《哈佛大学公开课Justice-What#39;s the right thing to do 10》.pdf

Justice 10 The Good Citizen / Freedom vs. Fit We turn to Aristotle after examining theories, modern theories, of justice that try to detach considerations of justice and rights from questions of moral desert and virtue. Aristotle disagrees with Kant and Rawls. Aristotle argues that justice is a matter of giving people what they deserve. And the central idea of Aristotles theory of justice is that in reasoning about justice and rights we have, unavoidably, to reason about the purpose, or the end, or the telos, of social practices in institutions. Yes, justice requires giving equal things to equal persons, but the question immediately arises, in any debate about justice, equal in what respect? And Aristotle says we need to fill in the answer to that q uestion by looking to the characteristic end, or the essential nature, or the purpose, of the thing were distributing. And so we discussed Aristotles example of flutes; who should get the best flutes. And Aristotles answer was the best flute-players. The best flute-player should get the best flute because thats the way of honoring the excellence of flute playing. Its a way of rewarding the virtue of the great flute-player. Whats interesting though, and this is what we are going to explore today, is that its not quite so easy to dispense with teleological reasoning when were thinking about social institutions and political practices. In general its hard to do without teleology when were thinking about ethics, justice, and moral argument. At least that is Aristotles claim. And I would like to bring out the force in Aristotles claim by considering two examples. One is an example that Aristotle spends quite a bit of time discussing; the case of politics. How should political offices and honors, how should political rule be distributed? The second example is a contemporary deb