The concept of justice is an odd thing.
Because it feels like many people are taking a lot for granted.
I mean, what is justice anyway?
And who gets to decide what is just and unjust?
Frankly, I think you could do the same exercise with justice as we did with evil.
- If you say there is injustice, you assume there is justice.
- Therefore there must be some kind of moral law to differentiate between what is just and unjust.
- If you assume a moral law, you need a moral lawgiver.
- And you need a moral lawgiver because the entire concept of justice is only a concern of humans.
People worried about justice while holding onto determinism are missing the boat.
As soon as you take any ethical stand, you are stepping out of determinism.
And don’t even get me started about morality being determined with a 51% vote…
In the Western world, our concept of justice has blossomed into an elegant system of law that describes how citizens and governments should behave, but justice is not merely a legal concept. How could it be? Justice demands that we make distinctions between right and wrong behavior. Those are decisions of moral judgment that rest on something more substantial than the whim of a single individual or 51 percent of the voting public.
-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)
