Preferring justice

by Eric M. Cave

Rules of justice would benefit the members of a community little if individuals lacked an effective desire to comply with these rules. But from the individual point of view, the sense of justice appears to do no more than to limit what individuals can do in pursuit of their ends and open them to exploitation. Realizing this, we might each wonder whether the sense of justice is anything more than an instrument of social control, something we would each be better off without. And it is a short step from such worries to unjust action and all of its attendant costs. Hence, we require a successful justification of the sense of justice to answer pernicious doubts about this disposition arising from the individual point of view. In Preferring Justice, Eric Cave argues that, as flawed agents of differing abilities choosing under partial information, most of us require the sense of justice to advance maximally whatever ends we have apart from the end of acting justly.