What Is Justice?

Lol, class activity in English.

Thought it actually might be worth posting here.


Justice is defined as: “the quality of being just or fair”. This is inherently faulted from the beginning however, as justice only exists consistently in the mind of its beholder. The word fair itself exists only as truth in the eye of its beholder. What happens when ideas of what is “fair” are made public; or the quality of being “just”? These terms are just subjective, and are rather absurd to argue for, as while they prove to be logically possible, they may prove to be humanly impossible all the same.

The idea of justice is faulted then, as there is no inherent standard to compare justice against. Due to justice’s subjective nature, justice becomes victim to the “naturalistic fallacy”. That is, that justice falls under the flaw of seeking truth merely through moral righteousness, rather than that which is necessarily truth and logic. For example, based under the premises that Percy is in Melbourne, and that Melbourne is in Victoria, one would be logically inclined to believe that Percy is in Victoria. However, compare this truth value statement to that which concerns itself with justice, and morality. For example, based on the premises that there are many poverty stricken nations in the world, and that many countries have the financial means to end the poverty, one isn’t necessarily inclined to believe the conclusion (as just as it may be) that the countries with the financial means to end poverty should help out the poverty stricken countries.

However, maybe that is the very nature of justice, that justice is not meant to be applied logically, but maybe justice ought to constitute a balance, fairness, whether or not it may be truthful and logical. However, upon recognition of this notion, this notion that posits that justice should aim at what is fair and what is right (in the utilitarian sense, if anything), one realises that one becomes snared in the original problem of justice. That is, that justice exists only in the eye of the beholder, and that opinions of justice only exist arbitrarily. Even more controversial then, is the question “Who gets to decide what justice is?”

Certainly no human then, because isn’t it globally accepted that all humans are equal, and no human stands above on a high ground? So if not humans, who decides what is just? Are we to rely on entities such as “Paul the Octopus”? Do we let “God” decide what is just? Or does it seem much more appropriate to forget the idea of justice, forget ideas like “The Golden Mean”, and forget something that has only existed as a flawed human construct.

And justice is that, there is no natural justice, there is only nature. There is no poetic justice; there is only the turn of events. And there is no such thing as justice, there is only an inherently human selfishness, there is only a will that demands restitution for what we hold to be wrongdoings. There is only that will that disguises itself ever so sneakily into what is called “justice”.