Social justice

Social Justice is a concept that has fascinated philosophers ever since Plato rebuked the young Sophist, Thrasymachus, for asserting that justice was whatever the strongest decided it would be. In The Republic, Plato formalised the argument that an ideal state would rest on four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.

Related Topics:
Plato - Thrasymachus - The Republic - Ideal - State - Virtues

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The addition of the word social is to clearly distinguish Social Justice from the concept of justice as applied in the law — state-administered systems which label behaviour as unacceptable and enforce a formal mechanism of control may produce results that do not match the philosophical definitions of social justice — and from more informal concepts of justice embedded in systems of public policy and morality, and which differ from culture to culture and therefore lack universality. Social justice is also used to refer to the overall fairness of a society in its divisions and distributions of rewards and burdens and, as such, the phrase has been adopted by political parties with a redistributive agenda.

Related Topics:
Justice - Law - Public policy - Morality - Universality

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