Evolution of Justice Concepts: From Ancient Philosophy to Modern Theories

Generations of Human Rights

Human rights are fundamental moral values and a model for the State’s structure. They are often categorized into generations:

  • 1st Generation: Civil and Political Rights – Emphasizing individual liberties, often associated with the Rule of Law.
  • 2nd Generation: Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights – Focusing on equality and the role of the social state of law.
  • 3rd Generation: Peace, Environment, and Development Rights – Centered on solidarity and mutual cooperation among states.

Theories of Justice

Plato (The Republic)

Plato posited that a just society is one where each individual successfully performs their assigned function according to their physical and mental abilities. The best-equipped individuals serve as guards, and among them, the wisest become rulers. In this ideal state, the guards hold all property in common.

The ultimate goal is to achieve social harmony.

Aristotle

Aristotle concurred with Plato on the importance of social functions and the necessity for each individual to perform their role well. He related the notion of justice to equal proportion, distinguishing between two primary types:

  • Commutative Justice: Focuses on equality and balance in the exchange of goods between individuals of the same rank or status.
  • Distributive Justice: Concerns the equal or balanced allocation of goods and burdens among individuals of equal status within the social collective.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

In the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas synthesized Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy. He essentially adopted Aristotle’s definition of justice and its classifications, asserting that charity is superior to justice. Justice, in his view, is limited to repairing damage and rewarding merit. Charity, however, surpasses mere justice, serving as a model of the gratuitous love with which God loves humanity.

Aquinas believed justice is realized through adherence to different types of laws:

  • Positive Law: Derives its obligatory force from covenants or agreements.
  • Natural Law: What God imparts to creatures, enabling them to achieve their inherent purpose. This concept was instrumental in paving the way for the later development of natural rights and human rights.

Modern Perspectives (16th to 18th Centuries)

The specificity of the notion of justice in the modern age is its insistence that individuals possess inherent natural rights. The Rule of Law emerged as a central concept of liberalism.

Philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau argued that society must understand politics as the result of a social contract.

During this period, justice came to be understood as a situation in which individuals enjoy a wide range of freedoms, along with certain procedural protections and a series of private property rights.

Utilitarianism

Emerging in the 19th and 20th centuries, Utilitarianism posits that the conception of justice governing a modern society should foster the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

John Stuart Mill believed that rights and basic liberties are a means to maximize collective happiness, which he saw as the ultimate end of the state and social life. Both Mill and Jeremy Bentham argued that all human happiness holds the same value.

Socialist Theories of Justice

Socialist theories define justice as the abolition of socioeconomic privilege.

In the early decades of the 19th century, utopian socialists like Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen argued that a society could not be just or prosperous without abolishing private ownership of the means of production.

The latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century saw the rise of classical libertarian socialism or anarchism, represented by thinkers such as Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Abbot of Santillan. For them, justice was the result of a profound change in people and social structures, leading to the elimination of all types of oppression.

Marxism, however, held that the priority for achieving a new society should not be the immediate abolition of the state. Marx believed that the state would disappear by itself through a long, revolutionary process.