Hannah Mount

John Gonzalez
ETH 250 01
16 September 2015
Justice
There are three forms of justice, social justice, individual justice,
and distributive justice. Social and distributive justice are essentially
inverses of one another, social justice is when the individual is serving
the common good or the community (taxes and jury duty) and
distributive justice is when those who have the power or are heading
up the community serve the people of that community (the
government). The biggest drawback to social justice is that its not
necessarily fair or equal, it is based on the needs of the community
and people are required to supply whatever is asked of them to serve
the common good. Individual justice on the other hand is only
concerned with the relationships and what is owed between individuals
or individual entities (i.e. corporations or countries or even something
as simple as agreeing to babysit for money). All three forms of justice
though work together to create a cycle, justice goes between
individuals who then give it back to the common good and the
common good supports its people (the individuals).
In On Moral Grounds, Maguire and Fargnoli present the term
socialindividuals to label the way humans function, were individuals

living in a society together. As socialindividuals we must pay our debts

to the society as a whole but also to other socialindividuals we may
have wronged or have made a contract with. Now, some individuals
may not find this fair, they believed they wronged someone and that
person deserved it so they shouldnt make amends or that society does
not deserve to take as much from them as it does (i.e. taxes). The
Foundational Moral Experience is based upon how people feel towards
certain values and an individuals view on what is just and what is not
is based on how that person feels towards the situation. There are
times when everyone should be able to look at a situation and based
on social, distributive, and individual justice say that there is one way
to handle that situation fairly but not everyone feels the same way,
hence were socialindividuals. So the FME and justice are frequently
working in opposition because our feelings are more often than not in
contradiction to what is realistically just. Now if humans had no
emotions then the FME could be eliminated and the world would
operate solely on the idea of justice, but morals and ethics are so much
a part of the way an individual feels that the world would be inhabited
by robots and every interaction and situation would be like doing math,
X happened so to be fair Y must occur and then well get Z which is a
fair solution. Its rather unfortunate that not every problem can be
solved so simply but the passion a person feels for their code of ethics

and what they believe should be the social code of ethics makes
society all the more interesting and exciting.
Its difficult to imagine a time where everyone would agree
that society is completely fair to everyone who resides within it
because that would involve not changing the rules of society but the
rewiring of every socialindividuals brain. So until there is some magical
revelation where everyone suddenly feels the same way, everyone
must work to maintain a balance between the individual and society.
There is a certain amount of stress that must be placed on the three
forms of justice and at times that may go against a group of peoples
FME, thats something else that must be recognized. It has been said
many times that life isnt fair and is an unfortunate truth given the way
morality and justice work and its not impossible for them to be fighting
on the same side but human beings are such fickle, emotional
creatures that they make it quite difficult for that happen, its like
cutting off ones own nose to spite their face.