Justice

1. Justice Week 10

2. In today’s lecture… • Recap • The Bucket list • Plato – justice as ‘social harmony’ • Aristotle – justice as ‘desert’ • Criminal justice

3. Recap • What is existentialism? • Kierkegaard – passion of faith • Nietzsche – God is dead • Sartre – Existence precedes essence • Camus - Absurdity

4. Recap • Existentialists believe in free will and individual choice. • No one else can tell us what is the purpose of our existence or how we should live our lives. Instead, we have the freedom and responsibility to make decisions for ourselves and take control of our own lives.

5. Recap • For example, you may want to be a doctor but you do not have the chance to study in a university. It does not mean that you should give up. There are always meaningful things you can do such as reading books about medicine or taking first aid courses. Such actions and decisions will give meaning and purpose to your life.

6. Recap • Camus and other existentialists believe that life is ‘absurd’ because we all live in a world without meaning and purpose. • Most of us are not aware of the absurdity of life. Only when some significant events happen to us do we start thinking about the meaning of life (e.g. when we contract incurable diseases感染不治之症).

7. The Bucket List

8. The Bucket List • When the main characters contracted cancers, they began to realize that many of the things they did in the past had little or no meaning for themselves. • As you are watching the film, pay attention to how they gave new meaning to theirexistence by choosing how to live the last days of their lives.

9. The Bucket List The main characters in the film made an important decision in the final days of their lives. Do you think they made the right decision? How did that decision give meaning to their lives?

10. Plato Plato (柏拉圖 427 B.C. to 347 B.C.) was one of the most famous ancient Greek philosophers. He was a student of Socrates (蘇格拉底) and the teacher of Aristotle (亞里斯多德).

11. Plato • The Greeks before Plato believed that ‘justice’ could be understood as the idea that ‘might is right’ (強權就是公理).Justice was often seen as the same as ‘the interest of the powerful’. • In his book The Republic (理想國), Plato proposed a new conception of ‘justice’.

12. Plato • For Plato, the human soul (靈魂) can be divided into 3 parts: Reason (理性), Spirit (精神、情緒), and Appetite (慾念). • Reason (the mind or intellect), which is capable of thinking, governs the soul with wisdom. Reason and Spirit (the emotions) control Appetite (bodily needs and desires).

13. Plato • ‘Justice’ is the result of all 3 parts of the soul working together in harmony (和諧), each doing its most suitable job. • Plato’s idea of justice, therefore, is based on the principles of specialization (分工) and order (秩序) – Reason (aided by Spirit) rules, and Appetite obeys.

14. Plato • The human society also consists of 3 classes: the ruling class (統治階級), the warriors (戰士), and the lower class (低下階層). For Plato,the 3 classes of a society correspond to the 3 parts of thesoul. • If each class always does what is most suitable for itself, society will be in harmony, and there will be ‘justice’.

15. Plato • Everyone must know his or her rightful (合適的) position in society. Justice can be seen as the idea of ‘doing one’s own job, and not trying to do other people’s jobs for them’. • Justice, therefore, is a kind of specialization, i.e. every part of a whole doing its own job properly (恰當地).

16. Plato • For Plato, a just man (公正的人) is someone who is working in the right place, and giving his best as he is performing his duties. • At the individual level, justice is a virtue (德性、德行) that makes a person a good man. As far as society is concerned, justice is the principle that maintains social order and harmony.

17. Plato • According to Plato, slaves (奴隸) and other members of the lower class do not have the ability to become rulers. • Because they do not have the ability to run (治理) a country, the lower class should follow orders rather than questioning the judgments and decisions of the ruling class.

18. Think! Does Plato’s idea of ‘justice as social harmony’ provide a good justification for sending Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) to prison?

19. Desert • There is an ancient tradition, found in both the mainstream of Western philosophy and religion as well as Eastern thought that justice consists in giving people what they deserve (應得). • Justice as ‘desert’ (應得果報)refers to the idea ofgiving each person his or her due(應得的).

20. Desert • In the Hindu and Buddhist idea of ‘karma’, which holds that there is a casual relationship between actions in this life and circumstances in the next, is an expression of the idea of ‘justice as desert’. • Succeeding reincarnations (延續的轉生) of each person is rewarded or punished in exact proportion to his or her desert.

21. Desert • In the Jewish(猶太教)/Christian tradition this principle of justice as desertis reflected in the doctrine of heaven and hell. The good will go to heaven as a reward for the good things they did whereas the evil will be punished in hell. • Similarly, in Aristotle’s philosophy, justice means treating individuals in accordance with their desert.

22. Desert • ‘Desert’ (or ‘just desert’) is the condition of being deserved of something. To get what is deserved is just, and failure to receive what is deserved is unjust. • The deserts of individuals differ from one another, so their rewards and punishments should not be the same. That is why Aristotle said that justice requires‘treating equals equally, and unequals unequally’.

23. Desert • Desert, in other words, is the idea that good behavior should be rewarded, and bad behavior should be punished. • For Aristotle, justice requires lawfulness and fairness. It is ‘unjust’ when someone has broken the law, or when someone has taken more than his or her fair share (i.e. more than he or she deserves).

24. Desert • Thus, as an example, according to the principle of justice as ‘desert’, if a teacher gives a student a ‘C’ when the student deserves a ‘B’, the low grade is an injustice to the student. It is equally an injustice when the teacher gives her an ‘A’ which she does not deserve.

25. Think! Jason is so clever that he does not need to study hard to get an ‘A’ in the exam. Daisy, on the other hand, is a slow learner and even though she studies hard, she can only get a ‘C’. Can we say that Jason and Daisy, in being thus graded, are treated unjustly? Should every teacher give every student an ‘A’ as an act of kindness?

26. Think! Some people might say that hardworking students deserve a better grade.Teachers, however, give students grades on the basis of merit, i.e. on how well they have performed on tests, exams, etc., not on how hard they have tried. The idea of desert is more closely related to ‘merit’ (優點) than to ‘effort’ (努力).

27. Think! Should a teacher give every student an ‘A’? No. Because the examination system (or grading system) becomes meaningless if students get grades that they do not deserve. Giving everyone an ‘A’ is a great injustice, especially to the students deserving ‘A’s’ – the ‘A’ that they receive has been degraded and is no longer the ‘A’ that they deserve.

28. Read! • Read a short article titled ‘Justice and Desert’ which is available for download on the course website.

29. Criminal justice • ‘Criminal justice’ can be understood here as matching fair consequences to crimes. • Questions that we need to consider in criminal justice include: [1] What justifies (合理化) punishment? Is punishment justified because wrongdoers deserve it, or is it justified as a means to reduce crime? [2] What determines the right kind and amount of punishment?

30. Criminal justice • Punishing people usually involves harming them, either by causing them pain or by taking away their freedom, property, or life. Harming people in these ways is ordinarily morally impermissible (不被容許的). • If, as the saying goes, two wrongs do not make a right, then why punish people for their crimes?

31. Criminal justice • Kant, for example, argues that justice requires punishment. Wrongdoers deserve punishment, the innocent do not, and justice requires that each person receives his or her due. • In Kant’s view, it is unjust if the guilty are not punished, because they would not receive what they deserve, just as it is unjust if an innocent person is punished.

32. Criminal justice • Traditionally, punishment is based on the idea of desert. Those who do wrong deserve to be punished for their wrongdoing. Justice consists in people getting what they deserve. • The question is: Should every bad behavior be viewed as a crime and punished accordingly?

33. Criminal justice Joe is a mechanic (機械技工). One night he was on his way home after work. It was late at night and the streets were quiet. Suddenly he saw an old man lying unconscious (失去知覺) on the floor. There was no one else around but Joe saw a car parked on the side of the road. So Joe broke the lock of the car’s doorand drove the unconscious old man to the hospital.

34. Criminal justice Does Joe deserve to be punished for stealing someone’s car? Why or why not?

35. Criminal justice • The ‘harm principle’ (傷害原則) is a modern principlein criminal law. As an alternative to the principle of ‘justice as desert’, the harm principle states that behavior that does not cause harm to others should not be punished, e.g. taking drugs, prostitution (賣淫) and homosexuality. Only behavior that causes harm to others should be punished.

36. Criminal justice • Supporters of the harm principle are concerned about the harmful effects of crime on society and how to reduce it. • They argue that because punishment leaves unchanged social causes of crime, such as poverty (貧窮) and unemployment, it is not very effective at reducing crime.

37. Criminal justice • Punishment for them is not justified unless [1] it prevents crime by reducing the criminals’ capacity to commit further crimes (e.g. by imprisonment); or [2] it deters (阻嚇) other people from breaking the law; or [3] it makes criminals understandthat their behavior was wrong; or [4] it forces the criminals to make amends (補償) to the victim or to the community (e.g. paying compensation賠償or doing unpaid work).

38. Criminal justice • Crimes are kinds of conduct (行為) that are defined by the law as wrong, e.g. hurting someone intentionally (固意傷人). Merely thinking about hurting someone is not a crime. Performing some action that causes harm to others is a crime. So, by definition, a person cannot commit a crime if he or she has not taken any action.

39. Criminal justice Is it a crime not to take care of one’s children? Is it a crime not to pay tax to the government? Is it a crime not to report a crime? Why or why not?

40. Criminal justice • One of the main concerns of criminal justice is to determine proportionate (合乎比例的) punishment as a morally acceptable response to crime. • In other words, not only should punishment be justly deserved, it must be a fitting response to the crime committed.

41. Criminal justice • Besides thinking about whether a person deserves to be punished, it is also necessary to consider the proportionality (匹配) between the crime committed and the punishment imposed. • One solution is to argue for some kind of ‘equivalence’ (對等) of offense (罪) and penalty (罰).

42. Criminal justice • Traditionally, ‘lex talionis’, or ‘the law of retaliation’ (報復原理) is the basis of criminal justice. Itis the principle of ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’. • The death penalty (or ‘capital punishment’ 死刑) is the best example of applying the principle of lex talionis to cases of murder.

43. Criminal justice • In theory, the amount of punishment must be proportional to the amount of harm caused by the crime. In practice, however, the exercise of lex talionis faces serious problems. • How, for example, do we punish rapists (強姦犯)? Should we rape them?

44. Criminal justice • In modern criminal justice, the old principle ‘an eye for an eye’ has been replaced by a new principle: ‘let the punishment fit the crime’. • Imprisonment (監禁) has become a unified (統一的) form of punishment. The jail term (刑期) is based on a modified form of lex talionis, i.e. the more serious the crime, the longer the period of imprisonment.

45. Criminal justice • But there is anotherproblem: judgments about what is a fitting punishment for a crime vary (有差異) between individuals – sentences (裁決、判刑) are often criticized as too harsh (嚴厲) or too lenient (寬鬆). Judgments also vary between cultures – e.g. adultery (通姦) is punishable by death in some societies, but is not even a crime in others.

46. Next week