The definition of justice

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I have never before had any reason to define the word justice, or really try to understand it. To me, justice has always just been punishing those who are wrong and helping those who are good... or something like that. The problem with such a "definition" is that it is subjective as to what is wrong and what is good. Everyone has their own understanding of these words, and I feel as if that is one of the main reasons injustice is so prominent; if you do not (or cannot) have a universal definition of right and wrong, good and bad, then you cannot really have a definition of justice.

Without a definition of justice, it's very unclear as to what constitutes injustice. Things such as race, gender and class privilege shape the definition and application of justice because to every person, justice has a different meaning. For instance, to those who are of the majority (caucasian) and of a higher class privilege than most people, justice will most likely be understood as favoring their interests. Really, the same goes for every different "class" of person; they are most likely to see justice as the affirmation and associated actions that benefit them and act in their favor. As written by Jared Silverman, a West Orange attorney, " One person's injustice can be another person's justice" (How to define 'social justice': It's all relative). It seems to be that a universal definition of justice is just not realistic. Because of this, humankind will probably always be fighting for justice. As much as I would like to think that justice is black-and-white and that the solution to injustice is to tell those who are committing unjust acts "Hey, that's unjust! Knock it off" (because surely, after telling them that they will understand their wrongdoing and change their ways), it is not that simple. It probably never will be.

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This page contains a single entry by Ashley 'eike' (: published on September 18, 2011 2:48 AM.

Marginalization was the previous entry in this blog.

Hannah Reichenbach, white privelage & justice is the next entry in this blog.

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