Concerning the nature of justice, one of our distinguished jurists has said that justice delayed is justice denied. With respect to education and justice, we can say similarly, though without our jurist’s alliteration, that justice aimed at is justice missed. In other words, education cannot be for justice.

Before looking directly at justice, consider a parallel case from Aristotle on Sparta’s attempt at “education for courage.” In his Politics, Aristotle criticized the Spartan city-state’s program of education because it did not aim its educational practices at the right thing. Instead, Sparta attempted to produce courageous citizens by organizing its education around the virtue of courage. Good soldiers follow orders, of course, but they also need to be courageous, and Sparta believed that the way to produce courageous soldiers was to aim at and emphasize the virtue of courage.

But Aristotle, playing a variation on an educational theme begun by Socrates and Plato, argued that the virtues come either all together or not at all. That is, a person without all the virtues does not really have any of them. (See his Nicomachean Ethics, book 6, chapters 12 and 13.) In the case of courage, Aristotle argued that the result of the Spartan attempt to develop the virtue of courage alone led them to produce not even courage but just a kind of savagery in its place (Politics, book 8, chapter 4). Furthermore, having educated its citizens for war, Sparta fell apart in peace because its citizens had not been educated to be happy in times of war and peace (Politics, book 7, chapter 14).

The case of education for justice is similar. If students, parents, teachers, schools, and universities aim at producing simply people who are just, they will miss other aspects of human life. For example, to aim at only justice in education is a mistake because friendship is not governed by the principles of justice. Again, referring to Aristotle, “between friends, there is no need for justice, but people who are just still need the quality of friendship” (Nicomachean Ethics, book 8, chapter 1). This is not to say that friendship is inconsistent with or contrary to justice but that to be friends requires more than being just to one another. Thus, to set justice as the goal of education aims too low. Such an education will not teach students to be good friends, and since friendship is central to a good life, such an education will fall short of educating students for a good life.

One reason for this is that educating students for happiness rather than merely for justice has to account for all the aspects of human life. Justice is significantly about how we relate to one another and treating one another with justice has to assume that one has, internally as it were, good character. But if educators want to help students develop that good character, they will have to include those things as part of the aim of education and, at least in practice, reject the notion of justice as their exclusive aim.

It would be bad enough to aim at justice and miss it, but aiming at justice in education wouldn’t mean only that we would fail to become just. Recall that Sparta’s attempt at educating for courage produced a caricature of courage; similarly, attempting to educate for justice will produce in students character traits that merely look like justice or even distort it. For example, those who fixate on justice might be overly ready to do violence to enforce what they think is just, but that readiness will not be part of genuine justice. Or they are likely to apply standards of justice in inappropriate ways or to be rigorous without reason for the sake of rigor. Another possibility is that one who has developed an inadequate sense of justice might tend to focus on distributive justice—giving to each their due—at the expense of retributive justice—restoring to each their due if they have been wrongly deprived of it—or vice versa. All these ways of falling short of true justice can come about if one’s education is directed at justice.

Justice is good and becoming just is good. All the virtues are good. But a single virtue cannot suffice as the aim of education. Much less can things like cultural heritage, patriotism, or aesthetic appreciation serve as an adequate aim; patriotism is good—but it is too narrow to serve as a foundation for a broad and true education, and aiming at anything less than the proper end of education will result in distorted versions of the good things we want to bring about in the first place: savagery in place of courage, legalism instead of justice.

One last point concerning virtue deserves the serious attention of all students and educators, even though it is a radical thesis. This is the claim that no virtue of character is truly such unless it is accompanied by all the virtues of character and unified by wisdom. Courage, for example, is not genuine courage unless it is present in someone who possesses moderation, generosity, truthfulness, wisdom, and all the rest. Even if educators think that this thesis is implausible, they at least ought to reconsider how much their thinking about education has been affected by a tendency toward thinking compartmentally. However, if educators go about their tasks as if the thesis were true, they will be less likely to reproduce an essentially Spartan form of education, for if we aim at less than all the virtues, we won’t acquire any.

Note: For more on the last point, see Bonnie Kent, “Moral Growth and the Unity of the Virtues,” in Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, edited by David Carr and Jan Steutel, pages 109–124 (Routledge, 1999).

 

By Gary Hartenburg, associate professor of philosophy, director of the Honors College at Houston Christian University, and author of Aristotle: Education for Virtue and Leisure, available from Classical Academic Press.

 

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