More to Virtue than Justice
What does it mean to be a good person? Most modern answers to this question invoke some notion of justice: a “rightness” towards other persons. The libertarian appeals to a certain kind of justice in defense of individual rights; the socialist invokes distributive justice to make demands about what society owes to individuals. This emphasis on justice has strong and ancient precedents. Plato and Aristotle both categorize justice among the four “hinge” or “cardinal” (cardo) virtues. So too, the Psalmist tells us that “[God] governs the world with justice and the peoples with faithfulness” (Ps 96:13). But while ancient minds understood justice as one virtue among many, we often tend to view justice as the sole, super-virtue by which we measure all human action. This view, however, not only harms the other cardinal virtues—temperance, fortitude, and prudence—but it also distorts justice itself, re-ordering it into something very different.
Temperance, the cardinal virtue which moderates food, drink, sex, and other goods, may be the most foreign virtue to us today. The temperate man or woman is someone who has trained their desires through reason to balance the good things of the world. Although prized by athletes or dieticians, this virtue does not really have a place in our modern conception of goodness. We might place a certain moral currency in the pursuit of health and healthy eating, but it would be strange to call the unhealthy or intemperate man vicious. In the cases of sex and alcohol, we see more fingers extended in judgement. But few secular Americans would consider the man who sleeps around or the woman who habitually drinks too much to be vicious simply by virtue of a breach of temperance. If they are considered vicious, it is only because their actions represent a more fundamental breach in justice: the man who cheats on his wife, the drinker who neglects her children.
Our other “moderating” virtue, fortitude, has also been subsumed into the domain of justice. Fortitude helps us remain steadfast in the face of trials, helps us cling to the good when the good becomes difficult. The soldier and the martyr exemplify this virtue in obvious and often dramatic ways. But this virtue is not limited to heroics. Rather, fortitude empowers patience in the face of everyday trials, and allows us to stand up for the truth and for the goods of others. Like its sister virtue, however, fortitude is rarely viewed as essential to modern moral life. Although the modern may admire people who are brave or patient, we hardly consider bravery or patience essential to being good. We ask ourselves: what is the purpose of patience? And we respond: we are patient only so that we do not manifest our frustration in a way that harms or offends other people. Similarly: why should we honor those who stand up in the face of adversity? Only because some right is being secured. In either case, fortitude is not something appreciated on its own terms. Rather, we value only those aspects of the virtue which rely back upon the foundation of justice.
After justice, temperance, and fortitude, we have prudence, the “charioteer” of the four cardinal virtues. Prudence gives us the ability to choose actions rightly. Prudence is what guides us through the question of how and by what means we are to perform just, brave, and temperate acts. While the other virtues seek after the good (whether that be the right amount to eat, or what to do in the face of adversity), prudence commands what is true—it guides with the light of the human mind to show the ways in which justice, temperance, and fortitude ought to be pursued. Prudence, too, has become decentralized in our society. We live in a world which heralds diving into things without thinking on the one hand, and yet taking our sweet time to make decisions on the other. This dual tendency ultimately devalues reason’s role in the moral life, making just action the sole measure of goodness.
Modern man prizes justice above the other virtues. This alone is not necessarily dangerous. The real danger is that we have distorted justice in our common way of thinking. For the ancients and for Thomas Aquinas, justice requires some sort of jus, or right relationship between persons. This jus varies depending on the relationship under consideration. There is a different jus between parent and child than beggar and benefactor. Parents owe their children food, clothing, and shelter, insofar as they are able to provide them. Yet we would not say that the benefactor who gives his spare change to the beggar is being unjust because he did not take him into his home. The reason for this is because the jus in each case is different.
The modern shift towards understanding jus as a right has affected our ability to consider justice relationally. The rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness do not exist as abstract notions; they must be understood in the context of lived relationships. We can see this clearly in recent hot button debates over police brutality, sexuality, and gender, where the focus is almost universally placed upon what is owed to particular persons, and not necessarily on the nature of the relationships themselves. In such a society, justice becomes dehumanized by both sides of the aisle: the severity of theft is merely measured by the amount of money stolen, not by the human relationship which has been fractured. Rarely do we ask what the right relationship between officer and citizen or between parent and child actually is. Justice is our last virtue in modernity; but we have taken the jus out of justice.
Justice is not the sole classical virtue. But it remains extremely important. St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae spills more ink on justice than any other virtue. This virtue governs our relationships with other people; it is the standard by which we measure what ought to be given and done to others. Every action which we do to human persons and institutions, to our possessions and those of our neighbor, to our planet, and even our creator falls under the purview of justice. In each of these cases, we render to others their due. We treat others as we want to be treated. So too, all human laws deal with our relationship between people and the common good of society. This is why this great virtue is often depicted with a set of scales.
While modern conceptions of justice between men and women may be distorted, there remains a higher justice that cannot be distorted: a justice we do not render, but is imputed to us. This justice, the justice of God, makes us just by his grace (Rom 3:24). This is a justice which makes us just, which enables us to be just to other created persons; to be prudent, brave, and temperate to ourselves. In this way, the slogan “no justice, no peace” rings true. For it is only when our justice becomes God’s justice that there is true peace—on earth, and in the life to come.
Br. Nicodemus Thomas joined the Order of Preachers in 2018. He is currently a student brother studying for the priesthood at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC.