Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a

148 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
on theories of justice
Justice is an essentially contested concept: there is no generally accepted
definition of justice, and thus no consensus on what the appropriate
subject matter of theories of justice is or should be. Of course, it does not
follow that nothing at all can be said about the notion of justice. David
Miller’s description of social justice is a good starting point. He claims
that when arguing about justice, we are discussing:
how the good and bad things in life should be distributed among the
members of a human society. When, more concretely, we attack some
policy or some state of affairs as socially unjust, we are claiming that a
person, or more usually a category of persons, enjoys fewer advantages
than that person or group of persons ought to enjoy (or bears more of
the burdens than they ought to bear), given how other members of the
society in question are faring. (Miller 1999, 1)
Theories of justice do not cover the entire spectrum of moral issues.
Social justice theorists generally agree that parts of morality fall outside
the scope of justice. Charity is such a case: you may not have a duty
of justice to help a frail, elderly neighbour, but you may nevertheless
decide to help that person as an act of charity and compassion. Another
example is morally laudable behaviour, such as being a volunteer for
social activities in your neighbourhood. Such behaviour may be morally
praiseworthy, but it may at the same time not be required as a matter of
justice. Hence, justice is not all that matters, if we consider how to make
the world morally better.
Can we describe justice, and theories of justice, by their properties, as
philosophers often do? First, justice is a property that has been ascribed
to both individuals and institutions: justice is a virtue of individuals
in their interactions with others, and justice is also a virtue of social
institutions (Barry and Matravers 2011). Thus, we can say that a certain
society is more or less just, or we can say that the behaviour of some
persons is just or unjust. Theorists of justice tend primarily to discuss
the justice of social arrangements, that is, of social institutions broadly
defined; justice as an individual virtue is sometimes regarded as a
matter of ethics rather than of political philosophy (although not every
political philosopher would agree with this way of demarcating justice