Justice as a Virtue

A Thomistic Perspective

Jean Porter

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781467445818
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethik & Religion

“Aquinas,” says Jean Porter, “gets justice right.” In this book she shows that Aquinas offers us a cogent and illuminating account of justice as a personal virtue rather than a virtue of social institutions, as John Rawls and his interlocutors have described it — and as most people think of it today.
 
Porter presents a thoughtful interpretation of Aquinas’s account of the complex virtue of justice as set forth in the Summa theologiae, focusing on his key claim that justice is a perfection of the will. Building on her interpretation of Aquinas on justice, Porter also develops a constructive expansion of his work, illuminating major aspects of Aquinas’s views and resolving tensions in his thought so as to draw out contemporary implications of his account of justice that he could not have anticipated.
 

CHAPTER 1

Justice as a Virtue

According to Aquinas, justice is a virtue, which he identifies, in terms taken from Justinian’s Digest, as “a constant and perpetual will rendering to each that which is his right” (Summa theologiae II-II 58.1).¹ This is one of those points at which we are sharply reminded of the distance between Aquinas’s intellectual world and our own. Aquinas’s predecessors and interlocutors generally assume, as he does, that justice is a personal virtue of some kind. To most of our contemporaries, this way of thinking about justice is unhelpful at best. After all, what would the virtue of justice be, over and above a disposition to carry out just actions? Our conception of justice as a personal virtue would seem to presuppose some account of impersonal principles of justice—a theory of justice, in other words, such as we find in the magisterial work of John Rawls and his many students and critics.²

In one sense, Aquinas too has a theory of justice—that is, he offers a critical, integrated account of the ideals and precepts proper to this complex virtue. Nonetheless, he does not have a theory of justice in the contemporary sense, such as we find in Rawls and his interlocutors. Rawls begins A Theory of Justice with the claim that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, just as truth is the first virtue of systems of thought.³ As he goes on to explain, “For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation.”⁴ Thus, the ideal of justice is paradigmatically expressed through social systems that allocate communal benefits and burdens in an equitable way, while preserving the basic rights and freedoms of all. The key point here is that this way of thinking about justice focuses on institutions, understood as impersonal, self-sustaining systems of interlocking roles and functions that operate in such a way as to distribute opportunities, benefits, and burdens to the members of a society. A theory of justice, thus understood, proposes an account of the ways in which institutions ought to operate, which kinds of structural arrangements are acceptable, and which kinds of outcomes are acceptable, given basic criteria of fairness and respect.

So far as I have been able to determine, this line of analysis is very nearly absent from Aquinas’s thought. He does comment on the legitimacy and desirability of different forms of governmental structures, but he does not evaluate these by reference to criteria of justice (I-II 105.1). Elsewhere, he addresses questions pertaining to the licitness and authority of laws and legal judgments, but in these contexts he has little to say about institutional arrangements as such (I-II 95–97; II-II 60). It is difficult to say whether he could have developed an institutionally oriented theory of justice along contemporary lines, given the conceptual resources available to him. The twelfth century was a remarkably creative and fruitful period for jurisprudence, and after the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Politics in the thirteenth century, scholastic theologians and jurists began to reflect on the nature and scope of political authority, its purposes, and the conditions for its legitimate use.⁵ As we would expect, they have robust notions of social roles, collective entities, and juridical personality, and the jurists in particular begin to work out the main lines of what we would describe as constitutional theory. However, their attention is focused on issues of legitimacy, authority, and power. They do not seem to think of institutions and social systems as playing a distributive role in the way that our own interlocutors do, and I am not aware of any examples of an institutionally oriented theory of distributive justice in this period. At any rate, Aquinas does not think of justice as a quality or an aim of institutional or social structures. He does devote a question to distributive justice, but distributive justice as he understands it pertains to fairness with respect to allocations of commonly held benefits and burdens, public offices, and honors, in accordance with generally accepted criteria of fairness, suitability, or merit (II-II 61.1, 62.1, 63). It is a virtue of public officials acting on behalf of the community, not a quality of institutional systems of exchange, and Aquinas explicitly distinguishes it from general justice, which pertains directly to the common good (II-II 61.1 ad 4).⁶

Aquinas and his interlocutors, however, do have theories of virtue, and Aquinas’s own theory stands out for its analytic clarity and comprehensive scope. This is the context within which we need to place his extended account of justice in order to understand it on its own terms and to appreciate its contemporary significance. According to Aquinas, justice is a virtue of the will (I-II 56.6; II-II 58.4). As we will see, this position implies that justice is a habit, that is to say, a kind of stable disposition that is grounded in an abstract, reasoned conception of the good as it pertains to human life and that is expressed through the agent’s choices and actions. On both counts, the virtue of justice is central to the agent’s moral personality. Through the virtue of general justice, she devotes herself to the common good of her community, especially as expressed through rational and appropriate laws (II-II 58.5–6). At the same time, through the virtue of particular justice, the agent is disposed to respect the claims of others, in accordance with normative ideals of due regard, fairness, and equity (II-II 58.7–8). Thus, justice in both of its forms directs the agent outward, so to speak, away from her own immediate interests and benefits, toward the more comprehensive good of the community and the distinct claims of other people. In this way, the virtue of justice operates in such a way as to integrate the agent’s passions with her reasoned convictions and overall aims. For all these reasons, justice is the highest and most excellent of the moral virtues, although it is not the highest virtue overall. That place is reserved for the supernatural virtue of charity, which is also a virtue of the will (II-II 58.12; cf. II-II 23.6, 24.1).

Seen from this perspective, Aquinas’s extended treatment of the virtue of justice is highly relevant to contemporary debates in moral theory. The debates in question, however, are not focused on theories of justice. They are taking place among proponents of Kantian, neo-Aristotelian, and Stoic theories of ethics, and they are focused on the meaning and significance of practical reason, motivation, character, and good disposition.⁷ Aquinas’s account of justice as a virtue provides the integrating key for a comprehensive account of moral value, seen as both grounded in, and yet qualitatively different from, the aims and values natural to us as living creatures of a certain kind. As such, this account offers an illuminating and cogent alternative to recent Kantian theories of morality, which emphasize the dichotomies between natural values and moral norms. At the same time, Aquinas does not simply equate moral and natural values, because for him the self-reflective judgments of intellect and will do introduce qualitatively new kinds of normative considerations. This line of argument distinguishes his theory of virtue from leading contemporary neo-Aristotelian approaches, which tend to identify natural and moral goodness or value.⁸ For Aquinas, natural and moral goodness, while related, cannot simply be identified, because the latter presupposes distinctively human capacities for self-reflective judgment, choice, and action. This distinction is especially pertinent to the virtue of justice, which presupposes capacities to rationally grasp and freely respond to the claims of others.

At the same time, Aquinas’s overall account of justice does share much in common with contemporary theories of justice. For both Aquinas and our own contemporaries, the idea of justice is bound up with ideals of equality, freedom, respect, and forbearance. It is preeminently an ideal of right relations, expressed through mutuality, restraint, and acknowledged obligations. Indeed, this general idea of justice can be traced to a much earlier period and has a good claim to be, in its general outlines at least, a cultural universal. Without attempting to offer a definitive statement of this ideal, we might characterize it as follows: A just individual is committed to fairness, equity, and respect for the legitimate claims of others. She is committed to ideals of impartiality and mutual accountability. She recognizes her dependence on and obligations to a community and is prepared to place the common good ahead of her own private interests, at least in some contexts. So when Aquinas claims that the virtue of justice is the highest connatural virtue, he implies that these specific values and precepts are in some way centrally important to morality itself.

My primary aim in this book is to offer an interpretation of Aquinas’s account of the complex virtue of justice as set forth in the Summa theologiae, focusing on what I take to be the key to that account, namely, the claim that justice is a perfection of the will. This project is motivated by the conviction that Aquinas offers us a cogent and illuminating account of justice as a personal virtue that renders the agent and her actions good in some distinctive way. Not to put too fine a point on it, Aquinas gets justice right—which is not to say that his account is correct in every detail or fully developed at every point. As we have just noted, he does not raise, much less address, questions pertaining to social and institutional structures that are central to most contemporary theories of justice. His own theoretical presuppositions and aims lead to a very different approach. But when we consider his account of justice from the perspective of his own aims, we find that he offers a cogent, illuminating, and ultimately convincing account of justice as a personal virtue. In the process, he lays the foundations for a comprehensive theory of morality that has a commitment to right relations at its core.

In order to defend these claims, it will be necessary at some points to go beyond what Aquinas explicitly says by drawing out the implications of his remarks, filling in connections that he leaves implicit, and attempting to resolve seemingly paradoxical elements of his overall theory. To some extent, this kind of expansive interpretation will inevitably play a role in any serious attempt to understand the theoretical writings of another, even a contemporary, let alone a premodern author. In order really to understand a medieval or classical thinker, as opposed to simply paraphrasing a text, it is necessary at some points to draw connections between the author’s assumptions and claims and the corresponding views of one’s own contemporaries. In the process, we will inevitably move at some points from interpretation to constructive theorizing. There is nothing problematic about this move, so long as we try to be clear about which task we are engaged in at any given point, even though admittedly it is not always easy to draw a line between expansive interpretation and constructive theorizing. In this instance, expansive interpretation is especially necessary, because Aquinas does not explain in any detail why he regards justice as a personal virtue, nor does he draw out the distinctive implications of this approach. It does not occur to him to do so, because, after all, everyone in this period thinks of justice in this way.

At some points in this project, I will offer a constructive expansion of Aquinas’s views on justice, drawing on contemporary voices, as well as on some of Aquinas’s own interlocutors. I hope to do so in such a way as to make it clear that I am developing Aquinas’s theory in some way, rather than simply interpreting what he says. At the same time, at these points I will try to show that the constructive proposals in question illuminate some key aspects of Aquinas’s views, resolve tensions in his thought, or revise his claims in some way that is consistent with his overarching principles. My overall aim in this project is to set out an account of justice as a personal virtue that is authentically Thomistic, in the sense that it is grounded in a convincing interpretation of Aquinas’s own account and develops it in a consistent and illuminating way.

In this chapter I will set out, in a preliminary way, what it means to consider justice as a personal virtue. Our assumptions about the virtues and virtue ethics do not seem to fit well with a consideration of justice. Yet, as I will argue, the seeming incongruities stem from distinctive features of justice, having to do with its characteristic normative ideals or its status as a virtue of the will. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to setting a framework and a set of reference points for what follows. Aquinas’s account of justice as a personal virtue presupposes a distinctive theory of the virtues, and the second and third sections of this chapter will be taken up with a brief examination of the main lines of that theory, considered both as a kind of philosophical psychology and as a way of formulating and expressing normative claims. In the fourth section I will offer an overview of the main lines of Aquinas’s treatment of justice. Finally, in the fifth section I will say something more about the approach taken in this project, specifically with reference to the theological character of Aquinas’s theory of the virtues and his account of justice as a virtue.

Preliminary Considerations

I begin with a fundamental question. What does it mean to identify justice as a personal virtue—or at any rate, what would this understanding have meant for Aquinas and his immediate predecessors and interlocutors? By endorsing the traditional view that justice is a virtue, one of four cardinal virtues characteristic of the upright and admirable man or woman, Aquinas commits himself to the view that justice is a stable disposition oriented toward characteristic kinds of praiseworthy actions, thereby rendering both the agent and her actions good (I-II 55.1,3).⁹ The disposition of justice renders its subject good because it is not merely a tendency to act in accordance with norms of justice but a stable disposition to care about and to pursue just relations, informed by some sense of the point or the worth of just actions and the kinds of relationships that they generate.¹⁰ That is to say, the just individual not only does what is just, she does so knowingly, out of an informed desire to act justly.

Already, we can begin to see why a virtue-oriented approach might seem unpromising as a way of understanding justice. We are accustomed to think of justice in terms of abstract principles and the social and institutional arrangements expressing and safeguarding them—all of which are properly expressed in general, impersonal norms for conduct, which are accessible to all, at least within a given community, and which are correlatively binding on all.¹¹ This way of construing justice leaves little room for the kinds of appeals to personal sensibility, discerning individual choice, and integrity of character that we associate with the virtues. At best, justice as a personal virtue might be regarded as a disposition to carry out just acts, knowingly and with appreciation of their worth. Thus understood, a focus on justice as a virtue would suggest fruitful ways of addressing concerns, raised by Rawls and others, regarding the stability of institutions and practices of justice.¹² But of course justice as a virtue, thus understood, is dependent, conceptually and practically, on a substantive account of ideals or norms of justice, of a kind supplied by Rawls’s theory of justice.

It is tempting to regard these reservations as distinctively modern in origin and inspiration, but that would be a mistake. Even in Aquinas’s own time, and indeed for some time previously, the virtue of justice was regarded as more or less anomalous, seen in comparison to the other traditional moral virtues.¹³ This was especially true for those working within the parameters of Aristotelian moral philosophy, including Aquinas himself.¹⁴ Aristotle’s analysis of the norm of justice in terms of equality of exchange in accordance with an arithmetic or geometric proportion is notoriously obscure. More fundamentally, justice fits badly with Aristotle’s overarching analysis of the virtues in terms of a mean, an ideal of appropriateness falling between vicious extremes. This line of analysis seems to fit the characteristic virtues of the passions, courage and temperance, fairly well, although even in these contexts Aristotle’s conception of the mean is not as clear as we might wish. But in any case it fits justice rather badly, or so we might think. Aristotle’s analysis implies that each virtue is correlated with specific vices, characteristic deformities of passion or judgment, so that, for example, courage is contrasted with cowardice or recklessness, and moderation stands over against both licentiousness and insensibility. The difficulty here is that justice is not clearly correlated with specific vices of this kind. A cruel or greedy individual is likely to behave unjustly, but it is by no means the case that those who are characteristically unjust typically reflect these, or any other specific set of vices. On the contrary, someone can be led into injustice through admirable motives and traits of character—we all know men and women who are too empathetic or kindhearted to be consistently fair and equitable. Conversely, it is all too possible to behave justly out of vicious motives, for example, pride or cold self-interest. The only vice that seems to be directly opposed to justice is injustice, which is not a particularly helpful correlation.

At this poi...