Published in Journal of Markets & Morals, 7 (Fall, 2004). 409-20.
[James
V. Schall, S. J. is a Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown
University. His books include At
the Limits of Political Philosophy, On
the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, Another Sort of Learning, Jacques Maritain:
The Philosopher in Society, Schall on Chesterton, What Is God Like?, and Roman Catholic Political Philosophy. This
essay was originally presented as a lecture in the Business School at Loyola
University in New Orleans, March, 2004.]
[Summary: The place of justice among the
virtues, both moral and theological, has always been a delicate issue. Machiavellians tend to underestimate or
deny its central significance.
Contemporary religious rhetoric often tends to exaggerate it. Classical philosophy was ever aware of
the ambiguity of justice, its impersonality and rigidity. Unless placed within a higher order of
“good,” as Plato saw, or of “charity,” as Aquinas understood, justice
introduces an unsettling utopianism into any existing polities.]
JUSTICE: THE MOST TERRIBLE OF THE VIRTUES
“Mercy
and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each
other. Truth shall spring out of
the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.”
–
Psalm 85, 10-11.
Summum
jus, summa injustitia.
–
Cicero, De Officiis.
“Deus
misericorditer agit, non quidem contra justitiam suam faciendo, sed aliquid
supra justitiam operando....”
– Thoms Aquinas, I, 21, 3, ad 2.
I.
In
ethical and political affairs, no more frequent or more agonizing word is found
than that of justice or its related words “fair,” “equitable,” “right,” or
“rights.” In its own way, of
course, it also is a noble word standing at the height of the practical, not
theoretical or theological, virtues.
It is also one of the attributes applied to the divinity – God is just. Justice, following Plato, can have a
very brad scope. It means that
everything is voluntarily doing what it ought to do so that the whole may do
what it is ordered (that is, designed) to do. Such is the fifth definition of justice in the fourth book
of Plato’s Republic. The standard sub-title of this famous
dialogue is precisely “On Justice.”
Justice
is classically treated in the fifth book of Aristotle’s Ethics, wherein he distinguishes between legal or general
justice and special justice. In
earlier books, he offered an overall description or analysis of virtue and
responsibility, together with the vices opposite to each of the virtues.1 Aristotle explained how virtues applied
to human action and passion in which they exist as habitual guides or
moderators. Justice is a virtue
which, unlike courage or temperance, does not look inward. Rather, it looks ad alium, to how we stand to another or others besides
ourselves when we chance to come into various relationships with them. It implies that our perfection is
not something totally dependent on or related to ourselves alone. If we speak of ‘justice to ourselves,’
we mean that we compare or relate what we ought to be with what we in fact are and do.
Justice
is usually the first virtue that children and youth become aware of, the one
that causes most of the loudest controversies existing within families or
society. “He took my toy” or “she
won’t give me my cake” are protestations frequently heard by parents throughout
the world and in all times. And
whether the toy is his or the cake hers is itself a controversy about
justice. Justice has something
strangely incomplete about it, even when it is complete. Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was addressed to the potential conflict between
justice and charity, to the reasons why the famous ‘pound of flesh,’ even
though due in “justice,” was not just in its carrying out.2 Justice seems to overlook “exceptions,”
something Aristotle discussed under the heading of epichia or equity in the same fifth book of his Ethics. This
problem with exceptions also explains, in part, the length and nature of
Plato’s dialogue on the Laws, why
each law needed a “preamble” to explain what it was intended to accomplish
whatever the words used to describe it.
Actually,
Aristotle tells us, every virtue or vice, not merely justice and injustice, can
have an effect on others so that it thereby acquires a justice component. Thus, it can fall under the law. Our excessive anger or intemperance,
for example, can require legal standards and restrictive coercion or
penalty. This need is what drunken
driving laws, after all, are all about, the combination of temperance and
justice. When a virtue is looked
upon under the aspect of how it relates to others, it is what Aristotle meant
by “genera” or “legal” justice, an action that could or should be subject to legislation but only under the
aspect of justice, not of itself.
The actual acquiring and practicing the virtues ought to be the normal
accomplishments of human moral growth acquired for their own sakes. That is, we should control our eating
or drinking even if it had no effect on others.
But
justice was also its own particular virtue, not just an element in the other
virtues. It had its own specific
realm or object, something that was not merely subjective. It concerned itself with how ee stand
to others either voluntarily or involuntarily in relationships that, broadly
speaking, had to do with exchanges in which something could be measured or at
least reasonably estimated.
Liberality or generosity was treated in book four of the Ethics. This
particular virtue also dealt with something outside of ourselves, with how we
handle our wealth or property.
This is one of the origins of the term “liberal,” which meant, in such
writers as Locke, that the state was designed to protect our wealth so that we
can freely use it. In Aristotle,
it meant our being “free” of our wealth so that we could use it in a reasonable
manner when occasion arose.
Clearly,
property or wealth is something related to justice, at least indirectly. But in fact, liberality is related to
wealth as a means to meet the bodily and human needs of finite, corporeal
beings, particularly the family.
Indeed, liberality, strictly speaking, means that we show in our actions
that we sue our wealth for proper or beneficent ends. Chesterton, in a famous essay explaining why he was not a
socialist, remarked that he did not want to live in a world in which everything
was “shared” because sharing had attached to it the notion of justice rather
than of something beyond justice.
He wanted to live in a world in which he could actually give what was
really his freely to someone else.3
He also wanted to be able to receive something that was really given to
him, not just “shared,” as if it were a matter of justice. Strictly speaking, justice does not
require thanks. Without this
economic foundation of freedom, without some basic abundance or superfluity, it
is impossible to have the virtue of generosity, of liberality. But this notion does not mean that the
poor cannot be generous or liberal.
Often they are more generous proportionately than the rich, a reminder
of the story of the widow’s mite in the New Testament (Luke, 21, 1-4). Wealth and its production are thus not
only related to justice.
Liberality,
nevertheless, was, like fear and pleasure, still concerned with something more
directly related to ourselves, even to our bodies. And, but it noted, there is nothing pejorative or wrong about
things naturally related to ourselves.
It is good that we exist, as Genesis teaches. Nature also looks to ourselves and to the things needed to
be what we are in our flourishing.
“No ethically unfavorable connotation attaches to the notion of a need centered
about the self...,” Yves Simon has written. “Needs relative to such goods as food and shelter are
self-centered y nature....”4
We have a proper good that needs reasonable attention. The common good in principle is not
opposed to our private good.
Indeed, one of the purposes of the common good is that private goods in
their proper manner, be achieved by us.
One of the basic purposes of authority, as Yves Simon also wrote in his
great boo, is that it fosters and protects the autonomy of families and smaller
institutions.5
II.
Aristotle
considered justice itself under two headings. The first was distributive justice, namely, ow are the
general or common goods and burdens to be equitably divided among the various
people within a polity or organization?
In this sense, justice, like all virtues, always involved an element of
prudence, namely, the discovery of a proper judgment about what this proportion
was, more or less. We should not
expect, as Aristotle warned us, more certitude of a science than its subject
matter will allow (1094b13-15; 1103b28; 1104a3-5). Thus, it was recognized that it was impossible, usually, to
have an exact mathematical relationship, even though Aristotle spoke of
distributive justice in terms of geometric proportion and commutative justice,
the second form of justice, in terms of mathematical proportion. Aristotle thought that these goods and
burdens should be decided in accordance with their relative contributions to a
common good. Thus, those who
contributed or suffered more deserved more rewards, spiritual or temporal. Burdens, be it noted, were likewise to
be distributed according to some standard of equitable bearing of what commonly
needed to be done, in wars, for instance, or in taxation, or in honors.
The
second form of justice, that is
the one with which we are most instinctively familiar, the one we learn, or
fail to learn, as children, is generally called “commutative” or
“rectificatory” or “rectifying” justice.
Its classical definition, itself a kind of self-evident principle, is “reddere
cuique quod suum est,” to “render to
another what is due.” Thus, if I
borrow a hundred dollars from you and promise to repay it back in a month, then
I “make right’ what is unbalanced in our relationship when I pay back the
hundred dollars. Thing are
restored to the status quo ante, to
the state of things when I owed nothing to anyone, and no one owed me anything. At first sight, this restored condition
seems to be the model of the way things ought to be.
Be
it noted in the beginning, however, that to live in a world in which we “owe”
nothing to anyone or no one “owes” anything to us can be a kind of isolated
hell. It is what Aristotle was
worried about when he inquired whether God was lonely because He did not
apparently have friends (1159a5).
This concern was also Chesterton’s point on giving and receiving. Indeed, in a sense, receiving may
be more important than giving. We
are initially beings to whom things can be given, including, ultimately,
ourselves, our own being.
Justice
implies, as Josef Pieper has well written, a kind of constant unsettlement that
reflects the ever changing activity of seeking and restoring, tearing down and
rebuilding, yes, of giving and receiving.
It implies the possibility of newness and likewise of preservation. Indeed, it implies that destruction or
obsolescence is not always a bad thing.
“What it (the ever recurring need to restitution, the rendering of what
is due) means,” Pieper wrote, “is, rather, that the fundamental condition of
man and his world is provisory, temporary, non-definitive, tentative, as is
proved by the ‘patchwork’ character of all historical activity, and that,
consequently, any claim to erect a definitive and unalterable order in the
world must of necessity lead to something inhuman.”6
Pieper,
I think, has his finger on something absolutely fundamental here about human
condition. It can never be perfect
in this world and attempts to make it so, by our own powers, are fundamentally
totalitarian. I shall return to
this point later in commenting on C. S. Lewis’ problem with progress, namely,
“do things get better if men do not get better?” This view by no means denies the importance, even the
economic or political importance, of the Platonic or Augustinian forms or
ideas, but it does serve to put them in their proper place.
Aristotle
pointed out that there are two general ways in which I enter a relation with
someone else under the heading of justice. In the first case, I voluntarily enter an agreement with him
to do this or that in exchange for this or that contribution on his part. We begin a business together on these
terms, for example. Justice seems
almost like an open invitation to men to see what they can do to improve things
already given to them, as if what is given by nature is not, by itself,
complete. The failure to
understand this point is what, I think, is wrong in general with modern ecology
movements when they reduce man to some a priori notion of what the earth can carry. One very dangerous strand of modern
tyranny stems from this source.
Indeed, I think this is where much of the left went at the collapse of
Marxism, itself another view about how to perfect the earth and mankind within it
by our own powers and theories.
In
the second case of commutative justice, some accident or other incident occurs
to set up a relation that was not voluntary between two or more people, but the
situation needs to be rectified.
For instance, someone totally unknown to me and I to him smashes into my
parked car in a strange city or country.
A thousand dollars of damage is done to my car. Thus, under the aspect of commutative
justice, I can be related potentially to anyone in the whole world, either
voluntarily or involuntarily, to whomever I sign a contract with or to whoever
crashes into my parked car in any time or place. There is a striking and philosophically significant negative
universality to justice that underscores the possible relation of anyone to
everyone. It implies that we each
should have a positive relation, but, I think, not really under the aegis of
justice. It is what Aristotle said
when he remarked that friendship is more important to the city than justice
(1155a21-28). This is a notion
that revelation carries even further almost, I think, to the point of subsuming
or eliminating justice altogether.
Justice,
to give it its due, implies that we are and need to be bound to others in a
specific judgment and action. It
will be recalled that, in the first book of the Republic when the question of the initial of five definitions
of justice came up, the first definition, associated with Socrates’ old friend
Cephalus, was “to render what is due and to tell the truth” (331c). Why does the “truth” have to come into
the definition? It is because if I
lie, I cannot render what is due because the other does not, quite literally,
know what is due. If t here is no
implicit and objective standard by which anyone can assess the fairness of the
exchange, what is left is not justice but power, as Hobbes in fact would later
put it, even advocate. What is
“just” becomes not what is due but what is enforced. When Socrates pointed out that we do not return a borrowed
sword to a madman from whom we borrowed it, he was saying that reason and truth
are already included in all the exchanges of justice.
III.
Against
this background discussion, I have selected the somewhat odd and provocative
title to these reflections – the
thesis that justice is the “most terrible of the virtues.” These
are not literal words of Aristotle, though I think he implies then when, in his
two books on friendship but only one on justice. I have suggested elsewhere, moreover, that “sincerity” is
the “most dangerous of the
virtues.”7 The greatest crimes are often committed
by quite sincere men who believe in their cause and are earnest in its
pursuit – as far as we can tell,
most “suicide bombers” in our time seem to think in this manner. Sincerity is often a very charming
thing and is not, in itself, a vice.
The most dangerous fanatic is not the ne who knows he is doing wrong and
does it anyhow, but the one who sincerely thins th is doing right – and does it enthusiastically. We like people to be sincere so that
their inner intentions correspond to their external actions. Sincerity, as such, however, prescinds
from the truth or validity of the cause about which one is sincere. In this sense, I call sincerity the
most “dangerous “ virtue.
But
here, I have something else in mind when I talk about justice as the “most
terrible of the virtues.” Notice,
I do not intend to suggest that justice is not a virtue. It is indeed a virtue, often said to be
the highest of the “practical” virtues, of courage, temperance, prudence, and
justice. To be sure, a case can be
made that prudence, the intellectual of the moral virtues, is the highest of
the practical virtues, that is, of the virtues related to human action, not the
theoretical virtues related to thought and truth. The seeds of my thesis, of course, are already in Aristotle
and indeed in Plato, though the words “the most terrible of the virtues” are
mine. An examination of why
justice can be so described, I think, brings us to considerations of the
highest moment.
IV.
To
make these points more clear, however, let me cite some of the classical
descriptions or definitions of justice.
We must begin by recalling the young potential philosophers, Adeimantus
and Glaucon, in the second book of the Republic. They
explain to Socrates that they want to hear justice praised for its own
sake. The trouble with justice,
they soberly tell Socrates, is that it is common knowledge that no one follows
justice except for fear of punishment or hope of reward, not the highest
motives. No one, these two young
potential philosophers thought, would be just if he did not have rewards or
punishments hanging or dangling over his heard. Justice, the brothers explain, is merely a mid-point between
doing the maximum evil, which we would do without law if we could, or suffering
the maximum evil from someone else doing evil to us. Thus, the so-called “just” laws are merely compromises
between being unjust and suffering injustice.
Adeimantus
adds that if we read the great poets, those witnesses to what men really think,
we will find that, even in the most famous poetry, say, Homer, the unjust are
praised and rewarded while the just suffer and are punished. “Because I think we’ll say that what
poets and prose-writers tell us about the most important matters concerning
human beings is bad. They say that
many unjust people are happy and many just ones wretched, that injustice is profitable
if it escapes detection, and that justice is another’s good but one’s own
loss. I tink we’ll prohibit these
stories and order the poets to compose the opposite kind of poetry and tell the
opposite kind of tales” (392a-b).
Thus, no one really believes that justice is any good by itself.
This
poetic opinion about justice is the common testimony of mankind. So the young men urge Socrates to
explain to them why we should be just whether or not we are rewarded or
punished. “Can’t we hear justice praised
for its own sake?” they plead with Socrates. In a touching moment, Socrates stops to praise these two
brothers of Plato for being able to explain the charges against justice so well
without themselves being persuaded by them or seeing what is wrong with
them. No one with any perception
can fail to have some sympathy with these two charming young men who sense that
something terrible lies behind justice.
“But in what does this ‘terribleness’ consist?” we wonder.
Let
me recall for you some of the most famous statements about justice. We will see that it is both praised and
feared. Cicero, for instance, in
words I cited in the introduction, stated, in a terse and famous passage: Summum
jus, summa injustitia (Cicero, De
Officiis). “The highest or most perfect justice leads to the worst
injustice.” We intuitively suspect
some truth is found in this famous observation. The Roman poet Terrence had the same idea: Jus summum
saepe summa malitia.(Terrance, Haeutontimosun
unos, 77). “The most perfect justice often leads to the most perfect
evil.” These concerns about
justice, I think, cannot be ignored. Even if there are more positive things to
be said about it. And the rather
notorious Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I (1503-64), remarked: Fiat
justitia, pereat mundus. “Let justice be done even though the
universe be destroyed.” Again
there is a suspicion about the effects of justice. Yet another famous phrase reads, Fiat justitia, ruat
caelum. “Let justice be done even if it ruins the heavens.”
Yet,
the opposite principle is also seen in the literature: Fiat justitia ne
pereat mundus. “Let justice be done so that the world be
not destroyed.” The motto of the
District of Columbia, for example, is Justitia omnibus. “We
stand for justice for all.” We can
hardly say, “We want injustice for all.”
We cannot even say, “we want injustice for anyone.” Giorgio Filibeck, at the Pontificial
Commission on Justice and Peace (2001), wrote, “La justice renvoie B une autre notion-clé, cette de la vérité, aui constitue un présupposé
de la justice.” “Justice sends us to another key-idea,
that of truth, which constitutes a presupposition of justice.” We have seen that Plato already
included truth in his first definition of justice. “Liberty and justice for all” is a phrase familiar to all of
us from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Suddenly,
it occurs to us that we must relate justice and charity. Or must we make a choice between
justice and charity? Is
forgiveness unjust? Plato says
that not to be punished for our crimes is unjust so that we should want to be
punished for them. Is it justice
instead of charity? Or does
charity come before justice? Or
must we fist be just before we can think of having charity? If that latter were true, we suspect,
there would be no revelation as we know it, since it seems to have been arrived
before the world was just. And
what about benevolence and gratitude?
Benevolence means giving more than what is due. Strictly speaking, we need not be
“grateful” for receiving what is our due.
When he arrived at book 6 of the Republic, Plato suddenly ceased speaking of justice and began
to speak of the good, almost as if to say that justice must be, to be itself,
contained in the good, that something beyond justice exists.
VI.
I
have always held that the most important and poignant passage ever penned about
justice is found in C. S. Lewis’ wonderful novel, Till We Have Faces. This is
a Christian retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche. In the novel, Redival, Psyche’s ugly
but most intelligent sister, is speaking with the Greek philosopher, the
Fox. She is blaming the gods for
their taking away her beautiful sister from her. This is the conversation that follows: “(Redival): ‘My
judges?’ (Fox): ‘Why, yes,
child. The gods h ave been accused
by you. Now it’s their turn.’ (Redival): ‘I cannot hope for
mercy.’ (Fox): “Infinite
hopes – and fears – may both be
yours. Be sure tat, whatever else
you get, you will not get justice.; (Redival): ‘Are the gods not just?’ (Fox): ‘Oh, no, child. What would become of us if they were?’”8
We
need to ponder again and again these words – “Oh, no, child, what would become of us if they
were?” What would become of us if
the gods were just? We would all
be lost. Our only hope, it seems,
lies in the ironic possibility that the gods are not just.
And if they are not just, are they not “terrible?” Yet, I am arguing that justice itself
is what is “terrible,” not the gods.
Thomas
Aquinas makes the same point about the gods that C. S. Lewis’ philosopher, the
Fox, does – “what would become of
us if the gods were just?” Aquinas
writes, “Opus autem divinae justitiae semper praesupponit opus
misericordiae, et in eo fundatur (I,
21, 4). “The work of divine
justice always presupposes the world of mercy and is founded in it.” What an amazing passage! It is the key, in fact, to all I have
been saying about the limits of justice.
Once we understand that justice, even for its own sake, must first be
taken up into the Good and into mercy, we can begin to understand its proper
place among us. I do not argue, be
it noted, that justice does not have a proper place. Rather I argue that what it is itself points to something
beyond its own terms and cannot safely exist without it. In his address to the Diplomatic Corps,
John Paul II stated that the Church “wishes to make all her spiritual energies
available, convinced that ‘justice must find its fulfillment in charity.’”9 Justice leads beyond itself by being
itself.
What
does it mean, then, to maintain that justice is the most “terrible”
virtue? Josef Pieper, as is his
wont, has again provided us with just the right context. Justice is not opposed in principle to
power or even war. It is opposed
to injustice. Its opposition to
injustice must include the ability actually to do something about injustices as
they occur in concrete reality.
This “doing something” may require the reasoned use of force. The lack of any coercive or punitive
forces is to a virtue or nobility, but itself an injustice, a lack of what
ought to be there.10
Here is how Pieper put it: “The fundamental rationale for all power is
to safeguard and to protect these rights.... No calamity causes more despair in the world than the unjust
exercise of power. And yet ay
power that could never be abused is ultimately no power at all – a terrible thought.”11
What
is it that Pieper calls precisely “a terrible thought?” The terrible thought is not that we are
always capable of abusing power. This is a metaphysical consequence of the very
nature of freedom. Rather it is
that no power may exist to be abused in the first place. For if there is no way to abuse power,
there is likewise no way to use it rightly.12 The rationale for power is to
protect and safeguard that which is just or right when it needs
protection. Take away this power
and we have unlimited injustice unopposed. This consequence is one of the most difficult things for
many, especially religious people, to understand. So if it is a “terrible thought” that no power exists to
protect what is just and right, it is always a “terrible” virtue that does the
protecting. The virtue of justice
is rightly exercised precisely that injustice may be contained. I have always make this same point with
retard to Lord Acton’s famous phrase, “power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.” To this
aphorism I reply, “ lack of power corrupts, and absolute lack of power corrupts
absolutely.” That is Pieper’s
point.
VI.
Earlier,
I mentioned C. S. Lewis’s problem with the idea of progress. In his essay, “Is Progress Possible?”,
he states: “The question about progress has become the question whether we can
discover any way of submitting to the world wise paternalism of a technocracy
without loving all pw4ersnal
privacy and independence?”13
Lewis did not think so. The
possibility of a world-wide tyranny, one not imposed but freely chosen, has
been in the literature for centuries.
Indeed, it was in Plato himself.
In his Seventh Letter, Plato wrote:
At last I came to the conclusion
that all existing states are badly governed ad the condition f their laws
practically incurable, without some miraculous remedy and the assistance of
fortune; and I was forced to say, in praise of true philosophy, that from here
height alone was it possible to discern what the nature of justice is, either
in the state or in the individual, and that the ills of the human race would
never end until either those who are sincerely and truly lovers of wisdom come
into political power, or the rulers of our cities, by the grace of God, learn
true philosophy (326)a-b).
Whether the “miraculous remedy” has in fact happened
or the “assistance of fortune” come about can be debated. It is my suspicion, of course, that
they have. Plato’s “possibility to
discern what the nature of justice is, either in the state or in the
individual” requires reference to this “miraculous remedy,” if I might so refer
to revelation.
One
is, in my view, reinforced in this position by the point I am trying to make
with regard to the “terribleness” of justice. We have to maintain, at the same time, that justice is a
good but that it is strangely empty.
Aristotle, I think, understood this perfectly well. If we return to a consideration of
justice, we see that relationships of justice, by themselves, are
quintessentially impersonal. We
get what is “due” – no more, no less. This indifference to the person to whom
we are just or who is unjust to us is what I meant earlier in suggesting that
gratitude, benevolence, and charity are needed in addition to justice. We must be just even to our enemies, to
those who hate us, to those we do not know or care to know.
If
we now look at Aristotle’s famous books on friendship, we see that he proposes
three kinds of friendship, that based on utility, that based on pleasure, and
that based n the highest virtues.
Each of these kinds of friendship remedies, as it were, what is lacking
in a justice relationship. What is
lacking? Justice is wholly
indifferent to the person to whom we are just. When Aristotle said that cities need friendship more than
justice, he put his finger on the essential issue. If I am related to another in justice, I do not, in that
relationship as such, care about him.
What I care about is the unbalanced relation between him and myself that
came about because of contract or injury.
That
the world is a constant network of changing, impersonal relationships of
justice is the political background whereby human exchanges can take place, as
such a good and necessary thing, itself a great achievement. But every human exchange, be it
economic, political, or of any other nature, is potentially open to the modification
of friendship. The hard
relationship tat is justice is always better if it can be softened. Its impersonality is what makes it
“terrible,” the realization that the person who is being just to me does not
really care about me or does not have the time or opportunity to do so. He only cares, and in essence should
only care, about a mutual relationship that is out of balance. We can be related to someone in justice
and have no other relationship with him.
It is a very cold virtue, but still a virtue. It is very common, not intimate at all.
The
remedy for this problem exists on two levels. The relationship of friendship is reciprocal and reaches to
the inner person of the friend. It
is distinctly not impersonal.
Aristotle tells us that friends have no need of justice. This implies that there is something
higher – some good – that is
higher than justice into which it is subsumed. Moreover, revelation adds the consideration not merely that
our relation to the Godhead is not primarily in justice but in mercy. There is a possibility of forgiveness
or compassion. Our
injustices need not always be subject to the criteria of justice, even when
they are questions of justice.
VI.
In
an old Peanuts, to conclude, it is
near Christmas. Lucy is watching
Linus mailing his Christmas lists to Santa. She asks him, “Are you sending those greedy letters to Santa
Claus again?” Without looking at
her, Linus replies, “I’m not
greedy.” He then turns around to
confront her grim stare. Loudly,
he protests, “All I want is what I have coming to me! All I want is my fair share.” Lucy throws up her hands, and shouts, “Santa does not owe you anything!”
But Linus responds defiantly, “He does if I’ve been good! That’s the agreement.” In the last scene, Linus walks in one
direction, Lucy in the other. He
mutters to her, “Any tenth grade student of commercial law could tell yo
that.” All Lucy can say is “Oh,
good grief!”
Actually,
all the problems of justice and charity are in this charming scene. The “terribleness” of justice is to
claim that Santa “owes” us something because we have agreed to be
virtuous. There are no gifts
possible in this view of the world.
I suppose, in the end, that is the thought that I want to
emphasize. Justice is a virtue,
but a “terrible” one that will, when taken to its extreme, deprive us even of
Christmas. Perhaps this is why, at
bottom, we are no longer allowed to show images of Christmas on our streets or
to say “Merry Christmas” to each other.
We live in a world that claims justice is the only virtue. “Summum
jus, summa injustitia.” “‘Are the gods not just?’ ‘Oh, no, child, what would become of us
if they were?’”
The
last words on the most “terrible” virtue can safely be left with Aquinas: “Opus autem divinae justitiae semper
praesupponit opus misericordiae, et in eo fundatur.”
“The work of divine justice always presupposed the work of mercy, and is
founded in it.” “Deus
misericorditer agit, non quidem contra justitiam suam faciendo, sed aliquid
supra justitiam operando.... “God always acts mercifully, not by
going against justice, but by effecting something beyond it.”
1See James V., Schall, “Virtue and Vice:
The Rule of the Self over the Self,” At the Limits of Political Philosophy (Washington: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1996), 161-86.
3G. K. Chesterton, “Why I Am Not a
Socialist,” The Chesterton Review,
7 (August, 1981). This essay was
originally in The New Age, January
4, 1908).
7James V. Schall, “The Most Dangerous Virtue,”
The Praise of ‘Sons of Bitches’: On the Worship of God by Fallen Men (Slough, England: St. Paul Publications, 1978),
53-62.