Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their ApplicationsThornton, William Thomas
Philosophy
Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications
Thornton, William Thomas
Metaphysics; Utilitarianism
which she would not show even to a lunatic, but exacts inexorably full
reparation for what he has done, requiring him commonly to pay in kind
so far as he can, and to make up with his person for any deficiency.
Within the limits thus marked out she is well content that, with the one
object which alone justifies punishment, other secondary objects with
which justice has no concern, should be combined. She is well content
that the same penal measures as are called for in order to compensate
the injured party, should also subserve the reform of the criminal, and
serve as general deterrents from crime. But she protests against the
notion that these, or any other objects, can ever excuse the
infringement of any ordinance of justice, or of any of even a criminal's
rights which the criminal has not forfeited by crime. Justice, in short,
in her penal, as in all her other arrangements, has but to adhere
closely to the anti-utilitarian principles of rendering what is due, and
of taking nothing that is not due, in order to steer clear of all the
difficulties by which the ablest and most accomplished Utilitarians
confess themselves staggered.
A second greatly vexed question is, 'whether, in a co-operative
industrial association, it is just or not that talent or skill should
give a title to superior remuneration? On the one side it is argued that
all who do the best they can deserve equally well; ... that superior
abilities have already advantages more than enough in the admiration
they excite, the personal influence they command, and the internal
satisfaction attending them; and that society is bound in justice rather
to make compensation to the less favoured for this unmerited inequality
of advantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary side, that society,
receiving more from the more efficient labourer, owes him a larger
return; that a larger share of the joint result being actually his work,
not to allow his claim to it is a sort of robbery; that if he is only
to receive as much as others he can only be required to produce as
much.'[17] 'Between these appeals to conflicting principles of justice,'
Mr. Mill considers it impossible to decide. 'Justice,' he says, 'has in
this case two sides to it, which it is impossible to bring into harmony,
and the two disputants have chosen opposite sides; the one looks to what
it is just that the individual should receive, the other to what it is
just that the community should give. Each from his own point of view is
unanswerable, and any choice between them, on grounds of justice, must
be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the
preference.'[18] The form of justice depicted with this Janus-like
aspect can scarcely be the utilitarian, since, whoever, on utilitarian
grounds, selects one of its sides, must perforce, on the same grounds,
reject the other. Still, it is spoken of as genuine justice, wherefore
that there is a justice independent of utility, would seem, after all,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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