IB Philosophy 7.2.1 Social Justice Notes

The Nature and Scope of Social Justice

1. Having examined the state (7.1.1), forms of government (7.1.2), and civil society (7.1.3), Unit 7 now turns to one of the most contested concepts in political philosophy: justice. The overarching question of this unit asks whether justice can be an ideal as well as a process.
   1. This topic explores the concept of social justice, its philosophical foundations, and the major debates surrounding it.
2. Plato’s Republic is organised around the question ‘What is justice?’ Plato argued that justice in the state mirrors justice in the soul: just as the soul has three parts (reason, spirit, and appetite), the state has three classes (philosopher-rulers, guardians, and producers).
   1. Justice exists when each part performs its proper function without overstepping. A just city is one where philosophers govern, soldiers protect, and workers produce, each contributing according to their nature.
   2. Plato's view has been criticised for its anti-democratic implications, it assumes some people are born to rule and others are not. But it establishes a powerful idea: justice is not just a matter of personal opinion. It is an objective feature of how a society is organised.
3. The question of whether justice is an idea, an ideal, or a process captures three different philosophical approaches. Justice as an idea refers to an abstract concept that can be analysed and defined.
   1. Justice as an ideal suggests a standard of perfection that societies should strive toward. Justice as a process emphasises the procedures and institutions through which justice is pursued, rather than any fixed outcome.
4. The distinction between substantive justice and procedural justice is central to this debate. Substantive justice focuses on outcomes: a society is just if its distribution of goods, opportunities, and burdens meets certain standards of fairness.
   1. Procedural justice focuses on the fairness of the processes through which distributions occur: a society is just if its procedures are fair, regardless of the specific outcomes they produce.

Moral Realism, Anti-Realism, and Constructivism

1. Whether there is an objective standard for justice is one of the deepest questions in political philosophy. Moral realists argue that justice has an objective basis, grounded in human nature, rational principles, or moral facts.
   1. Moral relativists and constructivists argue that standards of justice are products of particular cultures or agreements, and that no single standard can claim universal validity.
2. Moral realists argue that justice has an objective basis independent of human opinion. Plato’s Theory of Forms holds that there is a Form of Justice, an eternal, perfect standard against which all human arrangements can be measured.
3. Moral anti-realists deny this. J.L. Mackie's error theory claims that when we say something is unjust, we are pretending there is an objective moral fact backing us up. Mackie argues there are no such facts, so all moral statements are technically false, even if they feel true to us.
   1. If Mackie is right, 'social justice' expresses a preference or aspiration, not a truth about how things ought to be. The constructivist position, represented by Rawls himself, takes a middle path: justice is not discovered in nature, nor is it purely invented. Instead, it is worked out through a fair process of reasoning that rational people could all agree to.
4. The distinction between distributive justice and retributive justice, first drawn by Aristotle, marks two fundamentally different domains.
   1. Distributive justice concerns how society allocates goods, honours, and opportunities among its members. Retributive justice concerns how wrongdoing is punished.
   2. A scholarship committee selecting candidates on the basis of merit exemplifies distributive justice. A court awarding damages to a victim of fraud exemplifies corrective justice (Aristotle's related concept, covering the restoration of balance after a wrong).
5. Aristotle argued that each form of justice requires its own principle: distribution should follow merit or desert, while correction should restore the equality that existed before the wrong was committed.

1. Social justice as a political concept emerged in the nineteenth century, associated with movements for workers’ rights, universal suffrage, and the abolition of slavery. It carries the claim that structural inequalities in wealth, power, and opportunity are not merely unfortunate but unjust, and that the state has a responsibility to address them.
2. The connection between social justice and the distribution of wealth was examined in 4.3.3. This topic builds on that discussion by exploring the philosophical foundations and criticisms of the concept itself, asking whether social justice is a coherent and achievable goal or, as some critics argue, a dangerously vague aspiration.

Rawls and Justice as Fairness

1. John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) is the most influential work of political philosophy of the twentieth century. Rawls wanted to build a rigorous, systematic account of justice that could underpin the institutions of a liberal democratic society, offering an alternative to existing approaches such as the idea that whatever produces the most happiness is just.
   1. Rawls’s method begins with the original position, a hypothetical thought experiment in which rational agents choose principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. Behind the veil, no one knows their social class, natural talents, gender, race, or conception of the good.
   2. This ensures that the chosen principles are genuinely fair, since no one can tailor them to their own advantage.

1. From the original position, Rawls argues that rational agents would choose two principles of justice. The first principle (the liberty principle) holds that each person has an equal right to the most extensive system of basic liberties compatible with a similar system for all.
   1. The second principle (the difference principle) holds that social and economic inequalities are permissible only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society.
   2. The difference principle is Rawls’s most distinctive contribution. It does not require strict equality of outcomes but insists that any inequality must work to improve the position of those who are worst off.
   3. This principle directly addresses distributive justice by providing a standard against which institutional arrangements can be evaluated.

Critiques of Rawlsian Justice

1. Rawls draws a sharp distinction between procedural and substantive justice. He advocates what he calls pure procedural justice: if the procedure is fair, then whatever outcome it produces is just.
   1. The original position is designed to be such a procedure. However, the difference principle also introduces a substantive element, since it specifies that outcomes must benefit the least advantaged.
2. Communitarian thinkers such as Michael Sandel argue that the veil of ignorance is the wrong starting point. When you ask people to imagine they know nothing about who they are, you strip away the very relationships, histories, and values that make justice matter to them in the first place. Sandel argues that justice cannot be worked out from abstract principles alone. It has to grow out of the real traditions and commitments of actual communities.
   1. The communitarian critique and its implications for the relationship between justice, freedom, and equality are developed in 7.2.3.
3. Robert Nozick mounted a powerful libertarian challenge to Rawls in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), arguing that any distribution arising from voluntary exchanges is just, regardless of the pattern it produces. Nozick’s entitlement theory, and its claim that redistributive taxation amounts to forced labour, is developed fully in 7.2.2.
4. Amartya Sen argued in The Idea of Justice (2009) that Rawls’s focus on ideal institutions is misguided. Rather than designing a perfectly just society, we should focus on reducing manifest injustices in the world as it is.
   1. Sen’s capabilities approach, which evaluates justice by what people can actually do and be rather than by the resources they hold, is explored in 7.2.2.

Hayek’s Critique and the Debate over Objective Standards

1. Friedrich Hayek mounted one of the most powerful attacks on the concept of social justice. In Law, Legislation and Liberty (1976), Hayek described social justice as "an empty phrase without determinable content", arguing that the concept is incoherent when applied to a market-based society.
   1. Hayek’s argument rests on the claim that justice can only apply to the intentional actions of individuals, not to the unintended outcomes of impersonal processes. The distribution of wealth in a market economy is the result of countless voluntary exchanges, not of deliberate design.
   2. Since no one intended the resulting distribution, it makes no sense to call it just or unjust.
   3. Hayek’s critique connects to broader debates about whether there is an objective standard for justice. If the outcomes of impersonal market processes cannot be evaluated as just or unjust, then the concept of distributive justice is undermined.
2. Defenders of social justice respond that market outcomes are shaped by laws, institutions, and power structures that can and should be evaluated for fairness.
3. Rawls would respond that the basic structure of society (its major political, economic, and social institutions) is the primary subject of justice. Even if individual market transactions are voluntary, the institutional framework within which they occur can be just or unjust.

Alternative Standards: Utilitarianism and the Capability Approach

1. The difference principle applies to this basic structure, not to individual transactions.

1. The utilitarian tradition offers another perspective. Classical utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill evaluate distributions in terms of their contribution to overall happiness.
   1. Critics argue that utilitarianism can justify sacrificing the interests of minorities for the sake of the majority, which is precisely the kind of injustice that social justice seeks to prevent.
2. For Hayek, the spontaneous order of the market, which he calls catallaxy (the self-organising pattern that emerges from millions of free exchanges, with no one directing it), produces results no central planner could predict.
3. If the state tries to impose a particular distribution in the name of social justice, it must override countless free decisions, which Hayek argues requires a level of authoritarian intervention that undermines the rule of law and individual liberty.
4. The capabilities approach, developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, offers a different standard for evaluating justice. Instead of asking how goods are distributed or how much total happiness a policy produces, it asks whether people have the real freedom to live a decent life, to be healthy, to pursue an education, and to participate in public life.
5. The debate between Rawls and Hayek boils down to whether justice requires active redistribution by the state, or whether justice is best served by protecting individual liberty and allowing market outcomes to stand.

Gender Politics and the Pursuit of Justice

1. Feminist philosophers have argued that traditional theories of justice, including Rawls's, fail to take gender seriously enough. Susan Moller Okin, in Justice, Gender, and the Family (1989), argued that Rawls's theory, properly applied, has radical implications for the family.
   1. If the family is part of the basic structure of society, then gender inequalities within it must be subject to principles of justice.
   2. Okin argued that the traditional division of labour within the family, in which women bear disproportionate responsibility for childcare and domestic work, is a fundamental source of social injustice. A truly just society would require restructuring family life so that both parents share these responsibilities equally.
2. Iris Marion Young challenged the assumption that justice is mainly about distributing goods fairly, what she called the distributive paradigm (the idea that justice is solved by working out who gets what).
3. In Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990), Young argued that justice is not only about distributing goods fairly but also about eliminating oppression and domination.
   1. Young identifies five faces of oppression: exploitation (being used for others' gain), marginalisation (being pushed to the fringes of society), powerlessness (having no voice or influence), cultural imperialism (having your group's perspective treated as abnormal or inferior), and violence (living under the threat of attack because of who you are).
   2. Young’s approach shifts the focus from distribution to structural relations of power. A society can distribute resources equally yet still be unjust if certain groups are systematically marginalised or dominated.
   3. This perspective has been influential in debates about racial justice, disability rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.

Capabilities, Equality, and Group Difference

1. Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach has a significant gender dimension. Nussbaum argues that many women around the world lack basic capabilities (such as bodily integrity, political participation, and access to education) due to discriminatory social structures.
   1. Justice requires that every individual, regardless of gender, has access to a basic level of central human capabilities: the real ability to live a healthy, educated, and politically active life.
2. The intersection of gender and justice connects to the overarching Unit 7 question of whether freedom and equality are compatible. Feminist philosophers argue that formal equality (treating everyone the same under the law) is insufficient if structural inequalities persist.
   1. Substantive equality requires active measures to address specific disadvantages faced by women and other marginalised groups.
3. Whether justice requires recognising group-based differences or treating everyone as identical individuals is one of the most contested issues in contemporary political philosophy. This debate has two sides: the politics of redistribution (focus on fixing economic inequality) and the politics of recognition (focus on giving respect and visibility to groups whose identities have been dismissed or marginalised), and will recur in 7.2.3.
4. These feminist contributions demonstrate that social justice is not a static concept but an evolving one, continually challenged and expanded by new voices and perspectives. The philosophical question of what justice requires continues to develop as societies confront new forms of inequality and oppression.
5. The tension between liberty and equality that runs through these debates is synthesised in 7.2.3.