Justice

Islamic and Western Pespectives

Zafar Iqbal

• Publisher: The Islamic Foundation
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780860376729
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

A thought-provoking monograph which provides a systematic and rigorous exposition of a range of social, economic and political views from the vantage point of Islam. Humanity is in a state of confusion and is torn apart by conflicting claims of civilization superiority. In the context of current misunderstanding on the east-west relationship, this comparative study will help to alleviate hostilities

Justice:

Islamic and Western Perspectives

WHAT IS JUSTICE?

The idea that a society should organize itself on principles of justice and that government ought to play a primary role in securing such justice is well known in history. In the fifth century CE, St. Augustine remarked: ‘Remota justitia, quid sint regna nisi magna latrocinia’ (Removed from justice, what be rulers if not large-scale robbers?). But, what is justice? According to Miller (1991, p.260), the best general definition comes from the Byzantine emperor, Justinian (482-565 CE): justice is the constant and perpetual will to render to everyone his due. One aspect of justice, called distributive justice, attempts to elaborate ‘what it means to give people what is due to them’ by identifying a morally correct principle that connects the characteristics of people with their rights and obligations. Some principles that can serve this purpose are listed in Table 1.1 below.

Table 1.1: Alternative principles of justice

• To each according to merit	• To each according to need
• To each according to individual effort	• To each according to societal contribution
• To each according to rights	• To each an equal share

Based on Beauchamp and Bowie (2001, p.642).

A theory of justice might accept only one, more, or all of these principles as legitimate (Beauchamp and Bowie, 2001). Sen (1992, pp.73-75) refers the characteristics across which a theory of justice establishes – explicitly or implicitly – a ‘basal equality’ amongst human beings as the substantive content or the informational basis of a theory of justice. But as he argues, focus on this basis alone is insufficient to comprehend the demands of justice. What matters also is the information that is excluded from a view of justice and which does not have a direct bearing on assessing alternative social arrangements and policies. It is this perspective that we shall keep in mind while examining different theories of justice advanced since the ancient Greeks.

PRE-MODERN THOUGHT

Greek thought

Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) were the first systematic political theorists of the Greek era. Plato in his Republic, the prototype of all utopias, considers that most people do not possess the intellect to conduct their affairs properly and need to be told what is good for them. Nevertheless, human beings are essentially social beings who find a natural fulfillment in political association. These premises lead Plato to conceive of an absolutist state that is led by a philosopher king or knowledgeable elite whose impartiality and commitment to Plato’s ideals is secured through grooming, renunciation of family life and affections, as well as, abdication of private property. Such an elite would strive to actualize the moral perfection of citizens by the development of private and public virtue. The concept of individual freedom, as we are aware of it today, does not find its way into Plato’s model of societal organization and if that contradicts with human nature, Plato is deliberately indifferent to it (Bowle, 1961, pp.40-42; Harmon, 1964, pp.29-52).

To Aristotle, Plato’s student, the search begins with the concept of ‘good’. Good is the goal, purpose, or aim to which something or somebody moves. And insofar as human beings are concerned, their good relates to their nature. Two basic aspects of the latter are humankind’s political nature and their ability to speak and reason (practical rationality). The former moves them to the formation of families, clans, and ultimately, political communities. The goal is to provide necessary economic, social, and legal conditions to pursue a good life in two directions: downwards to obtain the necessities of life and upwards to achieve self-realization. Rationality, the second aspect of human nature, is comprised of different stages: thus, there is a basic sensation of pain and pleasure (raw instincts or passions) shared with animals that guides human action. And then there is a unique ability to look beyond the here and now and determine at one level what is useful and harmful and at a higher plane, what is good and bad, and just and unjust for the interests of the community as a whole. It is the latter ability that corresponds with the essential nature or telos of humankind and equates with moral rationality (Hoffe, 1995).

Moral rationality, thus understood, provides a link back to the political nature of humankind and the demand that they realize their telos by acting in accordance with justice, whereas justice is that state of character that disposes one to act fairly in dealings with other people. Seen from this angle, justice also embodies virtue, rather the whole of virtue since most moral virtues, in their essence, are social and political attitudes. However, there is a connotation in which justice may also be considered as a part of virtue. In this context it is to be considered as equality apart from any other considerations that matter. To elaborate:

since the equal is a mean, the just will be a sort of mean too. … (1) as a mean it implies two extremes, the more and the less, (2) as equal it implies two equal shares, and (3) as just it implies certain persons for whom it is just. Consequently, justice involves at least four terms, two persons for whom it is just and two shares which are just. And there will be the same equality between the shares as between the persons, that is, the ratio between the shares will be the same as the ratio between the persons. If the persons are not equal, they will not have equal shares; it is when equals possess or are assigned unequal shares, or persons who are not equal are given equal shares, that quarrels and complaints arise. (The Nature of Justice, 1992, p.211)

Justice so equated with ‘equality’ is then divided further into three branches: distributive justice is concerned with the distribution of honour or money or the other divisible assets of the community (social benefits and burdens) among its members; justice in exchange stands for equality between whatever goods are exchanged and corrective justice means establishing equality between punishment and the crime.

Having clarified the scope of justice, Aristotle then integrates it with the role of the legislature and law making leading ultimately to the very important conclusion that the ruler and the elite are also subordinated to such impersonal rules/constitutions since these rules are oriented towards universal welfare. However, although the elite are subjected to such rules, a hierarchical social structure is envisaged. Citizenship is reserved only for those who are economically self-sufficient. Slaves, craftsmen, and traders are excluded. There is little room for pursuing commerce and wealth for its own sake; and trading and usury are considered as posing a threat to a person’s moral well being. The government is the highest form of community employed in the struggle to attain the highest form of moral good. Thus individuals are subordinated to the state and the state to an ethical purpose (Bowle, 1961, pp.40-42; Harmon, 1964, pp.29-52; Muller, 1993, p.41).

For Aristotle himself and a small class of leisurely elite – who can afford that degree of disengagement from the necessities of life – there is a ‘good’ even superior to exercizing virtue in a political community. And the way to discover that good is to reflect on what is best in human beings. As we saw above, what is best in human beings is reason and one characteristic of reason is to contemplate the unchanging and timeless truths that are equated with the divine in Greek thought. It is such contemplation done as an end in itself rather than as a means to something else that constitutes the highest form of human good (MacIntyre, 1966, pp.82-3). Taken to its logical conclusion, this attitude, carries within it, the seeds of asceticism and renunciation providing reason for the elite to withdraw from active politics and pave the way for something larger than ‘polis’, an absolutist state, the then state of Macedon. As Kelson (MacIntyre, 1966) puts it:

the glorification of the contemplative life, which has renounced all activity and more especially all political activity, has at all times constituted a typical element of the political morality set up by the ideologies of absolute monarchy. For the essential tendency of this form of state consists in excluding the subjects from all share in public affairs. (p.99)

The Christian view

The pursuit of the spiritual and renunciation of the material reached its zenith in the teachings of Jesus Christ (pbuh). According to one view, he had little interest in politics and no qualms with the public order established by the Roman authorities. Instead, he was interested in saving souls, this by providing a corrective for Pharisaic morality. And, that too, for a short interim period, until God’s Messianic kingdom arrived. Under these circumstances, as MacIntyre (1966) explains:

the only form of prudence is to look to the kingdom. To take thought of for the morrow, to lay up treasure on earth, not to sell all you have and give to the poor – these are essentially imprudent policies. You will lose your soul if you pursue such policies, precisely because the world you gain is not going to last. … the crucial fact is that the Messianic kingdom did not come, and … therefore the church ever since has been preaching an ethics which could not find application in a world where history had not come to an end. … It is therefore not surprising that insofar as Christianity has propounded moral beliefs and elaborated moral concepts for ordinary human life, it has been content to accept conceptual frameworks from elsewhere. (p.116)

This mindset became evident after the Roman emperor, Constantine, embraced Christianity in the early fourth century. In the event, the passive relationship between the Church and the State, that to some was implied in the early teachings of Jesus Christ (pbuh) was set aside. Thus, St. Augustine (355-430 CE) wrote in The City of God that the State was a divinely ordained remedial authority over which men had no control. And as regards its aims, it was to purge men of the misery of unregulated life: greedy egotism, selfishness and slavery of lust that was the result of man being born sinful. In fact, the Church was conceived as a partner to the State in the mission of cleansing men. The theory, expressed more succinctly by Pope Gelasius I in the late fifth century, became known as the ‘doctrine of the two swords’ (Harmon, 1964, pp.98-131; Kramnick, 1969, pp.83-84; Bowle, 1961, p.135).

This rather hostile view of the world influenced Western thought for some eight centuries until St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE), impressed by Aristotelian thought translated and expounded by Jewish and Muslim writers, presented the idea of a fundamental harmony between human and religious values, between the natural and the revealed law, and between reason and faith. Thus authority and socio-political institutions were necessitated not necessarily because of man’s inherent sinfulness, which nevertheless remained a core belief, but instead because of the positive value they offered in arranging human affairs in accordance with the requirements of human sociable nature. The Christian concept of humankind and society, however similar in form to the Greek, nevertheless, had important differences in terms of content. Thus the list of virtues is taken from the teachings of Jesus Christ (pbuh) rather than from Aristotle (Harmon, 1964, pp.123-131; MacIntyre, 1966).

In general, until the Middle Ages, Christian thought primarily focused on presenting life as the preparatory ground for salvation. The Church had the sole and infallible authority to interpret the demands of such salvation. And these demands usually called for caring, loving, and sharing with co-religionists. It was believed that each person had a divinely ordained place in life to which he exhibited loyalty by conducting a specific (mostly hereditary) function and becoming a member of the relevant organized (occupational) group.¹ The objective was to join a moral struggle for securing the necessities of life, i.e. food, clothing and shelter. The profit motive and pursuit of wealth for its own sake were considered as sinful. As a result, trade and commerce were seen as incompatible with the demands of a virtuous life, and usury and gambling were strictly prohibited. In brief, individual life was subordinated to both the demands of salvation and the Church sponsored view of societal needs (Fusfeld, 1999, pp.7-27).

THE MODERN QUEST FOR JUSTICE

In general, the roots of the modern Western quest for discovering reason-based principles of justice go back to the end of the Middle Ages. That period saw the rise of the modern nation state through intense conflict: (a) between rival views on organizing society, (b) the competing jurisdictional claims of the Church, feudal barons, and medieval parliaments against monarchs, and (c) the external struggle for conquest under the influence of mercantilism. Under the circumstances, there was a clear arbitrariness in distributing social dividends and burdens that prompted social philosophers to ask: how can an orderly and harmonious social system emerge from the pursuit of competing self interests? How can social organization be redeemed from warring concepts of common good? And, how can individuals be protected against arbitrar...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Transliteration Table
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Justice: Islamic and Western Perspectives
• Conclusions
• Bibliography