“ On Justice and Charity” — A Comment
1992; Routledge; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/758537077
ISSN1470-1162
Autores Tópico(s)Legal principles and applications
ResumoHaving labored myself over the concept of justice (McKee, 1987, pp. 52-56, 74-80), I read Ed. O'Boyle's article in the RSE (Winter 1991) with much fellow feeling. Unfortunately, he has relied on Bernard Dempsey's categorization (1958), so that a difficulty within the latter reappears. (1) As Aristotle remarked (Nichomachean Ethics, V, I) and Aquinas repeated (Summa Theologica II-IIae, Q. 58, as. 5 and 7), justice may be taken in a general and in a narrow sense. General justice is a way of referring to the whole of virtue -- which is true, provided God is included in the ad alterum recipients, making what is right and due to others extend to such personal virtues as faith, fortitude, etc. In this way, too, it covers the same ground as Biblical justice or righteousness, so admired today (as in Economic Justice for All, 1986, 39). Many authors have used justice in this wide sense of right relations throughout society (going beyond economics), and Aquinas also termed it justice. By the latter, he presumably meant observance of the natural law (our human participation in Divine law), itself translated into civil law to the extent appropriate (in line with Isidore's definition, S.T. I-IIae, Q. 95, a. 3). Now Fr. Dempsey (1958, pp. 165, 219) collapsed general = legal justice into contributive (meaning partly what civil law requires and partly what is obligatory beyond that), drawing on H. Pesch and Divini Redemptoris (O'Boyle, p. 583). J. Pieper has the same approach (1966, pp. 72-73). But the difficulty is that both general and Aquinas's legal justice are wider concepts and realities than the narrower man-to-community relation requiring a certain equivalence between what is due, and contributed, certainly so in today's society. Day care centers, safety regulations, the electoral process and goodness knows what else are affirmed to be matters of social justice by academe, the media and popular opinion, and, after due qualification, they are correct enough. Much more than narrow contributive justice is involved. My own solution to the problem has been to use justice in a wide sense as equivalent to general justice, taking in the whole of virtue -- including what is due God -- and in a narrow sense as contributive justice. Such an approach harmonizes widespread usage, Biblical concepts and the neo-scholastic tradition. If anybody has a better solution, please let us have it along with sufficient clarification. (2) Next, justice is also properly used in a strict/particular/special sense of giving each his due (Ulpian's definition). I agree with O'Boyle's classification into commutative, distributive and contributive, but he must defend this against the Biblical simplifiers who want to minimize talk of a natural law and do not understand that the neo-scholastic approach is much better to confront the institutions and working of the modern economy and rigorous economic science. All three call, as far as may be determinable, for exact equivalence in what is due from each party. After the easier case of exchange justice, distributive requires an equal in the sense of proportional allocation to recipients, where sharing out the tax burden (cf. Dempsey, 1958, p. 219) and public goods seem the most important matter as far as government-to-individuals is concerned. A similar problem arises for contributive justice. At this point, something must be said about the difficulties of getting from principles of justice to their applications; charts showing common expressions and unjust practices scarcely suffice.(1) Something should be said as well about the slovenly way so many identify distributive justice with justice in distribution (not that I accuse Mgr. Ryan, 1942 of other than bulling the matter through for the sake of his practical message) and equate social justice with one or both. (See Beauchamp and Donaldson, 1982, plus McKee, 1984.) (3) Coming to charity, a distinction will assist O'Boyle's pertinent remarks. …
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