Justice

A blindfolded woman holding a balance and a sword personifies one of our most significant virtues. We find Lady Justice in statues and paintings that adorn courts and other institutions of law, symbolizing strength and impartiality. Yet why do we valorize this virtue primarily as a quality of societies, and secondly as one of individual character? We can trace the virtue of justice to ancient Greece, where virtue ethics began its long evolution. There justice was seen as one of the most prominent virtues - and arguably the most important of the social virtues. With time, political philosophy diverted focus to understanding justice as a property of societies, and discussion of justice as a virtue of individuals diminished.
But justice as a virtue of individual character has, along with the other virtues, reasserted itself not only in philosophy but in social psychology and other empirical fields of study. This volume aims to demonstrate the breadth of that thinking and research. It comprises new essays solicited from philosophers and political theorists, psychologists, economists, biologists, and legal scholars. Each contribution focuses on some aspect of what makes people just, either by examining the science that explains the development of justice as a virtue, by highlighting virtue cultivation within distinctive traditions of empirical or philosophical thought, or by adopting a distinctive perspective on justice as an individual trait. As the volume shows, justice begins with the individual, and flows outward to make just laws and just societies.

Mark LeBar is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. His book, The Value of Living Well (Oxford University Press, 2013) provides a development of contemporary eudaimonist ethical theory. He is now working on extending that account of eudaimonism to questions about the nature and origin of the virtue of justice. He co-edited Equality and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and is the Editor of Social Theory and Practice.