We should strive for social justice. But what is it?<\/p>\n
I fear that the phrase\u00a0can be used to mean: “All the things that we’d like\u00a0to see in a society.” In that case, anyone who doesn’t commit to pursue “social justice” (by that name) must be\u00a0against at least some of these good things; and anyone who doesn’t agree with us\u00a0about what’s good must be\u00a0against social justice. Then\u00a0it’s us versus them: the people who care about social justice against\u00a0those who don’t. The result can be\u00a0a warm feeling of righteousness and solidarity, perhaps admixed with some regret that our actions don’t live up to our words.<\/p>\n
But ask yourself: What are<\/em> the things you’d like to see in a society? They are likely to be heterogeneous. For instance, equality comes in many forms, all of which may be\u00a0attractive even though some are in tension (equality of opportunity, of outcomes, of status, of rights; equality for members of a community, for all adults, for all human beings, etc.). And equality won’t suffice, because no one wants to see a society in which everyone is equally miserable and oppressed. So even strong egalitarians also want some combination of liberty, peace, solidarity or community, human flourishing, excellence, and\/or sustainability, for all those equal people.\u00a0But liberty and equality-of-outcomes trade off, as do\u00a0liberty and solidarity. In some cases, the means to achieve valuable ends are bad or they undermine the ends. For instance,\u00a0I’d like to see everyone be able to work, but I worry that\u00a0any policy that\u00a0guaranteed employment would also undermine the value and dignity of the labor.<\/p>\n Once you spell out what you value with due attention to priorities, means, costs, and tradeoffs, it’s likely that your own view will be\u00a0unique, or at least unusual. That chips away at the us-versus-them framework. You may begin to see other people’s views as attractive even as you continue to endorse your own. There are certainly\u00a0selfish and foolish people in the world, but now it begins to seem that many of our fellow citizens also favor “social justice.” They just disagree about what it is, because\u00a0that’s a profoundly hard question.<\/p>\n See also:\u00a0we are for social justice, but what is it?<\/a>;\u00a0on the moral peril of clich\u00e9 and what to do about it<\/a>;\u00a0on the moral dangers of clich\u00e9<\/a>; and\u00a0talking about \u201csocial justice\u201d in education<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We should strive for social justice. But what is it? I fear that the phrase\u00a0can be used to mean: “All the things that we’d like\u00a0to see in a society.” In that case, anyone who doesn’t commit to pursue “social justice” (by that name) must be\u00a0against at least some of these good things; and anyone who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17350"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17414,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350\/revisions\/17414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}