— I just got through perusing Camus’ The Rebel and one of the things he digresses on is the fact that sometimes freedom and justice may be opposed to each other. Any thoughts, ideas, discussions, dissertations?
Can you elucidate a little, I am having troubles imagining such a scenario, apart from the fact that to get justice often you take away someone’s freedom, which is fair enough because they’ve already violated someone else’s. Is that what you’re talking about?
well if we are talking about an objective kind of justice then yes, you cannot have it without taking away freedom. The version of justice that the serial killer believes in his heart that he is dolling out however wouldnt be taking away his freedom. Freedom begins to dissapear the moment we decide on an objective framework for justice.
— While persusing amazon.com i happened to run across the title of one of Camus’ articles from combat ‘justice and freedom’ September 8th 1944. I do not yet have this. has anyone read it?
At least in social contract theory everyone gives up some freedom in order to get justice and i am sure that the converse occurs in a number of situations (i.e. you give up some justice to get freedom).
I’m having real trouble trying to imagine a situation in which people will give up some justice in order to have more freedom. With technology getting more advance by the month, it is getting harder and harder to maintain your privacy. Would a good example be of taking away certain laws (justice) in order for us to retain more privacy (freedom)?
— Capital punishment where a few innocent people die so that we can be free from criminals. Martial law in order not to get shot. These are extreme examples of where people give up justice and get freedom, there must be simpler more mundane examples.
True. We give up certain freedom under martial law to maintain order (receive some justice) and in Capital Punishment a number of innocents die, with the assumption that safety is maintained and the guilty still get punished. Sure.
But your topic question is: are the two incompatible?
I see no feasible way to argue that Justice negates the presence of Freedom, or vice versa.
However, it seems obvious that total freedom would negate the idea of justice (anyone can do whatever the hell they want, and you can’t punish them for it). But then, total freedom doesn’t exist, because I would be free to kill you, just as you would be free to live. So it just can’t occur.
Total justice would negate freedom. However, this doesn’t exist either. First, because it assumes that justice is always done, and that’s not even possible. That would assume some sort of fully enforced code of law, which is flawless is apprehension and punishment. That just won’t happen. It can’t. We’re too limited in our abilities.
So the proposed topic seems pointless.
However, you brought up a middle ground. As such, I think that’s perfectly feasible. The question then is: which is more valuable? Should we have more freedom and less justice, or more justice and less freedom?
I’d have to go with the first. In that I think the more freedom you give people, while still holding them accountable, the better a populace you get. I actually think allowing the “common” people more control of their lives is a very good thing. That is, when they make a mistake, they suffer for it immediately, and have no one to blame save themselves. And they are also responsible for correcting it. This teaches a sense of reponsibility that we would lack with a more “impersonal” form of justice/law.
I’m afraid I don’t feel like going into great detail right now, and since you seem to be asking more for opinion than detailed argumentation, I see no need to go into great depth, or heck, even minor depth.
Wasn’t it Mill who said something like the best person to make decisions about your life is you?
Also I don’t see how total justice, assuming you could carry out such a thing, would negate freedom, it would limit it, but not negate it. Then again I suppose it is how you understand the meaning of justice.
For M McD some more mundane examples of Justice/Freedom, both from present debates in British Politics:
- Not wanting identity cards.
- The conservatives are saying they will remove many speed cameras if they got into power.
Shybard said.
You made some excellent points. I agree with your thesis that more freedom/less justice is better. For at least two reasons 1.) more freedom may produce justice simply because some people free to live a just life will do so. But i find it difficult to see how more justice could possibly bring about more freedom unless, perhaps, a lot of people are incarcerated. 2.) Some ancient chinese dude said, “When a society has many laws it is doomed.” I think one of the books i ordered may have Camus’ article in it, i’m curious as to what he wrote.
Thanks Matt. I knew there had to more mundane examples. In one sense justice disallows you to violate the freedom of the other person, whereas freedom allows you (if you are so inclined) to be more just than the law. A society with many laws may actually prevent one from being just in certain circumstances.
what is justice?
Matt:
I was equating justice to law, which is fairly common. And with our limitations, in order to make “absolute justice” we would have to have everyone follow its grounds absolutely, which would effectively make any supposed concept of freedom moot.
If we equate justice to something like fairness, that’s different. It would limit some freedoms, but also create a more harmonious society, which is what we want, and would likely be willing to give up some freedoms to achieve.
Of course, that indicates the middle path I spoke of already. And a fairly leniant one (like I favored).
True.
But now you’re not equating justice to law, but more to a sense of fairness, or right and wrong. Which is a tricky thing to do, since we could even go from justice to morality in that instance. Your statement could be taken as, “prevent one from doing that which is right.” Which bleeds into morality, and thus is not necessarily “justice.” Unless you’re comfortable with having the two overlap. And I admit, it’s hard to keep that from happening sometimes.
What is the point of this question?
The paradox of justice and freedom as opposite forces vanish if you consider freedom as a set of choices in a given time. Freedom is not “to do whatever I want”. “I would like to go to the moon but I can’t” that don’t limit my freedom to wishing something that can’t be. Justice do not limit your freedom at all, you can kill some one but that action impose yourself in a choice of three options commit suicide, try to escape for life or face a sentence.
Carlosefrain: A very good point, something that hadn’t even crossed my mind. However, I think that if we are talking about abstract restrictions placed on us by other humans (i.e. law) rather than physical limitations the case that our freedom isn’t limited is not as clear as the moon example. Certainly if we’re talking about the type of freedom that Mill was talking about in “Of Liberty”, though not having read Camus I’m not 100% on his definition of freedom or liberty. Which rather muddles the question!
Shybard: In In talking about total justice negating freedom, you wrote
I was thinking exactly the opposite when I said it depends on your concept of justice. When we are talking about a legal system the only restrictions it can place on your freedoms are those which there laws about, hence it still gives you freedom to lie, con, adulterate, etc., all the things we would consider ‘unfair’ and yet too trivial, complicated or invasive to legislate against.
When you talk about equating justice to fairness it’s the opposite, if you had absolute justice in that type of system you could never do anything unfair which would completely negate freedom (inasmuch you can call it freedom in light of Carlosefrain’s salient point).
oooh, freedom, free will, one of my favorite subjects of discussion … with that said I’ll try and keep my reply under 2000 words! 
I believe pocky mentioned the most important question that should be asked first “what is justice?”
I would like to respond to that question. The idea of justice today, this “objective framework” to quote Frighter, is a lot different than the origins of this term. I believe there were six cultures that used the same idea of justice back in BC. I believe the egyptians had it depicted as grain being scrapped across a type of stone that lets the seeds or whatever fall into an enclosure while the dust was fanned in the other direction. Hmm, damn considering I just woke up I can’t readily remember all of this, I’ll try and get a hold of my philosophy teacher who had this nicely worded and explained, the six cultures he used were the egyptians, hindus, japanese, greeks and i can’t even remember the other two lol
Okay, enough of that response then, let me get to the point. In all of the similarities we find Justice to be equated to “balance”. Not giving too much, not giving too little. Everything works in accordance basically. To give a practical example it is Just to give back 4.95 when a customer drops 4.95 on the ground or something. Not giving them back 4, not giving them back 5, but exactly what was dropped. Ah! I just remembered the greek example, it’s the three virtues of a person that lead from the appitites and having them in accordance or balance leads to being just.
From my own personal perspective (being a naturalist) I believe nature is balanced and already agreed with this perseption of justice long before I studied this subject, solely because the natural order of things will balance out. “What goes up must come down,” and “what goes around comes around.” The natural order of things leads to balance.
Now bringing up the topic of freedom, what is freedom? I would have to reply to a two-fold answer on this one. Firstly freedom can be said to be our ability to act our will without opposition. Secondly freedom can be said to be the ability to have will in the first place. From the first we can see that ability being oppressed when either other’s wills and abilities are more powerful than ours thus stopping our will or when external factors such as say the natural order, or the natural world (if I want to get somewhere and there’s a mountain in the way I can’t make that happen in the original plan lol). From the second I have to argue what is free will really? How “Free” is it? Is it only derived from the first when we are able to remove external forces? No longer do we have kings and queens telling us what to do, we’re Americans and we are free? What about internal controls? Our very own emotions and conditioning control our ability to think or do things. We cannot neglect those factors either (for the psychologists, Erich Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom” is a great book on discussing this idea of internal controls). I, personally, like to refer to these sometimes “subjective” and otherwise internal controls as natural controls. I mean, we’re dependant on our own biology (nature) as well as the physical world (nature!) for us to function as we do and to percieve the world as it is (the … natural world! see a theme? lol).
So to combine these two to answer your question, does justice conflict with freedom? I don’t really see that being possible unless you refer to “justice” as we have developed it into laws and order and enforcement and frankly that really only is a factor in the external region of our freedom unless we want to look at the psychological effects of this “justice” (for a good example of internal controls just look at the “market” and the “culture” as a way of prohibiting and influencing our way of life and literally controlling our will, we have to look like this, buy this or that, not do this or that, psychological control that’s not ordered from a structured figure).
To summarize, justice is balance, we’re not as free as we’d like to think and the natural order will always prevail. Because freedom and our free will derive from the natural order of things and justice in its truest sense may very well be equated to the natural order of things, the two are not conflictual but may be part of the same whole.
The “justice” we objectified and created is just the great “will” of those who developed it and are really just our tampering with the natural order to create our own structure thinking its better, but that, in itself, is a whole other discussion! 
— Metavoid. I was using that as an example to clarify my point, i do not favour capital punishment.
---- Carlosfrain. That was a very good point, caught me off guard too. All justice does is impose consequences in a lot of circumstances, but one might counter that prison does affect freedom.
— Darkwolfofvoid. From the little i know of the Greeks justice is a balance (remember that blindfolded statue with the set of scales). I am talking about justice as it is (or should be) practiced, not as in religion or law.
I’ll write more later.
At this point you’re not talking about “absolute justice.” That is, something that applies absolutely, in all instances. I was thinking more along the lines of 1984. That is, no matter what you do, “big brother” is watching, and willing to basically smite you down.
Fairness is more open to interpretation, and therefore, not something you can handle with anything concrete like law. Therefore, it’s of only limited importance in discussing in this instance. If I give you a cookie, in all fairness, I should give your brother a cookie. But if your brother doesn’t like cookies, it’s ok that I don’t give him a cookie, and it’s still “fair.” But “justice” or “law” might demand that I give him a cookie anyway. Which is basically trivial and pointless, but it’s more “absolute.”
By absolute, I intended “universally applicable.” Thus, “absolute.” As in, there is no instance in which law does not apply (aka, justice).
Thus, a sense of fairness would be less invasive. Especially since we consider fairness to more or less be applicable anyway, even without the mandate of law behind it.
Also, it might be worth noting, we allow people to lie in court. That is, the 5th amendment, which is basically lying by omission. In fact, we encourage it somtimes. You said a “lie” is unfair, but it could be argued that it’s fair to lie in this instance, since you’d only be getting yourself in trouble for something you may firmly feel it was right to do, or at least, you shouldn’t be punished for.
But a law would apply to this universally, and be less “flexible.” Thus, fairness seems to be far more bendable, and allow more freedom than “absolute justice” or “absolute law.”
You do realize that you just changed the definition of freedom we were working from, right?
But what happens if I think a law is unjust? Should I follow it anyway? Doesn’t it hamper my freedom to tell me I must do something, even if I feel I shoulnd’t have to? Or, even stronger, to say that I must do something I find it immoral to do?
People do things like this all the time. They say restricting X prevents them from exercising Y freedom. If you say I can’t have three wives you may be restricting my freedom of religion.
You’re saying basically, “You can exercise your freedom within boundaries.” The boundary of not being able to go to the moon is almost silly. That’s not quite as bad as saying, “I want to be able to fly, and since I wasn’t born with wings, nature is restricting my freedom of flight.” But these sorts of arguments we can ignore as trivial.
But to say I must kill my second born child because it’s the law, seems to restrict my natural freedom of procreation. The question then is, not do I accept the punishment if I break this law (or whatever other options are open to me), but “should” I “have” to accept this punishment? And additionally, by what right do you command this?
Your definition of freedom doesn’t seem to be freedom really, but more along the lines of “privileges granted.” We can’t grant you the privilege of flight or moon travel, but we can grant you the privilege of that one child, or that one wife. But is this really “freedom?” Or is it just a convenient semantic dodge?
— Excellent posts! I finally got that article by Camus on Justice and freedom. I will be quoting about 30% of the essay.
Albert Camus, Between Hell and Reason, Essays from the French Resistance newspaper Combat 1944-1947 Wesleyan University press English Translation copyright 1991
It would appear that Camus contrasted the two as freedom for the individual vs justice for the “collective good”. How much do we owe to the state?
Shybard.
You say that fairness is more open to interpretation than justice. if you reason from the approach of the majority, top down so to speak, i agree with you. But from my general perspective, (bottom up from the individual), there are (some) people whos sense of fairness is more strict than that of justice, who don’t yearn for the unearned. These are the people who keep the laws from being “invasive”, as you say. But laws were not made for fair or just men, the law has to assume that you will commit wrongs.
Hmmm.
Yes I was.
I didn’t want to labour this but you’ve misinterpreted me. Simply put there are two ways to interpret “Absolute Justice” according to this quick argument we’ve had.
-
AJ=Full implementation of law. All laws are enforced without fail and no chance of getting away with a crime. The severity of punishment will be proportionate to the crime.
-
AJ=Everyone will be forced to treat everyone fairly. Everyone will act fairly in all aspects of life with no expceptions, no-one will be able to get away with acting unfairly. Again, severity of punishment is proportionate to the crime.
Now you said that Absolute justice in the sense [1] would negate freedom, which is plain wrong. It depends on the SCOPE of the law, if the law is very limited in scope the restrictions will be limited too. If extensive in scope it will be extensive.
However, and this is a big HOWEVER, it will never be as limiting as [2] as you are obliged to act fairly in EVERY SINGLE ACTION YOU EVER TAKE. Hence [2] utterly negates the concept of freedom and [1] doesn’t!
The key point, the one I think you missed, is that it actually doesn’t matter how you define fair, it is still a concept that will apply in ever action you take in life, while law can only apply to specific cases that have been legislated against (unless you created a law which was “everyone must act fairly” but laws don’t have that format).
Do you see the point I’m trying to make?
In light of M McD posting Camus’ article it seems that Camus was talking about fairness and not law in terms of justice, you can see it from that brief passage “Freedom for each also means freedom for the rich and ambitious; that invites injustice”.
In that case his argument then falls straight into the very trap we have been discussing, the negation of freedom by “Absolute Fairness”. The two can’t co-exist.
What lies at the intersection of freedom and fairness? Now there’s a thought and a half!
I am trying to understand Matt’s excellent argument. Fairness will apply to every individual case whereas justice only applies in cases delineated by law. Ergo fairness is more constrictive of freedom than justice due to it’s increased scope in the lives of individuals.
Apropos my ‘understanding’ of Matt’s argument. If fairness is applicable to every individual case, wouldn’t that necessarily entail the individual having chosen that course at least in some cases (thus free to make choices) since no legislating body would be able to dictate all cases?