HUMA 1825 Study Guide - Great Privilege, Brutal Assault, Distributive Justice
Document Summary
Justice can mean either lawfulness or fairness, since injustice is lawlessness and unfairness. The laws encourage people to behave virtuously, so the just person, who by definition is lawful, will necessarily be virtuous. Virtue differs from justice because it deals with one"s moral state, while justice deals with one"s relations with others. Universal justice is that state of a person who is generally lawful and fair. Particular justice deals with the divisible goods of honor, money, and safety, where one person"s gain of such goods results in a corresponding loss by someone else. There are two forms of particular justice: distributive and rectificatory. Distributive justice deals with the distribution of wealth among the members of a community. It employs geometric proportion: what each person receives is directly proportional to his or her merit, so a good person will receive more than a bad person.