the organization of social positions and relations which will produce a harmonious and cooperative whole. I do not wish to adopt the Platonic conception of justice, for there is much in it that is inappropriate for us, or indeed absolutely pernicious. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

 I will argue, however, that a theory of justice which takes as its primary question the structural and institutional relations of the society in its totality is better than one which focuses exclusively or primarily on questions of distribution. There are, in particular, two objections to the distributive orientation. First, formulation of many apt questions of justice in distributive terms tends to render them conceptually confused. Second, a distributive orientation tends to focus on the evaluation of the effects of given institutional forms and relations, instead of evaluating the institutional structures themselves. Questions about the principles and procedures according to which a society ought to distribute the material benefits of social production obviously constitute crucial questions of social justice. By no means all questions about the rights and liberties a society ought to protect for its members, the structure of power and decision-making, and so on. Here are some example of such questions of justice that are not distributive in any immediate sense: Is a division between mental and manual labour just? Is it just to raise taxes without the mandate of popular referendum? Is marriage just? #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

 True to the utilitarian tradition, most modern theories of justice answer questions like these in terms of the relatively quantity of benefits that accrue to persons. They conceptualize questions of rights liberties, the justice of institutionalized positions, decision-making procedures, relations of authority, and so on, as questions of the proper distribution of bundles of non-material goods. Such distributively oriented treatment of questions of rights, liberties, power, and so on, however, tends to obscure the meaning of those concepts. I shall concentrate on the examples of rights and power. Talk of distribution of power within society is perhaps the most common way political theories wrongly construe questions f social justice in distributive terms. Democratic arrangements are frequently held to entail an equal distribution of power, while more hierarchical arrangements are defined by an unequal distribution of power. The conceptual confusion here may ultimately lie in an equivocation on the term “equality.” Equality in the distribution of goods refers to sameness of quantity or value, whereas equality in relations of power and powerlessness means something like “peership.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Discussion of power as some kind of “stock” which can be distributed obscures the fact that power, unlike wealthy, for example, does not exist except through social relations. Having social power means standing in relation with others such that one can control their actions or the conditions of their actions. One can have a plot of land without being related to anyone else, but having the power to levy rent on it essentially entails specific relations to others and a whole supporting set of institutions. It is thus misleading to conceptualize relations of power on analogy with the distribution of an amount of goods. If the social relations of power change in such a way that a person or group gains autonomy, this does not mean that some quantity of power has been redistributed. It means, rather, that a relation of power has been eliminated. This criticism that a distributively oriented theory of justice distorts the meaning of important social and political concepts, however, does not reach to the core of the problem with distributively oriented theories. The main criticism of a distribytively oriented theory of justice is that it tends to focus on patterns of distribution without even bringing into direct theoretical focus the structure of the institutional relations and the movement of social processes which bring this pattern of distribution about. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Like nearly all other modern theories of justice, then, John Rawls’s approach avoids asking about the justice of specific institutional structures themselves, along with the relations of power, exploitation and dependency they can produce. Several writers have argued, for example, that Rawls fails to focus on the institutional relations which underlie economic classes, and fails to justify his assumption that class inequality is inevitable. In his theory Rawls implicitly assumes many institutions as given, moreover, such as competitive markets, political bureaucracies, and monogamous heterosexual families, without every raising questions about whether the positions and relations these institutions entail are just. In sum, distributively oriented theories conceptualize questions of justice, whether of particular actions or practices, or of the pattern of rights and inequalities of a whole society, primarily as questions concerning the fair allocation of social goods, including non-material goods, among individuals. The approach advocated here, on the other hand, focuses on the structures of social organization that allow some individuals to have power over others, on the structure of decision making within and among institutions, and on the definition of social positions themselves. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

 I am no arguing, of course, that questions of distribution are not important to a theory of justice, only that these questions of institutional structure should be considered first. On the basis of an ontology of love it is obvious that love it the principle of justice. If life as the actuality of being is essentially the drive towards the reunion of the separated, it follows that the justice of being is the form which is adequate to this movement. The further principles to be derived from the basic principle mediate between it and the concrete situation in which the risk of justice is demanded. There are four principles which perform this mediation. The first principle is that of adequacy, namely the adequacy of the form to the content. There is a complaint, as old as human laws, that laws which were adequate in the past are still in force, although inadequate in the past are still in force, although inadequate in the present. They do not give the form in which creative encounters of power with power are possible and a definite power of being results. They prevent such encounters from becoming creative, or, in terms of the ontology of love, from reuniting the separated. Laws, governing the family structure of another period or its economic relations, may destroy families and disrupt the class unity of this period. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The possibility for such discrepancies between law and actual encounter is based on the fact that forms which once expressed the power of being, have a tendency towards self-continuation beyond the point of their adequacy. This is so even in nature, as the remnants of former biological stages in later stages of development show. It is confirmed by the conservatism of institutions in human’s cultural and social existence. In both cases it is the risk of self-transcendence which keeps life in the bondage of tested institutions. However, the price paid for the safety in the old form is paid in terms of injustice. And injustice in terms of the inadequacy of the form ultimately undermines safety, so that the price was paid in vain. The second principle of justice is that of equality. It is implicit in every law, in so far as the law is equally valid for the equals. However, the question is: Who are the equals? In what sense is equality meant? In Plato’s Republic, the central concern of which is the idea of justice, a large group of human beings, for instance, those enslaved, are excluded from full humanity and the corresponding justice. Amongst the three groups who are equals as citizens and as such fully human, great inequalities do exist with respect to their claims for distributive justice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Christianity has reduced the fundamental inequality of the ancient World, namely that between human beings with full humanity and those with limited humanity. There is ultimate equality between all people in the view of God and His justice is equally offered to all of them. Hierarchy and aristocracy are irrelevant for the ultimate relation. However, they are very relevant for the inner human relations. Slavery was not abolished in the early Church and the medieval order was feudal, establishing qualifications of justice according to the claim for justice of each grace of social standing. The principle of equality was restricted to the equals within the same ontological degree, inside and outside the human society. Justice is based on a cosmic hierarchy. It is the form in which this hierarchy actualizes itself. The principle of equality can be understood in the opposite way. It can be applied democratically to every human being. If this is done, one points to the possession of reason in everyone who deserves the name “human.” It is their potential rationality which makes all humans equal. If real equality is to be created, this potentiality must be actualized. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

However, in the process of actualization innumerable differences appear, differences in the given nature of the individual, differences in one’s given social opportunity, differences in one’s given creativity, differences in all sides of one’s power of being. These differences entail differences in one’s social power and consequently in one’s claim for distributive justice. However, these differences are functional and not ontological, as in the systems of hierarchical thinking. They are not unchangeable. Nevertheless they prevent an egalitarian system of society. Actually there is no egalitarian structure in any society. The relation of equality and justice depends on the power of being in a human and one’s corresponding intrinsic claim for justice. The definition of this claim is rather diverse. It is one thing if one is posited on a grade of a hierarchical stairway and one expects to receive the justice which fits one’s grade. It is another if one is considered a unique and incomparable individual and one expects a special justice which is adapted to one’s particular power of being. It is still another if one is considered a potential bearer of reason and one expect the justice which is claimed by one’s dignity as a rational being in different states of development. In all these cases equality is present, but a qualified equality, never an egalitarian one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Every solution of the problems of human’s freedom can be accepted in the context of the present discussion. What is decisive is only that humans are considered as a deliberating, deciding, responsible person. Therefore one had probably better speak of the principle of personality as a principle of justice. The content of this principle is the demand to treat every person as a person. If people are dealt with as if they were things, justice is always violated. This has been called “reification” (Verdinglichung) or “objectivation” (Vergegenstandlichung). In any case it contradicts the justice of being, the intrinsic claim of every person to be considered a person. This claim includes and circumscribes the relation of freedom to justice. Freedom can mean the inner superiority of the person over enslaving conditions in the external World. The Stoic slave and the Christian slave were equal in their independence of the social conditions which contradicted external freedom but which were not necessarily in conflict with their spiritual freedom, with their persons and with their claim to be considered as persons. The Stoic participates in the justice of the Universe and its rational structure; the Christian expects the justice of the Kingdom of God. An enslavement of the personal center is not implied in one’s social destiny. Spiritual freedom is possible even “in chains.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

In contrast to this ideal of non-political spiritual freedom, liberalism tries to remove the enslaving conditions. The transition from the one to the other idea of freedom is the awareness that there are social conditions which prevent spiritual freedom either generally or for the great majority of people. This was the argument of the revolutionary Anabaptists in the Reformation period. It was the argument of many social reformers in all periods of Christianity, and it was the argument of humanistic and religious socialists in our time. However, more than this is involved in the liberal fight for political freedom. “Liberty” is considered to be an essential principle of justice because the freedom of political and cultural self-determination is seen as an essential element of personal existence. Even if both the master and the slave can participate in a transcendent freedom, slavery in all forms contradicts justice. This liberal doctrine of justice is an exception in the total history of humankind, and it is today receding in influence. Does our ontological analysis give an answer to the question of freedom in liberalism? And is there an answer to the previous question of the aristocratic and the democratic idea of equality in connexion with it? #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The ontology of love gives the answer. If justice is the form of the reunion of the separated, it must include both the separation without which there is no love and the reunion in which love is actualized. This is the reason why frequently the principle of fraternity or solidarity or comradeship or, more adequately, community has been added to the principles of equality and liberty. This addition has, however, been rejected in the name of a formal concept of justice, and under the assumption that community is an emotional principle adding nothing essential to the rational concept of justice—on the contrary, endangering its strictness. The decision of all these interwoven problems is dependent on the qualities of justice and the relationship of justice to power and love. Ideas are very general models of or assumptions about reality. They are patterns of interpretations, historically developed and socially shared. They sometimes are involved with beliefs, but are much more than belief and do not depend upon it. They are ways of thinking about and interpreting things. They are so pervasive and essential to how we think about and how we approach life that we often do not even know they are there or understand when and how they are at work. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Our idea system is a cultural artifact, growing up with us from earliest childhood out of the teachings, expectations and observable behaviours of family and community. Anthropologists observe that the World occupied by a human being comprises not only the surrounding land, water, sky, plant and animal life, human beings and works of human hands, but also a “symbolic reality,” which is superimposed upon material reality. Our idea system is shareable by many—perhaps by entire social systems, such as nations or families—and it develops and changes through time and historical process, often without it being noticed that it has in fact changed. Examples of ideas are freedom, education, happiness “The American Dream,” science, progress, death, home, the feminine or masculine, the religious, “Christian,” “Muslim,” church, democratic (form of government), fair, just family, evolution, God, the secular, and so on. If you wish to see ideas in action, look closely at artistic endeavours in their various forms (especially today, movies and music, which encapsulate most of what is called “pop culture”), and at efforts to persuade (especially today, politics and commercials). Look, for example, at the place, freedom, a major idea now, plays in automobile ads and rock lyrics. And look at our now largely paralyzed public education system to see what ideas are dominant in students and teachers. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Now, for all their importance to human life, ideas are never capable of definition or precise specification; and yet people never stop trying to define them, in their vain efforts to control them. They are broadly inclusive, historically developing ways of interpreting things and events, which, for all their power, often do not emerge into the consciousness of the individual. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for most people to recognize which ideas are governing their life and how those ideas are governing their life. This is partly because one commonly identifies his or her own governing ideas with reality, pure and simple. Ironically, it is often people who think of themselves as “practical” or as “humans of action”—both, of course, major ideas—who are most in the grip of ideas: so far in that grip that they cannot be bothered to think. They simply do not know what moves them. However, ideas govern them and have their consequences anyway. Another illustration of “idea grip” would be how most people think of success in life in terms of promotions and possessions. One’s culture is seen most clearly in what one thinks of as “natural” and as requiring no explanation or even thought. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Beware the fury of a patient person. Jacob saw his Redeemer—the law of Moses typifies Christ and proves He will come. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, Jacob spake many more things to my people at that time; nevertheless only these things have I caused to be written, for the things which I have written sufficeth me. And now I, Nephi, write more of the words of Isaiah, for my soul delighteth in his words. For I will liken his words unto my people, and I will send them forth unto all my children, for he verily saw my Redeemer, even as I have seen him. And my brother, Jacob, also has seen him as I have seen him; wherefore, I will send their words forth unto my children to prove unto them that my words are true. Wherefore, by the words of three, God hath said, I will establish my word. Nevertheless, God sendeth more witnesses, and he proveth all his words. Behold, my soul delighteth in proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ; for, for this end hath the law of Moses been given; and all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the World, unto humans, are the typifying of him. And also my soul delighteth in the covenants of the Lord which he hath made to our fathers; yea, my soul delighteth in his grace, and in his justice, and power, and mercy in the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“And my soul delighteth in proving unto my people that save Christ should come all human must perish. For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. However, there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time. And now I write some of the words of Isaiah, that whoso of my people shall see these words may lift up their hearts and rejoice for all humans. Now these are the words, and ye may liken them unto you and unto all humans,” reports 1 Nephi 10.1-8. God of my end, it is my greatest, noblest pleasure to be acquainted with Thee and my rational, immortal soul; it is sweet and entertaining to look into my being when all my powers and passions are untied and engaged in pursuit of thee, when my soul longs and passionately breathes after conformity to Thee and the full enjoyment of Thee; no hour pass away with so much pleasure as those spent in communion with Thee and with my hearts. O how desirable, how profitable to the Christian life is a spirit of holy watchfulness and Godly jealousy over myself, when my soul is afraid of nothing except grieving and offending Thee, the blessed God, my Father and friend, whom I then love and long to please, rather than be happy in myself! #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Knowing, as I do, that this is the pious temper, worthy of the highest ambition, and closet pursuit of intelligent creatures and holy Christians, may my joy derive from glorifying and delighting Thee. I long to fill all my time for Thee, whether at home or in the way; to place all my concerns in Thy hands; to be entirely at Thy disposal, having no will or interest of my own. Help me to live to Thee forever, to make Thee my last and only end, so that I may never more in one instance love my sinful nature. O God, our Refuge in pains, our Strength in weakness, our Help in tribulations, our Solace in tears; spare, O Lord, spare Thy people, give not up to beasts the souls that praise Thee. O God of Heavenly powers, fulfill Thy promised mercy; that the hearts of the rebellious may be subdued to the truth of the Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who savest all humans, and willest not that any should perish; look upon the sols which have been deceived by the fraud of the devil; that all heretical perversity may be driven away, and the hearts of the erring may repent, and return to Thine unshaken truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Dissolve, O Christ, the schisms of heresy, which seek to subvert the faith, which strive to corrupt the truth; that as Thou art acknowledged in Heaven and in Earth as one and the same Lord, so Thy people, gathered from all nations, may serve Thee in the unity of faith. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20