As we have stated
more than once on this blog, we like to get questions or criticisms . . .
questions or criticisms that we can answer, that is. Okay, polite questions or criticisms that
we can answer. . . . like this one, from someone we had sent some links to
recent blog postings:
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| I am the man for philosophy. |
I look forward to my immersion in
your work. In the meantime, as you can see from these links, be aware that I
have developed a strong position against social justice.
My criticism starts with the fact
that no one, as you will see, has been able to define social justice yet. And
no one ever will, it is my conclusion, because social justice is a replacement
for the old word “politics.”
Here is our
edited response, composed after we looked over the material our correspondent
sent:
Thank you for the
positive comments about our work. We
agree with you that, considered within the current academic and political
paradigm (which is overwhelmingly Platonic), no one has defined the term social
justice in any meaningful sense. A
friend of ours who teaches Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy (and the need to
specify “Aristotelian-Thomism” is a sad commentary on modern Academia) at
Canisius College in Buffalo amused himself last year by sending us a long list
of what can charitably be described as confused definitions of the term used by
otherwise respectable (more or less) individuals and institutions. And yes, we agree with you that the soundest
understanding of social justice is actually the Aristotelian concept of the
general virtue of legal justice, or (as you pointed out), politics.
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| That you are, in my books. |
Frankly, our
research over the past several years reveals where “social justice” managed to
take a wrong turn in the 1830s and 1840s, being transformed from a vague
catch-all term into what you and others quite properly call a socialist
romantic fantasy. By the time of the
revolutions of 1848, social justice was a blanket term applied to measures
intended to implement the program of Henri de Saint-Simon’s “New Christianity,”
the first principle of socialism, that the whole of society, construed as
exclusively economic in nature, should be devoted to material improvement, with
special emphasis on uplifting the poor.
Specifically, “socialist
social justice” is divided into two forms of redistribution, one voluntary, the
other involuntary. Voluntary
redistribution is philanthropy, while involuntary redistribution is
distributive justice. Needless to say,
philanthropy and distributive justice have legitimate, non-socialist meanings
that differ from these. In addition, the
socialist understanding of social justice, while called a definition, obviously
does not meet the standards of a defined virtue.
In reaction
against socialism and the other “new things” of modernism and New Age thought, Pope
Gregory XVI issued the first social encyclicals (Mirari Vos in 1832 and Singulari
Nos in 1834). He also sponsored the
Thomist revival.
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| I stand on the principle of social justice. |
One of the
leaders in the revival was Monsignor Luigi Aloysius Taparelli d’Azeglio,
S.J., who developed a principle of social justice to correct the errors of the
socialists. In 1840 he published Saggio
Teoretico di Dritto Naturale (“Essay on a Theory of Natural Law”) to
explain his principle.
Taparelli’s work
was intended specifically to counter the socialist concept of social justice that
all things, including the natural law, are subordinate to whatever
is desired, especially the amelioration of social conditions. His principle of social justice was that all
things, even (or especially) social improvement and the general welfare, must
be subordinate to the natural law as understood in Aristotelian-Thomism, i.e., to God.
This, however,
was not a true social ethics or a defined virtue in the strict philosophical
sense. Rather, it was individual ethics
with a good intention toward the common good — sound guidance for the life of
the citizen in the State, as Aristotle explained in the Nichomachean Ethics
and the Politics.
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| I stand on the virtue of social justice. |
Most (if not all)
of the confusion that you note with respect to social justice and, we think,
your stand that there can never be a definition of the term, results from
generations of scholars and advocates attempting to resolve the socialist and
the Taparelli versions of social justice and synthesize a consistent
definition. Obviously, a theory of
social justice that says the natural law is subordinate to the will of the
people (socialism), and one that says the will of the people is subordinate to
the natural law (Taparelli) can never be reconciled. Any attempt to do so, or even define it in
any meaningful way, can only result in contradictory nonsense, as you hint.
This is where CESJ
co-founder Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., comes in. Here is a link to Father Ferree’s pamphlet, Introduction to Social Justice that
summarizes his analysis of Pius XI’s breakthrough in defining social justice as
a particular virtue. (Father Ferree’s
full argument is found in his doctoral thesis, The Act of Social Justice.)
As you can see,
according to Father Ferree, Pius XI built on Taparelli’s principle and was able
to define social justice. Before
anything else, of course, he rejected the socialist theory of social justice
completely, especially the fundamental principle that puts sovereignty into the
collective instead of into the human person (Divini Redemptoris, § 29),
calling it a “concept of society . . . utterly
foreign to Christian truth.” (Quadragesimo Anno, § 117.)
The bottom line
here is that we agree with you about social justice as commonly construed. It is at best wishful thinking and at worst
incoherent gibberish. If you read
through Father Ferree’s pamphlet, however, especially in light of the two
different concepts of social justice that preceded the work of Pius XI, you may
be persuaded not only that a definition is possible, but that it has been developed.
#30#
