Suppose there is one piece of very desirable candy left at my house, and my young daughter asks for and is granted it. My even younger son wasn’t thinking about it at all, had in fact just been offered a treat and had chosen something else. But now that he sees that the last candy will be gone, he feels that his sister shouldn’t have it because her having it means he can’t. He feels it is unfair that she gets to have it. I happen to disagree with him: from my perspective, he had his chance, and he freely chose something else. He would not rather have the candy than what he chose; he just doesn’t want to be shut out of the candy either. Under those circumstances I think it is entirely fair the candy goes to the person who wants it above the other options on offer and who chose it at a time when it was not under contention.

What is really happening here is that my son and I are having a disagreement about justice. I think it is fairly typical of such disagreements, and so I think it will be helpful to notice a few features of our deadlock.

First, note that we do not disagree about whether or not justice is a matter of concern. My response to my son is not “fairness is not a valid category;” a response that might make me something of a Machiavellian or a Nietzschean, arguing that power or the will to power were all that matters. No, I agree with him that there is such a thing as fairness, and that it ought to be brought to bear in just the sorts of circumstances he is invoking. It is, in fact, a legitimate appeal to justice.

What we are actually disagreeing about is the nature of justice. We both wish to see justice done, but have differing ideas about what that entails. But even here we still have some common ground. For my son’s claims to justice are grounded in the notion of equal access to goods considered desirable by all parties involved. He ought, he thinks, to have the same access to the candy my daughter has. (Note that he does not wish her to have less access than him; he only doesn’t want her to have more.) Now I happen to agree with this as well: I firmly believe he should not have less access to the things that both he and my daughter consider desirable. If he can prove that I am unfairly limiting his access to those things, he will have won me over and brought about real change.

But now we come to where the real disagreement lies: our understanding of what counts as equal access. However we have come to this point, there is only one candy left, and he wants to guarantee his access to it. He is not yet saying it ought to go to him instead of to her; he just feels that her choosing it at a time when he is not in a position to choose it predetermines the question. His access is being de facto limited by the exhausting of the good in question. The heart of his argument is essentially that he was not thinking about the candy, that he doesn’t want it right now, but that he should not therefore be shut out from it forever.

Here is where I disagree. I think that he has had equal access to it. He could have chosen it for his treat, but he preferred ice cream instead. That was his moment of access, and he chose not to take advantage of it. I would be sympathetic to an argument that he forgot about it, and so his choice was not made in full knowledge; but asked if he would rather have the candy or the ice cream, he doubles down on the ice cream. To me, this shows there is a real preference here. My daughter, on the other hand, was presented with the same choice: candy or ice cream. She chose the candy. To my mind, they both had equal access, and he, by prioritizing something else, ceded his interest in the candy to his sister. This is not an instance of unfairness, but of fairness.

Now whether you agree with me or with my son, this incident is a good example of how these types of discussions go. And from the beginning, it is very helpful to keep in mind what we share in common. When two groups disagree about justice, whether they are Republicans and Democrats or coming from different cultures or subcultures, it is not that they don’t think there is such a thing as justice, or that it is not important; it is that they disagree about what it would mean to act justly in the instance under discussion. This common regard for justice is the condition of the possibility of actually disputing whether something is just at all; without it, one might as well forego the conversation, as the discussion will be too mired in equivocation to even count as a dialogue.

Now I take it that this common regard for justice is a sign that we at least believe justice to be transcendent of all local contexts (friendships, families, organizations, cultures, eras). I also think that the existence not only of genuine moral disagreements like the one my son and I are having as well as of moral quandaries, where a person is not even sure within herself what is to be done, are evidence that we only know this transcendent justice imperfectly. We see it in a glass, and darkly. In that circumstance, nothing could be more fitting than to work together, from the bits of insight we each have arrived at, to try to reconstruct the image of the whole. And if light should shine on our efforts from the transcendent realm above, giving us clues and filling in blanks, that ought only to increase our commitment to what can only be a common project if it is to go well.

Junius Johnson, PhD, is executive director of Junius Johnson Academics [http://www.academics.juniusjohnson.com]

 

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