Justice as a virtue was originally understood to be a property ofindividuals or, more precisely, of an individual’s character.Today, we tend to think of the virtue of justice primarily asattaching to social institutions. And insofar as we do think ofjustice as an individual virtue, we regard it as having a (grounding)reference to social justice. But the original idea, that justice is anindividual virtue, remains worthy of attention and is the focus ofthis entry. (Justice as a virtue of societies, polities, and theirinstitutions is addressed in the entry ondistributive justice; see, also, the general entry onjustice.)

From the start, the idea of justice as a virtue of individuals facedseveral challenges. First, “justice as a virtue” isambiguous as between individual and social applications. Rawls andothers regard justice as “the first virtue of socialinstitutions” (1971, p. 3), but Rawls is not the first tothink of justice as a virtue of social institutions or societies— Plato was there long before him. So the application toindividuals has always been subject to eclipse. That said,individuals typically live as members of political communities, so thesocietal dimension of justice as a virtue will never be long out ofview (Woodruff 2018).

A second challenge is that even the idea of justice as a virtue ofindividuals seems ill-defined in regard to scope. Plato in theRepublic treats justice as an overarching virtue of bothindividuals and societies, so that almost every issue he (or we) wouldregard as ethical comes in under the notion of justice. But in laterusages justice covers only part of individual morality, and wedon’t readily think of someone asunjust if they lie orneglect their children — other epithets more readily spring tomind. We have come to think of individual justice as first and mostreadily regarding moral issues having to do with distributions ofgoods or property. It is, we think, unjust for someone to steal frompeople or not to give them what he owes them, and it is also unjust ifsomeone called upon to distribute something good (or bad or both)among members of a group uses an arbitrary or unjustified basis formaking the distribution. Discussion of justice as an individual virtueoften centers on questions, therefore, about property and otherdistributable goods, though the broader sense first broached by Platonever entirely disappears. Still there is disagreement over whetherthe broader distributive questions associated with political moralityhave subordinated or obscured the earlier Greek concerns with justiceas a virtue of individual character (Hursthouse 1999, pp. 5–6;Coope 2007; Lu 2017).

Finally, since justice is so important in just about every moraltheory, and just about every moral theory has an account of virtue, inone sense there are as many accounts of a virtue of justice as thereare moral theories. Consider, for example, an account likeRawls’s (§3 below) in which specifying the norms of justiceis the primary task of theory, and an individual virtue follows in asubsidiary way as a matter of serving and supporting those norms(Anderson 2010, p. 2; LeBar 2014). Call such a structure (followingLeBar 2025) a “norm-prior” account. But the firsttreatments of justice as a virtue of individuals in Western sourceswere in Plato and Aristotle, who treated justice as one of a number ofvirtues of character and intellect. They modeled a kind of ethicaltheory that is distinctive in making virtue — rather thanoutcomes or principles of action — the fundamental locus ofmoral assessment. Watson (1990, §4) calls this the “claimof explanatory primacy” for virtue. Here the focus will be onsuch virtue ethical accounts, in which traits of character are theprimary locus of moral assessment (Hursthouse and Pettigrove 2023).Even among these, however, we find a divide between norm-prioraccounts and those that take the notion of virtue to somehow helpdetermine the contents of the norms of justice. Call such a structurea “virtue-prior” account. Accounts on which the value of avirtue of justice is instrumental to realizing some other value arealways norm-prior. Non-instrumental virtue ethical theories includeboth norm-prior and virtue-prior frameworks.

With these points in mind, we can lay out a taxonomy of accounts of anindividual virtue of justice and consider its bearing on related moralissues.

• 1. Taxonomy
  • 1.1 Non-Instrumental Virtue Ethical Theories
  • 1.2 Instrumental Theories
  • 1.3 Other Non-Instrumental Theories
• 2. Justice and Other Virtues
• 3. Justice as a Virtue of Societies
• 4. Social Psychology and Justice
• 5. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Taxonomy

Whereas on theories of virtue along the lines of ancient accounts suchas Plato’s and Aristotle’s, virtue is seen as valuable forits own sake, in a second category of theories an individual virtue ofjustice is construed as valuable instrumentally, to the achievement ofother goods. Epicurus and Hume offer notable theories of thissort.

Finally, there are theories that see virtue (in particular a virtue ofjustice) as valuable for its own sake, but not as the fundamentallocus of moral assessment — denying Watson’s claim of“explanatory priority” for virtue. We’ll explorethese categories in roughly historical order.

1.1 Non-Instrumental Virtue Ethical Theories

As indicated above, Western philosophical discussion of justice beginswith Plato, who treats the topic in a variety of dialogues, mostsubstantially inRepublic. There Plato offers the firstsustained discussion of the nature of justice (dikaiosune)and its relation toeudaimonia (happiness), as a departurefrom three alternatives receiving varying degrees of attention. First,there is a traditionalist conception of justice (speaking the truthand paying your debts). Second, Plato has Socrates rebut the Sophistconception of justice which built on a distinction between nature(phusis) and convention (nomos) As Plato has thisconception articulated by Thrasymachus in Book I, justice is simplythe “advantage of the stronger,” not tracking anythinglike the sort of value attributed to it by traditionalists. Finally,Plato has Socrates confront a conventionalist conception of justicethat anticipates modern contractarian views, in which justice —forbearing preying on others in exchange for not being preyed on bythem — is a “second-best alternative,” not as goodas being able to prey at will upon others, but better than being theprey of others (338e). These last two challenges give rise to thecentral question of the book: to whose advantage is justice? Would wereally be better off being unjust if we could get away with it?Plato’s negative answer to that question is the project of thebalance of the work.

Plato’s method involves the provocative idea that justice in thecity (polis) is the same thing as justice in the individual,just “writ large.” There are good reasons to worry aboutthat assumption (Williams 1973; Keyt 2006). But in Plato’ssociology of the city, there are three classes engaged in a kind ofdivision of labor. There is a guardian class which rules, a class of“auxiliaries” that provide the force behind the ruling,and the class of merchants that produce to satisfy the needs anddesires of the city. Similarly, the psyche of the individual has threeparts: a reasoning part to rule, a “spirited” part tosupport the rule of reason, and an appetitive part. Plato findsjustice in the city to consist in each part “having and doingits own” (443b), and since the smaller is just like the larger,justice in the individual consists in each part of the psyche doingits own work (441e). (This grounds the idea, later enshrined byJustinian, that justice is “giving every man his due;”Justinian I.i). Further, Plato argues, justice is a master virtue in asense, because in both the city and the psyche, if each part is doingits own job, both city and psyche will also have wisdom, courage, andmoderation or self-discipline (Woodruff 2012). This conception ofjustice sustains the contrast with the conventionalist view advocatedby the Sophists. On the other hand, at least initially it leaves it anopen question whether the just individual refrains from such sociallyproscribed actions as lying, killing, and stealing. Plato eventuallyseeks to show that someone with a healthy, harmonious soulwouldn’t lie, kill, or steal, but it is not clear that argumentsucceeds, nor, if it does, that that is the right understanding of whywe ought not to lie, kill, or steal (Sachs 1963; LeBar 2013, ch.XII).

Plato gives a somewhat different treatment of justice elsewhere. InGorgias, it is a matter of treating other human beingsappropriately (507b). InCrito, Socrates’ eponymousfriend attempts to persuade Socrates to accept his (Crito’s)offer to bribe a way out of the death sentence Socrates is waiting tohave executed. Here Plato’s arguments first associate the justlife with the good life, thus the life Socrates has most reason tolive. Here as in theRepublic for Plato justice as a virtueis desirable not as a means to happiness but as the constitutive heartof it. And justice, he then argues, requires not only not inflictingwrong or injury on others, even in response to wrongs from them, butfulfilling one’s agreements, and — in particular —abiding by one’s (tacit or explicit) agreement to abide by thelaws of the city unless one can persuade it to change them. Of course,justice cannot require one to abide by laws that require one to actunjustly, as Socrates’ own case (as characterized inApology) shows (Kraut 1984).

It is worth noting (as Johnston 2011 observes) that even ifPlato’s is the firstphilosophical discussion ofjustice, a concern with what an individual is due as a matter ofjustice is a driving issue in Homer’sIliad, thoughthere is no counterpart concern there with justice as a property of asociety or tribe. So even Plato’s philosophical concerns arebuilding on well-established questions about what justice requires ofus in our treatment of one another.

Aristotle does not see the virtue of justice in quite thecomprehensive sense Plato does, though like Plato he sees virtuegenerally as a crucial constituent of the good life. At the same timeAristotle insists that virtue is desirable for its own sake, as wellas for the sake of happiness. He treats justice as a virtue ofcharacter (in the entirety of one of the ten books of theNicomachean Ethics, also common to theEudemianEthics), and as a virtue of constitutions and politicalarrangements (inPolitics). The question naturally arises asto the relation between these forms of justice. Aristotle seems tothink they are closely related, without clearly being applications ofthe same concept. As the latter is a conception of political justice,we will focus here on the former. Justice as a personal virtue followsAristotle’s model for virtues of character, in which the virtuelies as an intermediate or mean between vices of excess and defect(Nicomachean Ethics V). While he grants that there is a“general” sense of justice in which justice is coincidentwith complete virtue, there is a “particular” sense inwhich it is concerned with not overreaching (pleonexia). Itis not clear, however, exactly how Aristotle understands thisarrangement, or the nature of the vices of excess and defect whichthis “particular” justice is to counteract. One veryplausible reading has it that justice is opposed to a desire formaldistribution of “goods of fortune” such as money, fame,or honor (Williams 1980; Curzer 1995). On another it is opposed to aninsufficient attention to others’ rights (Foot 1988, p. 9). Onstill another it focuses on the goods of others, or common goods(O’Connor 1988; Miller 1995; Jagannaathan 2021, 2024), perhapstied to law as a matter of the norms of society (Lee 2014), ordistributions congruent to the stability of society (Hirji 2018).

These issues remain open in part because Aristotle seems mostinterested in establishing a conception of the formalstructure of “particular” justice, which seems toreflect a conception of desert. He distinguishes between justice indistribution and justice in rectification. The former, he claims,adheres to a kind of proportionality, in which what each deserves isproportional to the relationship between the contributions. If Acontributes twice as much as B (of whatever the metric of merit isrelevant in some particular case), then A’s return ought also tobe twice B’s. This conception of distributive justice obviouslylends itself to “goods of fortune” — and to somegoods, like wealth, more obviously than others — but it need notin principle be confined to such goods, although the examplesAristotle provides suggest such applications. Similarly, justice inrectification involves a sort of “arithmeticalproportion.” If C defrauds D by amount X, then justice requiresdepriving C of X and restoring X to D, as a matter of reestablishing akind of equality between them.

These structural devices are elegant and attractive, but they leaveopen a number of questions (LeBar, 2020). First, as indicated by therange of alternatives above, to what are we to suppose they apply?

Second, in what way do they figure into the nature of the person whois just in the particular sense, and how are they related to the normsof justice? Aristotle seems torn between a conception of justice as avirtue in his distinctive understanding of what a virtue is —one rooted in the doctrine of the mean, and with a requirement thatone have all the virtues to have any (Nicomachean EthicsVI.13) — and justice as having the form of a formal normativestructure. Interpretations of Aristotle here can be found on bothsides of the virtue-prior/norm-prior taxonomy mentioned above. On thenorm-prior side, Curzer (2016) and Williams (1980) understandAristotle’s conception of the virtue of justice as oneresponsive to independent norms of various sorts, with Curzer going sofar as to maintain that the norms (rules) to which the other virtuesrespond arealso derived from the norms of justice. On theother hand, Berryman (2019) argues for what we are calling avirtue-prior approach to Aristotle’s practical thought moregenerally, as does Russell (2009). LeBar (2020, 2025) argues thatAristotle himself offers a norm-prior approach to the“particular” virtue of justice inNicomacheanEthics V, but a virtue-prior approach to the other virtues ofcharacter, and that a virtue-prior approach to justice as well wouldbe more consistent with his fundamental commitments. All this is toleave aside questions of the relation between this“particular” sense of justice and political justice, andthe role of the virtue of justice in the individual as it contributesto justice in the polis (Jagannathan, 2024).

Though the Stoic approach to ethics was also virtue-theoretical, theyhad remarkably little to say about justice (Annas 1993, p. 311).However, all of these are Western treatments of an individual virtueof justice. Sim makes the case that there are informative parallelsbetween the Confucian treatment of the virtues (in particular, yi) andthe virtue of justice as adumbrated in Plato and Aristotle (Sim 2007,2018).

There are also recent ventures in the spirit of the ancient Greekthinking about the individual virtue of justice. Rasmussen and Den Uyl(2005) argue for two interpersonal senses of justice (pp.160–63). One is the familiar Aristotelian virtue. The second isa “metanormative” principle governing the institutions andlegal frameworks in which individual agents (just and otherwise) livetheir lives and exercise their practical agency. The second of thesesenses of interpersonal justice does not draw its content from theexercise of virtue, but rather makes a place for it, in a norm-priorway. The former does depend on virtue overall (including the exerciseof practical wisdom) for its demands, but these are construed broadlyin the traditional way of rendering to each his due. Bloomfield (2011,2024) similarly suggests extending the Aristotelian virtue of justice,arguing that self-respect is necessary for happiness, and treatingoneself fairly requires treating oneself fairly, as one treats othersfairly – a single standard for self and others – as aproperty of justice as individuals.

On the other hand, Wolterstorff (2008) argues that the eudaimonism ofGreek thought prevents a proper appreciation for the nature andsignificance of justice and rights. Whether there is theoretical spaceremaining for a virtue of justice is not a question Wolterstorffconsiders, but he does believe there is no hope for an adequate gripon justice in an Aristotelian or Stoic framework.

Recent thinkers have grappled with the question of priority betweenformal normative principle and virtue that vexes our reading ofAristotle, and offered solutions that for the most part subordinatethe virtue of justice to the prior notion of the justice ofdistributions, as Aristotle himself seems to have suggested. Asindicated above, Bernard Williams claims explicitly that this is so(Williams 1980, p. 197), as does David Wiggins, in an attempt to bringa “pre-liberal,” Aristotelian conception of justice tobear on modern liberal conceptions, a la Kant and Rawls (Wiggins2004). To do so, Wiggins distinguishes three senses of justice: (A) amatter of outcomes or states of affairs in which each gets what isdue; (B) a disposition to promote justice (A); (C) a condition of thepolis in virtue of which (A) is realized. Wiggins claims that theproper outcome of this collision of conceptions is one that recognizesa form oflogical priority of justice (A) over justice (B)(p. 489). At the same time, against Williams he insists that thenormative demands of justice (A) are “comprehensible” onlywithin the perspective of a person with justice (B). And in fact heclaims that a necessary condition on acts and outcomes satisfying thenorms of justice (A) is that they be recognized to be so by those withthe virtue of justice (B). Wiggins’ thinking here is nottransparent, but perhaps the thought is that the logical point ispurely formal: someone with justice (B) must, in act or judgingjustly, be responding to some norm which counts as justice (A). But,asmerely formal, that tells us nothing about the substantivecontent of that norm. To get that, we have ineliminable need to referto the judgment of the person with justice (B). That marks a wayperhaps of returning to a virtue-prior understanding of the standardsfor justice as a virtue.

LeBar (2013, 2014, 2020, 2025) takes a similar tack in attempting toincorporate Kantian and post-Kantian insights into just demands on thetreatment of others into an Aristotelian virtue framework. On hisview, there is no way to specify the contents of the demands ofjustice, or to spell out its norms, independently of the widerpossession and exercise of the virtues, including the virtue ofpractical wisdom. At the same time, what the virtuous and just personsees, in inhabiting a social world with equals in moral standing, arethe norms which have become associated with the liberal conception:the equal authority to obligate others and hold them accountable. Inthat way his view typifies the virtue-prior approach.

John Hacker-Wright argues that what is needed to replace a“legalistic” concern with moral status (as on modernliberal conceptions of justice) is instead an ethic of virtue with adifferent conception of the virtue of justice. Instead of a concernfor the resolution of claims in something like reciprocal, contractualrelations, Hacker-Wright’s conception of the virtue of justiceis a matter of sensitivity to “vulnerability of value” inthings, animate and otherwise. Thus, the threat of unjust —vicious – wronging hangs not only over people who aresufficiently cognitively impaired so as not to perceive insults, butalso corpses, animals, and even rare and valuable rock formations (p.463). This counts as a sense of justice in that, onHacker-Wright’s view it is not merely that we can act wrongly orviciously toward such entities, but (following Midgley 1983) that theycan be wronged by us by our doing so. Justice thus construed is amatter of non-reciprocal moral relations. However, while Hacker-Wrightclaims that on a virtue ethic “The character of the agent isrecognized as ineliminable in picking out facts as they figure in ourmoral deliberation,” this does not strictly speaking seem to betrue, as prior to virtue there isvalue which it is up to thejust or virtuous person to respond with sensitivity (Hacker-Wright2007, pp. 461, 463, 464). In this way Hacker-Wright’s view seemsin the end to be an instance of a norm-prior view of the virtue ofjustice.

1.2 Instrumental Theories

By way of comparison with the other Greek eudaimonists,Epicurus’ conception of the role of the virtue of justicereflects in part his distinctive understanding ofeudaimonia,or happiness. For Epicurus this consisted inataraxia —tranquility, or freedom from disturbance. Given that the good life isthe life without disturbance, justice plays a key instrumental role.One might, Epicurus thinks, withdraw entirely from human society toavoid disturbance, but the alternative is to live socially under termswhich secure the avoidance of disturbance. This is the structure ofthe ideal Epicurean community, in which each forbears aggression(Armstrong 1997, Thrasher 2013). Justice is a matter of keepingagreements generally, and in particular the agreement not to harm ortransgress social norms.

In this way Epicurus offers a conception of the virtue of justice thatharmonizes both its personal and its political dimensions. Thepersonal virtue consists in the motivation to abide by a contract notto aggress against or harm others. The political virtue inheres in apolity in which such norms regulate the conduct of its citizens, andthese two dimensions of justice as a virtue reinforce each other.However, its value is as merely instrumental to this further good ofhappiness.

Hume advances a similar account of the value of the virtue of justice,in both theTreatise and theEnquiries. Virtue, Humemaintains, is a matter of “some quality or character,”produced in one by “durable principles of the mind”(TIII.iii.I, p. 575). We deem such qualities virtues not, ason the ancient Greek view, because they conduce to the happiness ofthe person who has them, but because they have a “tendency tothe good of mankind” or society. (TIII.iii.I). Thisservice renders them pleasing to our “moral tastes”: ourapprobation, Hume tells us, has its source in “view of acharacter, which is naturally fitted to be useful to others, or to theperson himself, or which is agreeable to others, or to the personhimself” (T III.iii.I, 591). We can think of that asthe criterion some quality of character must have to be deemed avirtue. What counts as virtuous is an upshot of, and not the sourceof, the normative foundations of this view.

By Hume’s time thecontent of justice as a virtue hasshifted as well. In Hume’s treatment, the focus of justice isproperty — relations of “mine and thine.” It is a“cautious, jealous” virtue in the sense that it is focusedon the sorts of exclusionary powers that are characteristic ofproperty rules and relations. We may always be aspiring for more butjustice aims at the preservation and security of what one has already(E III.1, p. 184). So the virtue of justice, as Hume thinksof it, will in the main consist of a quality in one which disposes oneto observe and uphold these rules.

What Hume wants to show is, first, that we can have such a dispositionor quality (that is, that it is possible for us to have a quality orcharacter to observe the rules of justice), and, second, that such aquality would count as a virtue, given his criteria. His approach tothese questions in theTreatise is framed by a problem he hasset up himself. To appreciate that problem, we have to step back toHume’s broader view about moral motivation. Hume had argued thatmoral principles “are not conclusions of our reason”(T III.i.I); instead, they are “more properly felt thanjudg’d of” (TIII.i.II). Morality, and virtue, isa matter of sentiments or passions. Why? Hume marshals a number ofarguments to this effect which are not relevant to our purposes. Thebasic reason is that the functional roles of reason and the passionsare markedly different, in Hume’s view. The task of reason is todiscover truth or falsehood, in “relations of ideas” or“matters of facts” (T III.i.I); as such, itutterly lacks the capacity to move us to action. Only the passions cando that (TII.iii.III). The passions, on the other hand, haveno representational content whatsoever; they are “originalexistences” (T II.iii.III; III.i.I). Virtue isparadigmatically a practical matter: it is a property of what we do,and to act we must be motivated. That means any successful account ofvirtue must find it in our passions, not in any aspect of our reason(TIII.i.I). So far so good.

However, when we come to justice, we look in vain for a passion thatcan supply motive power for us to act justly. If anything, our naturalmotives move us away from justice (T III.ii.II). Self-loverequires “correcting and restraining”(TIII.ii.I). And only a passion can do that. But which? Humehimself dismisses the possibilities of public or private beneficenceor universal love. In the end he concludes that there is no naturalpassion to explain it. Instead, it is in a certain crucial senseartificial (T III.ii.VI). Under certain conditions, giventhat we are sensible of the advantages of living in human society, ourself-love or self-interest may be given an “alteration of itsdirection,” and induce us to respect the rules of justice. TheseHume thinks of primarily as involving honesty and“particular” property rules (TIII.ii.II). That“alteration” needs explanation.

Two facts about the conditions in which we act — one about us,one about our environment — set this alteration in motion.First, Hume maintains, we are limited in our generosity orbenevolence. And second, we live in conditions of scarcity (TIII.ii.II). We have to work to make a go of it, and we cannot count onothers to do so for us. We need control of our world to meet ourneeds, but we are vulnerable to the selfishness and predation ofothers.

The solution, Hume argues, is that we naturally fall into a“convention” by which we observe that rules of property— the observance of which is key to the virtue of justice— is good for all of us. This convention is no formal agreement;Hume argues that it cannot be something like the product of promise orcompact (T III.ii.II). Instead, “it arises gradually,and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeatedexperience of the inconveniences of transgressing it”(T III.ii.II, p. 490). Much as two men pulling the oars in aboat together need no explicit agreement to find they prosper by suchan arrangement, so do we generally. (Wilson 2018 explores support forHume’s hypothesis through work in experimental economics.) So inthe end it is self-interest that drives us to comply with therequirements of justice, though Hume adds that sympathy with thepublic interest induces our endorsement of it once justice has becomeestablished. This endorsement, however, is reserved for a scheme ofproperty rules taken generally; as Hume observes, individual instancesof compliance may frequently be “contrary to publicinterest,” though such compliance is still required of us. Humebelieves the benefit of the system overall, both to society and toindividual, requires that rules not admit of exceptions (TIII.ii.II,E Appendix III, §256). Self-interest accountsfor the possibility of our being motivated to act as the virtue ofjustice requires, and both the utility and the agreeableness, both toourselves and others, of a resulting social order with respectedproperty rules, leads to our approbation of that motivation as avirtue.

In fact, this point — that “public utility is the soleorigin of justice” — is the point of Hume’sdiscussion of justice in theEnquiries (III.I, ¶145).Scarcity imposes a need for us to distinguish mine from thine, and wehave not sufficient generosity in our natures to do without propertyrules (as we might, say, in our families). And once again Hume arguesthat our recognition of the utility and necessity of justice provides“entire command over our sentiments” (E III.II,¶163). As David Johnston observes (Johnston 2011, p. 138),Hume’s understanding of the value of justice as instrumental inthe promotion of utility marks a sharp shift from earlierunderstandings.

Such a sentimentalist account of justice is also found in Adam Smith;in fact, a focus on the sentiments almost completely swamps concernfor virtue. Our judgments of virtue and vice, he says, are compoundedby consideration of two different “relations” in asentiment: “the cause or object which excites or causes it, and… the end which it proposes” (TMS II.i.introduction). Hisfocus on those two “relations” obviates any independentdiscussion of virtue per se. He does however explicitly countenance avirtue of justice, developed in contrast with the virtue ofbeneficence. In Smith, even more clearly than in Hume, one can seethat this virtue consists in conformity to “rules” or“laws” of justice that appear to exist antecedently to therealization of the virtue itself, unlike ancient accounts — aparadigm example of a norm-prior conception of the virtue. Smithindicates that justice merits resentment when absent, that it may be“extorted by force,” and that in the main it requiresforbearing from harming others.. Smith calls justice a “negativevirtue” in this respect: often all it requires is that we sitstill and do nothing (Smith 1759, II.ii.I.5, 9). It is essential tothe subsistence of society, Smith tells us (Smith 1759,II.ii.3.3–4), but — in contrast to Hume — is notreducible in its motivational basis to regard for society. Instead,our just concern for “multitudes” is compounded of ourconcern for individuals, which arises from“fellow-feeling,” which is yet short of “love,esteem, and affection” (Smith 1759, II.ii.3.7).

Recent work ties the virtue of justice intimately to the experienceswe have as emotional creatures. On this approach, instead of justicestanding as distinct from “natural virtues” motivated bypassions (as on Hume’s account), or needing to be replaced bysentimentally-driven attitudes such as care or compassion, justice isto be seen as a virtue largelyconstituted by emotion(Solomon 1994, Roberts 2010). The virtue amounts to a stabledisposition of character to respond in the relevant ways to instancesof injustice, perhaps consisting in those occasions in which one doesnot receive his or her due, and on the other hand to be disposed to a“will to give each his due” (Roberts 2010, p. 38). ForRoberts, this is a will to realize “objective justice,”and as on other recent accounts, the virtue (and the passion) aretheoretically subsidiary to this primary notion of “objectivejustice.”

Another instrumentalist approach is offered by Jon Drydyk, who buildson the “capability approach” to human welfare to make acase for a capabilities-based account of the justice of individualagents, in particular as against an “Aristotelian”approach that stresses justice as a matter of response to merit.Acting justly involves “striving to reduce and removeinequalities in people’s capabilities to function in ways thatare elemental” to a truly human life (Drydyk 2012, pp. 31, 33).This is a norm-prior account, in that we begin with a prior conceptionof the content of the requirements of justice, and conform the virtueto this conception. However, Drydyk emphasizes justice as a virtue ofindividuals, rather than institutions or societies. Drydyk’sstrategy offers a counterpoint both to the Rawlsian way of thinkingabout just societies (below, §3) and to the ancient Greek way ofthinking about justice as a virtue of individuals.

1.3 Other Non-Instrumental Theories

The legacy of the ancients — Aristotle in particular —continued into the medieval period, notably in the work of ThomasAquinas, who appropriated much of Aristotle’s philosophy whilesetting it into a Christian theological framework. As in Aristotle,virtue and virtues are prominent parts of his ethical theory. And,like Aristotle justice is an important virtue, though for Aquinas itless important than the virtue of charity, a Christian virtue that didnot appear among the virtues recognized by Aristotle. There are otherelements of his account that situate the virtue of justice in aninteresting way in the transition from ancient eudaimonist accounts ofvirtue, in which virtue was the primary locus of moral assessment, tolater views in which that locus shifted. But to the extent Christianwriters allied themselves with Plato and Aristotle, they downplayedanother central element in Christian thought and morality, theemphasis on agapic love. Such love seems to be a matter ofmotivationally active feeling rather than response to rational norms,and some writers on morality (eventually) allowed this side ofChristianity to have a major influence on what they had to say aboutvirtue.

Significant elements of the Aristotelian account of justice reappearin Aquinas. First, justice is first and foremost a virtue of characterrather than institutions, although Aquinas draws a distinction amongsuch virtues not found in Aristotle. For Aquinas, justice as a virtueis a matter of perfection of the will, rather than the passions (STII-II 58.4). Aquinas offers no account of justice as a virtue ofsocieties or institutions, though he interprets the“general” sense of justice he borrows from Aristotle asbeing a matter of individual willing and action for the common good.“Particular” justice, which as in Aristotle’saccount is most of his focus, has to do with relationships – inparticular but not limited to exchange – between individuals asindividuals (ST II-II 58.8).

Second, Aquinas grounds the norms for these exchanges in the ancientformula of Justinian, which hearkens back to Plato: justice is givingeach his own. But his interpretation of this formula situates himastride a deep but subtle divide between ancient and modern thought,reflecting the difference between norm-prior and virtue-prioroutlooks.. To some extent this effect is an upshot of his inheritingnot only the Greek eudaimonist tradition, but also a Romanjurisprudential tradition in which notions like standing and right asclaim (rather than, say, fairness) had begun to emerge (Porter 2016,p. 143). As a result, Aquinas’ synergistic account has somenovel complications.

One major complication, relative to the ancient accounts, is that whatis ours by right is a recognition of a kind of status, as an effect ofthe order among people ordained by God (ST I-II 100.8). AsJean Porter points out, this establishes a normative standard forjustice that does not grow out of the agent’s own perfection oreudaimonia (Porter 2016, p. 157). There are two significant follow-onimplications.

First, the fabric of the eudaimonist approach to practical reasoningand life — inherited from the Greeks — begins to fray. Forbetter or worse, on the Greek eudaimonist views (including here Plato,Aristotle, the Stoics, and Epicurus) our reasons for action arise fromour interest in a happy life. If the reason-giving nature of othersarises from a different source, as this reading of Aquinas suggests,then practical reason seems to have a duality of ultimate sources,with the complications that kind of duality brings.

Second, this is the first step in the diminution of the theoreticalsignificance of the virtues; virtue is no longer the normativeepicenter of the theory, as it was for the Greeks. To the extent thatthis aspect of Aquinas’s view has virtue responsive to value orreasons accounted for in some way other than the work of virtue, it isthe leading edge of process that will result in a changed role forvirtue in later ethical accounts.

An example may be seen in the view of W.D. Ross, in taking virtue tobe good for its own sake — and indeed, among goods of that kind(along with pleasure and knowledge) the greatest of goods — butcharacterizing justice independently of it. For Ross, justice consistsin “the apportionment of pleasure and pain to the virtuous andthe vicious respectively” (Ross 1930, 138), and we have a dutyto promote it. Virtue, in turn, consists in part in a disposition todesire to do one’s duty (134). In that sense we arrive at avirtue of justice, desirable for its own sake, but little remains ofthe notion of justice as a virtue of individuals as it began with theancient Greeks.

The nadir of fixing the nature of justice through virtue occurs inKant’s account of justice, in which justice is contrasted withvirtue. The two are complementary elements in the “metaphysicsof morals,” establishing a distinction between justice as avirtue and justice as a norm to which a virtue may or may notcorrespond.. Moreover, the doctrine of justice itself has two parts,roughly corresponding to the distinction present since Plato’swork, between the role of justice in the individual and the role ofjustice in the state. Kant calls these “private right” and“public right,” respectively. But right in either case isirrelevant to Kant’s conception of virtue; instead, right is a“condition” that can obtain between the moral agentscomprising a moral or legal community, in virtue of their principlesof choice in acting (Kant 1797).

2. Justice and Other Virtues

Few would doubt that justice is a virtue of character. But there areother moral virtues. How is justice related to them? Is it moreimportant? Even inRepublic, in which Plato makes justice a“master virtue” of sorts, there are other virtues (wisdom,courage, and self-discipline), and elsewhere (notablyGorgias) Plato makes self-discipline (sophrosune)the “master virtue,” so it is not clear that justice hasany sort of priority over these other virtues (Woodruff 2012).Likewise, though the texts we have show Aristotle devoting more spaceto justice, it is not clear that the particular form of the virtue ofjustice has any sort of pre-eminence. On the other hand, Cicero claimsthat justice is the “crowning glory” of the virtues(De Officiis I.7). If we take virtue of character to have themoral centrality the ancients (perhaps in contrast to the moderns),how much importance should we accord to justice among the virtues?

Aquinas cites Cicero as a target in developing a sophisticated view ofthe relationships among the virtues (ST II-II 58.12). OnAquinas’ view, Cicero is half right, for Aquinas distinguishesbetween virtues as responsive to appetites of our animal nature (moralvirtues) and as responsive to appetites of our intellect (virtues ofthe will). He takes it that justice is preeminent over the moralvirtues because it inheres in the rational part of the soul, andbecause its object is more noble (the good of others, or the commongood, rather than the individual good). On that point he can agreewith Cicero. However, these virtues themselves are not as excellent asthe theological virtues, of which the greatest is love (or charity– caritas;ST II-II 23.6). There are several argumentsfor this claim but it is grounded in Paul’s admonition to theCorinthians, that love is the greatest among the virtues of faith andhope (1 Corinthians 13:13).

In recent decades there have been secular challenges to the primacy ofjustice among virtues. Carol Gilligan argues for a “differentvoice” for women in coming to grips with moral problems. Insteadof a rights-based understanding of morality that gave specialconsideration to the individual, women see relationships betweenpeople as primary (Gilligan 1983, pp. 19, 29). Educationalpsychologist Lawrence Kohlberg had offered a thought experiment abouta man (“Heinz”) tempted to steal a life-saving drug tosave his sick wife (Kohlberg 1981, p. 12d; §4 below). Whereasboys are more likely to think of Heinz’ dilemma in terms of whatis the right thing to do, girls, Gilligan argues, see the world as“a world of relationships and psychological truths where anawareness of the connection between people gives rise to a recognitionof responsibility for one another” (Gillian 1983, p. 30).Gilligan carefully frames this contrast as one between voices, not amatter of ranking of dispositions or virtues, but her work can and didprovide a basis for making that sort of assessment between virtues,one on which (as in Aquinas’ case) love and care for othersturns out to be more important than considerations of justice.

Nel Nodding’s pioneering work in laying out an “ethic ofcare” takes a similar step. Following Gilligan, she sees muchethical theory as missing a feminine voice, one which grounds moralconcern for the concrete other in caring for them and their needs, andthus as relational rather than individualistic (Noddings 1983, 1999).Yet some caution is required before seeing her as taking up somethinglike a Thomistic stance on the priority of love over justice. For onething, to a significant degree she wants to emphasize the importanceof the concrete and particular as opposed to the abstract and general(or the reliance on universal principles) in thinking and actingmorally. But that is an emphasis which animates some particularisticforms of virtue ethics, and does not distinguish justice from love orother virtues. Moreover, where she explicitly argues that care“‘picks up’ where justice leaves off”(Noddings 1999, p. 12), she is thinking of justice as a property ofinstitutions (e.g. Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness), andinstitutional implementations of those theories, not a virtue ofcharacter. She is clearly concerned about the limits of“rights-talk,” but that at least historically has not beena prominent part in thinking about justice as a virtue of character.Thus she does not clearly take a side in this matter.

Like Noddings, Virginia Held frames much of the point of the ethics ofcare against a historical theoretical backdrop of attention to justice(Held 1995, 2004, 2006). To some extent, like Noddings, for Held therelevant notion of justice is not a virtue of character but a concernwith fairness, equality, and individual rights, or perhaps moregenerally impartial universal principles (Held 2004, p. 144; 2006, p.14). In fact, Held more clearly poses an ethics of care as analternative to virtue ethics (Held 2004, 143; 2006, 14). This is fortwo reasons. First, virtue ethical theories focus on dispositions andtraits of individuals, whereas an ethics of care focuses on relationsbetween individuals. Second, an ethics of care sees people aspartially constituted by their relations with others, as opposed tothe individualism characteristic of virtue ethics. Held does not thinkan ethics of care can do without a concern for justice as a value,however (Held 1995, 129). More generally, she believes, caringprovides a “wider network” within which concerns forjustice and virtue (as well as utility) should be fitted (2004, 147;2006, 72). Margaret McLaren (2001), on the other hand, responds on thebasis of commonalities between care ethics and virtue ethics that careethics actually is most attractive when situated as an ethics ofvirtue. Marilyn Friedman (1987) similarly seems accepting of thegeneral framework of virtue ethics, and of crucial places for virtuesof both caring and justice within such a framework, responsive todifferent degrees and in different ways to gender differences shebelieves actually do hold, though not falling along a caring/justicefault line.

Michael Slote accepts care ethics as well-situated as a virtue ethicaltheory, but argues for the necessity of conceiving such a theory as“agent-based” – holding that motivation or motivesare “the ultimate bases for evaluation of action, institutions,laws, and societies” (Slote 1998, p. 173). As he has developedhis view, empathic motivation has come to take an increasing role(Slote 2010, p. 124). As with Noddings and Held, for Slote therelevant questions about justice are about forms of socialorganization, the allocation of rights, and so on. If there is avestige of the Platonic/Justinian model of justice as a virtue, itwould appear to figure in only as a rationale for the shape of somesocial policies reflecting e.g. social (or perhaps global)distributive justice. But empathy is the focal normative concernthroughout. The justice of a society constitutively depends on themotives of the individuals who make it up (Slote 1998, p. 187; 2010,p. 128). If the relevant motives are caring or empathic ones, thenSlote’s analysis would seem to collapse the distinction betweencaring and justice as virtues of individual character (or motivation).That is, individuals would count as just exactly to the degree thattheir motivations are empathic, and they thus contribute to the laws,policies, institutions, and so on in ways that are reflective ofsimilar motivations across society. But that is just to say that theyare caring motivations as well.

A somewhat different critique of a focus on a virtue of justice comesfrom Robin Dillon. Like Slote, her concern is more with socialinstitutions, structures, and hierarchies than with traits ofcharacter, and in fact these priorities lead her to be critical ofvirtue ethical theories which, she believes, cannot ask the rightquestions about virtues and vices (Dillon 2012, p. 86). However, shedoes accept the point that character traits matter, though shebelieves attending to the vices that allow and support socialstructures that allow for oppression and domination is more pertinentto feminist moral philosophy.

Lisa Tessman, on the other hand, accepts the basic framework ofAristotelian thinking about virtues of character, and with it thevirtue of justice (Tessman 2005). However, she argues that oppressivesocial conditions can interfere in ways Aristotle did not anticipatewith the formation of virtues of character and consequently (givenAristotle’s framework) with prospects for happiness(eudaimonia). One point of amendment, then, to Aristotelian thought isto recognize that oppressive social conditions may make other traits— traits that are important for liberatory struggle — intovirtues. Another, congruent with other lines of feminist critique, isthat Aristotle is insufficiently appreciative of the need forsensitivity to and response to suffering, so that something like thekind of supplementation recommended by care ethics is appropriate. Adifferent model of response to the development of the virtue ofjustice specifically under non-ideal or unjust social conditions, onemodeled on Kohlberg’s original architectonic understanding ofthe virtue, is defended by Jon Garthoff (Garthoff 2018).

Finally, in recent work Talbot Brewer has argued that a“revisionist” version of Aristotelian virtue ethics does abetter job than competitors (including Kantian and contractualisttheories) at recognizing the “irreplaceable value” of eachhuman being (Brewer 2018). Brewer believes that a robust conception ofthe virtue of justice does important work for such a theory, not justfocusing on distribution and allocation, but more generallyestablishing the space for virtuous recognition of ways that otherscan demand that we treat them (Brewer 2018, p. 25). Still, Brewerinvokes Aquinas to argue that such justice is not enough, that thatwhat is required is a recognition of a virtue of love to unify andperfect the other virtues of character.

3. Justice as a Virtue of Societies

As indicated earlier, today justice is very often first thought of asa property of societies or states, rather than of individualcharacters. Such views may, however, also offer an account of justiceas an individual virtue. Such accounts will be what we have callednorm-prior, as the norms for the virtue will derive from an antecedenttheory of social justice. An excellent example of this structure isprovided by john Rawls, in his highly-influentialA Theory ofJustice.

Rawls’s positive view of justice is concerned primarily with thejustice of institutions or (what he calls) the “basicstructure” of society: justice as an individual virtue isderivative from justice as a social virtue defined via certainprinciples of justice. The principles, famously, are derived from an“original position” in which (very roughly) rationalcontractors under a “veil of ignorance” decide how theywish to commit themselves to being governed in their actual lives.Rawls deliberately invokes Kantian rationalism (oranti-sentimentalism) in explaining the intellectual or theoreticalmotivation behind his construction, and the two principles of justicethat he argues would be agreed upon under the contractual conditionshe specifies represent a kind of egalitarian political liberalism.Roughly, those principles stress (equality of) basic liberties andopportunities for self-advancement over considerations of socialwelfare, and the distribution of opportunities and goods in society isthen supposed to work to the advantage of all (especially theworst-off members of society). He also says that the idea of whatpeople distributively deserve or merit is derivative from socialjustice rather than (as with Aristotle and/or much common-sensethinking) providing the basis for thinking about social justice.

According to Rawls, individual justice is theoretically derivativefrom social justice because the just individual is to be understood assomeone with an effective or “regulative” desire to complywith the principles of justice. However, it is not merely socialjustice that Rawls understands in (predominantly) rationalist fashion.When he explains how individuals (within a just society) develop asense and/or the virtue of justice, he invokes the work of Piaget(below, §4). Rawls lays more stress than Piaget does on the roleour affective nature (sympathy and the desire for self-mastery) playsin the acquisition of moral virtue. But, like Piaget, he stresses theneed for asufficiently general appreciation and rationalunderstanding of social relations as the grounding basis of asense of duty or of justice and he explicitly classifies his accountof moral development as falling within the “rationalisttradition.”

More recently, David Schmidtz and John Thrasher suggest rethinking therelationship between social justice and individual justice (Schmidtzand Thrasher 2014). Turning Plato’s account of justice inRepublic on its head, they depict justice as a bridge betweena virtue of the soul and of thepolis: because we areessentially social, we need community, and justice is a matter ofharmony with the community. On their view this is (largely) a matterof compliance with rules and institutions that enable people to livein harmony and flourish together.

4. Social Psychology and Justice

Twentieth-century developmental psychology drew deeply on Kant’smoral-philosophical legacy. Piaget (1932 [1948]) treated moraldevelopment as principally involving increasing cognitivesophistication. More particularly, Piaget saw that sophistication as amatter of taking more and more general or universal views of moralissues, and endorsed the Kantian and rationalist idea that moralityrests on and can be justified in terms of considerations of justice.Piaget saw a “law of evolution” in moral development, froman understanding of rules (including moral rules) as being“heteronomous” impositions of authority, to which one isobjectively responsible, to a grounding in mutual respect, accompaniedby subjective responsibility to others (Piaget 1932 [1948, p. 225]).This transition is fostered through social interaction, and attentionto norms of equality and reciprocity replace those of mereobedience.

Educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg was inspired by Piaget topropose a conception of moral development that postulated six stagesof human moral development. In his earliest work, Kohlberg identifiedthe highest stage of such development with a concern for justice andhuman rights based on universal principles. Concern for relationshipsand for individual human well-being was embedded in a framework ofconformity to social norms at lower stages of the process. Moreover,he saw the ordering of the different stages in Piagetian fashion asbasically reflecting differences in rational understanding: thosewhose moral thinking involved the invoking of universal principles ofjustice and rights were thought to show a more advanced cognitivedevelopment than those whose moral thought appeals primarily to theimportance of relationships and of human well-being or suffering. Theparadigm of moral development involves judgments that are“reversible,” in the sense that each party to the issuecan accept the correct judgment by reversing his or her perspectiveand taking up the viewpoint of the other (Kohlberg 1981). Thesophisticated moral reasoner will engage in a process of “moralmusical chairs,” taking up the positions of the parties to theconflict successively. It is, on this version of Kohlberg’sthought, that formal feature of the deliberative process that ischaracteristic of greatest moral development. As his research andthought progressed, however, Kohlberg increasingly acknowledged thatthese formal features were less characteristic of overall moraldevelopment and thought than of the deployment of specificallyjustice-based concepts. In fact, Kohlberg was impressed by the work ofRawls, and thought that the nature of Rawls’ “originalposition of equality” exemplified the kind of reversibility thatis paradigmatic of the highest form of moral thought (Kohlberg 1981,p. 204). However, his approach treats utilitarianism as lesscognitively advanced (more primitive) than rationalist views likeKant’s, and utilitarians (like R.M. Hare) naturally called intoquestion the objectivity and intellectual fairness of Kohlberg’saccount.

More significantly, perhaps, the evidence for Kohlberg’s stagesequence was drawn from studies of boys, and when one applies thesequence to the study of young girls, it turns out that girls onaverage end up at a less advanced stage of moral development than boysdo. As indicated above, Carol Gilligan argued that her own studies ofwomen’s development indicated that the moral development ofgirls and women proceeds and ends in a different fashion from that ofboys and men, but that that proves nothing about inferiority orsuperiority: it is merely a fact of difference. But Jean Hampton,among others, responded that Gilligan’s critique was itself adistortion, and that concerns for justice and individual rights are assignificant for and in the moral lives of women as for men (Hampton1993).

In recent years, a variety of social sciences have intensifiedinvestigation into aspects of our natures that are plausibly importantfor a virtue of justice. For example, Widlok 2018 surveyscross-cultural anthropological work examining the development of“ethical skill” in rightful and just sharingpractices.

5. Conclusion

There are many different conceptions of the virtue of justice, andonly some of them are distinctively virtue ethical. Many non-virtualethical approaches put forward theories of virtue, and whatdistinguishes them from virtue ethics is that the given theory ofvirtue comes later in the order of explanation, rather than itselfserving as the basis for understanding (all of) morality. This isespecially the case with justice, where (as we have seen) it isnaturally tempting to account for thenorms of justice firstand derive an account of thevirtue in light of those norms.The question of the priority of norms of justice or the virtue ofjustice is likely to continue to generate exploration and debate, asis the question of how our lives as social and political animalscontributes to understanding the virtue of justice. These vexedquestions have inspired a profusion of views and no doubt willcontinue to do so.

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