Ethics Finder

Social Justice

The idea of social justice is both ancient and recent: ancient in the sense that philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero wrote about the nature of justice in society, as did Augustine, Aquinas and most other philosophers who considered ethics, through to JS Mill in the 19th century and John Rawls in the 20th. Recent, however, in that the expression has been adopted by liberal, progressive, left-wing social activists as a general term for anti-racism, civil-rights, egalitarianism, feminism, LGBT rights and multiculturalism. What is common to ancient and recent ideas is that politics has to fashion principles for the just distribution of resources, opportunities, and positions within society. The difference is that whereas in traditional philosophical contexts it has been held that a particular view of social justice has to be articulated and argued for in response to other theories, in the recent usage of the expression it is reserved for favoured views and positions. This is an instance of what is sometimes termed ‘persuasive definition’ embedding particular values and principles as part of the definition of the term. In Catholic moral theology particularly in its practical applications the expression ‘social justice’ is often associated with another ‘Catholic Social Teaching’ which dates from the 19th century and represents an attempt to find an alternative to unconstrained capitalism and state socialism – see Distributism.

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