Should Justice be the Supreme Virtue of Societies

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Should Justice be the Supreme Virtue of Societies?

Social justice is distributive. It operates under the principle that each person must get his or her due. However, it is quite contentious as to precisely what each person's due is and thus opens the debate as to what justice is. Moreover, once a definition of justice is agreed upon (in a particular state), the question may be raised of how important it is. Is justice salient, or is there another concept that transcends its authority? Some argue that an aggregative concept would best suit a first principle (if indeed there were one). I would argue that justice is indeed salient, that without it there would be no such thing as civil society and therefore that it is the supreme virtue of society.

Justice has long been heralded as key to the creation and maintenance of a society, yet why this is has been harder to pinpoint. Pascal argued in Pensees that "force without justice is tyranny." Underlying this contention is the idea that equality amongst all people is inherently good and should be sought after. This is because he assumes that tyranny is a bad thing and that in