Justice With Virtue

Justice and virtue have always been ethical and moral values cherished by people since ancient times.In the long process of historical development,these two values complement each other to construct the core elements of both the Chinese and western traditional cultures in the development and evolution of all knowledge systems,including philosophy,politics,and ethics of both the Chinese and western traditional cultures.In traditional theoretical researches,justice was once considered as a basic virtue.Aristotle said: "Justice is the sum of all virtues." Aristotle deduces the doctrine from a specific moral virtue to the complete virtue,a sum of all virtues.Some others believe that justice is not only a virtue but a core value complementary to virtue.On the one hand,good laws and good characters complement each other;on the other hand,though political science and ethics are two separate fields,in practical reasoning,they are in complementary relations.The justice of the good system and the law almost always go hand in hand with the outstanding character of human.Many philosophers in the past have admitted that without good system and legal constraints,human virtues cannot withstand tests and are fragile.Moreover,they stressed that justice itself is not enough to guide people's life,and justice systems and laws must be supported and supplemented by virtue.However,with the constant development of legal systems and other norms of human society,the balance between justice and virtue has gradually been broken.In comparison with the past,more and more people began to pay attention to the difference between a just social system and a good personal character.Under the influence of this idea,a situation of mutual confrontation between advocates of justice represented by universalism and advocates of virtue represented by specialism has gradually emerged.The proponents of justice try to find the "universal value" that is applicable to all human beings through certain values of abstraction,idealization,intuition,and some metaphysical sources.They believe that as long as the principles of justice for such a system are discovered or constructed,they can be applied to all human standards.On the contrary,the advocates of virtue argue that the view above emphasizes the significance of the abstract principle excessively,and its way of standardizing people's rationality and action through abstraction seriously overlooks the different conditions caused by people's different living,social environments and other factors.In this world,if people from different regions with different cultures share the same standards of ethics or principles of justice,the results will inevitably be unfair;and it is precisely this view that has caused the confrontation between universalism and specialism,which thereby affect the relationship between justice and virtue.Why justice and virtue,which in the past were considered to be mutually influenced and complemented,have now become confrontational and incompatible with each other? Onora O'Neill's constructivist ethics thought was formed based on consideration of the issue above.She believes that justice and virtue should not be contradictory: even if people live in a system that is sufficiently just,they still need good moral standards,and the just system and the good moral standards should complement and support each other.As one of Rawls' most famous disciples,Onora O'Neill has carried out the constructivism that initiated by Rawls into a more thorough pattern.Compared with Rawls' premise of the theory about liberal and democratic society,O'Neill adopted a more abstract logical premise in practical reasoning,and the purpose is to bestow the conclusion with more Kantian-style universalism.She appealed to "comprehensibility" among citizens to justify reasoning,advocated a realistic ethical value,emphasized to find the logical starting point that is applicable to the ethical life of all citizens on the basis of reality,namely,"rejecting hurt and indifference",and took this starting point as the prerequisite for the construction of its ethical principles.Moreover,compared with the perspective of rights-prioritized research in traditional ethics,O'Neill clarified the relationship between justice and virtue in particular from the perspective of duty.In traditional theory,most people emphasized the study of ethics from the perspective of rights.This perspective pays more attention to people's rights in the course of their actions rather than to what characters of duties that people assume and perform can be more attractive and accepted by a wider range of people.However,the attraction of the rights tends to lead people to neglect the role of social duty,which has become a major flaw of the traditional perspective.Thereby,people blindly pursue all kinds of rights,but do not systematically analyze and assume the corresponding duties of these rights.The perspective of duty is equally important in the study of ethics.People's actions are often involved in their duties,and such duties with corresponding rights will play an important role in the design and establishment of a social justice system.What is more,if duties are given priority to,the situation of traditional ethnical perspective mentioned above would be avoided to some extent,and the connections and differences between social justice and virtue can also be more concisely elaborated.From the perspective of duty,people would pay more attention to their duties or responsibilities.Justice is the duty with corresponding rights,and virtue is the duty that without corresponding rights.It is not the confrontation between justice and virtue that the universalism and the particularists claim,but the effect of mutual influence and complementarity.Finally,on the issue of establishing a system of justice with virtues,O'Neill emphasized that these solutions can only provide a standard for the justice and virtue of the social system,and then evaluate the justice and virtue of system design according to this standard.Nevertheless,this standard of justice and virtue does not provide a normative guide in the sense of completeness in the pursuit of social justice or virtuous life,but it can only provide help for the progress in the direction of justice and virtue,because this constructive explanation of practical reason and ethics cannot realize the ideal state that perfectionists dream of.Since the ethical interpretation of constructivism cannot explain supreme goodness,humanity,or other transcendental and intrinsic values,it cannot establish the ultimate,comprehensive plan for good life,so that it is impossible to establish Utopian kingdom with the eternal purpose.O'Neill emphasized that this strict conception of reasoning about action allows us to construct a substantive interpretation of ethics,especially the relationship between justice and virtue,without creating any metaphysics about people or goodness.O'Neill's ethical ideas intend to re-incorporate the concepts of unproven dogmatic reasoning,practical rationality,and civil society in Rawls' s method of constructivist verification into a more thorough and reasonable verification model,aiming to remove the idealized components of the Rawls model and make it more objective and universal in both logic and reality.However,did O'Neill really achieve the theoretical goals of ethics that she pursued? According to this paper,it can be found that although O'Neill made a lot of efforts,her thought is still the same as that of Rawls in the end.From O'Neill's Kantian transformation to Rawls,it is not difficult to see that what she pursues is also trying to find a universal ethical principle or interpretation with universal significance in the context of the pluralistic forms of modern society.This theory is bound to be seen as an improvement and salvation of the status quo owing to the questioning and criticism of the rationality of the content of modern liberal democratic social values.Therefore,O'Neill's constructivist ethics theory will inevitably presuppose the content of capitalist current liberal democratic values into its theoretical arguments and practical reasoning,and thus fall into the common ground of its teacher Rawls and other constructivists.Demonstration cycle in dilemma.However,Marxist scholars also have their own unique views and opinions on the nature of constructivism and its limitations.The political philosophical thoughts of Western constructivist ethics scholars represented by Rawls,O'Neill and others also share many similarities with what Marxism attaches importance to.For example,Marxist philosophy and constructivism are essentially practical philosophy.The starting point of its theory is derived from practice,and the ultimate goal is to better guide practice.They all have a firm belief in the values of freedom and equality;the objects of sympathy and concern are the masses of people at the bottom of the society;they have a strong critical spirit in their time background;they all have their own ideals for the design of future society.Form and so on.But the two also have an essential difference.This is also an important reason that caused Marx and O'Neill to go on a different path and hold different attitudes towards the real society,that is,different ideologies brought about by different values: Marxism theory It is a theoretical form that transcends capitalism.The Western constructivists represented by O'Neill and others are,in the final analysis,a kind of realistic attitude that is internalized in capitalist society.Starting from the “transcendence” of Marxist theory,it can provide some new solutions and solutions to the problems and problems existing in the analysis and resolution of constructivist ethics.At the same time,the "inherent reality" of the constructivism model represented by Rawls and O'Neill also enriches the application and improvement of Marxist theory in building a socialist,fair and law society in China.