What is a just society?
Liberty, equality, power and the social contract
What is a just society? Philosophers give 7 main answers: the contract, natural rights, liberties, equality, virtue and harmony, tradition and one humanity. AskPhilosophy presents 48 arguments, from Laozi to Robert Nozick, reconstructed step by step, logic-checked and verified word for word against their original texts.
The 7 possible answers
Each column is one way of answering the question: what it holds and the philosophers who defend it. Click a column to see only its arguments.
Power is legitimate only if it rests on the consent of the citizens.
Rousseau, Hobbes, Diderot, John Rawls…
Everyone has, by nature and before any state, rights (life, liberty, reason) that the law must respect.
Locke, Wollstonecraft, Francisco de Vitoria, Thomas Paine…
A just society first protects everyone's liberties and property.
Voltaire, Machiavel, Locke, Ibn Khaldoun…
A just society corrects the inequalities that corrupt people.
Marx, Beauvoir, Wollstonecraft, Gramsci…
Governing well means setting an example and letting things take their course, rather than punishing.
Confucius, Aristote, Platon, Lao-tseu…
A just society relies on what the experience of generations has tested (customs, institutions, cautious reform) more than on a plan drawn up by reason.
Edmund Burke, Friedrich Hayek, Michel de Montaigne, G. K. Chesterton
Before being a citizen of a country, each person is a citizen of the world.
Kant, Cicéron, Marc Aurèle, Érasme…
The arguments
Click an argument to see it step by step, with the objections and replies.
The contract
Power is legitimate only if it rests on the consent of the citizens.
6 argumentsThe social pact: obeying the law and staying free
If laws come from everyone's will and apply to everyone, obeying them means obeying only oneself.
Without a state, the war of all against all
Humans are roughly equal, so rivals for the same things, so distrustful: without a common power, war follows.
The contract and the absolute sovereign
Promises without the sword are mere words, and a limited power sends every dispute back to force: we need an absolute sovereign.
No one is born to command
No one received from nature the right to command; power comes from force, which makes no right, or from consent.
The veil of ignorance: choosing the rules without knowing who you will be
If nobody knows their place in society, everyone chooses rules that are fair to all.
Justice is only a useful pact
Justice does not exist in itself: it is an agreement not to harm one another, and what stops serving that agreement stops being just.
Natural rights
Everyone has, by nature and before any state, rights (life, liberty, reason) that the law must respect.
5 argumentsProperty through labour
Everyone owns their body, hence their labour, and by mixing labour with something taken from nature they make it their property.
Rights do not come from our forefathers
If age alone made a custom just, the slave trade would be just: rights must therefore come from reason.
The Indians were the true owners of their lands
Neither sin, nor unbelief, nor a supposed lack of reason takes away a people's property: this right comes from nature, not faith.
Rights come from birth, not from governments
History proves nothing, there is always a contrary custom; at the origin all men are born equal, with the same natural rights.
Natural law would hold even if God did not exist
Humans are made to live in society with reason, and what follows from that is true by nature, as 2 and 2 make 4: God cannot change it.
Liberties
A just society first protects everyone's liberties and property.
11 argumentsNo one may say "believe or die": toleration
The golden rule forbids telling others "believe as I do or perish"; a belief is punishable only if it breeds fanaticism.
Conflict between the people and the great made Rome free
The quarrels between people and elites, fought through legal channels, produced laws that protect freedom.
Belief cannot be forced: toleration
Force can make people comply but not believe, and a religion only counts if it is truly believed.
Light taxes yield more, injustice ruins the state
Light taxes encourage activity, which brings the state more; excessive taxes kill the will to work and ruin everything.
Freedom to think and to speak
No one can be forced to think otherwise: banning speech does not change thoughts, it only corrupts good faith.
Power checks power
Anyone with power tends to abuse it until he meets limits, and only another power sets them.
The liberty of the Ancients and that of the Moderns
Today each person's share of power is tiny, so sacrificing private independence for it would cost more than it brings.
Force may be used only to prevent harm to others
When society imposes its way of life on a minority, it is as likely to be wrong as right.
Wilt Chamberlain: liberty upsets every pattern of distribution
If a distribution is just, free people spending their share as they wish produce a new distribution that is just as well.
Even the majority can be tyrannical, and a gentle power can lull liberty to sleep
When the majority is the only authority, nothing stops it; and a gentle power that thinks for us takes away the habit of being free.
Private vices, public benefits
The passions morality condemns put thousands to work: without them the hive grows poor; it is for the law to frame them.
Equality
A just society corrects the inequalities that corrupt people.
9 argumentsTo each according to his needs: equal right is still bourgeois right
The same measure applied to unequal people keeps the inequality: equal right does not end injustice.
Man is the Subject, woman is the Other
Man posits himself as the Subject and defines woman in relation to himself; her place as the Other is imposed, not chosen.
The rights of half the human race
Men's rights rest on reason, which women share, and the degree of reason is not what measures rights.
Power rests on consent as much as on force
Power combines force and consent: in the West the state is only a front trench, with civil society standing behind it.
All men are intellectuals
No work is purely physical, and outside their job everyone holds a view of the world and a conscious moral conduct.
Property is theft
The owner draws an income from a thing without working or producing anything: he receives products in exchange for nothing.
Equality of what? Equalising what each person can do and be
Neither goods nor happiness measure what each person can really do and be: that is what a theory of equality should target.
The natural lottery: no one deserves their talents or their starting point
No one deserves their talents or their background; so an inequality is just only if it also benefits the worst off.
What is called the nature of women is an artificial thing
Women's nature is unknown, since they have only been seen subordinated; and if nature decides, no law is needed: competition is enough.
Virtue and harmony
Governing well means setting an example and letting things take their course, rather than punishing.
6 argumentsGovern by virtue and ritual rather than by fear
Ruled by punishment, people avoid wrongdoing out of fear but feel no shame; they imitate virtuous example and learn shame.
To each according to merit: distributive and corrective justice
Justice is a form of equality: shares should match each person's merit, while between private persons only the damage counts.
Justice is each part of the city and of the soul doing its own task
A city is just when each group does its own task; the soul, which has three parts, is just in the same way.
Governing through non-action
The more laws and bans a ruler piles up, the more disorder there is: a people left alone regulates itself.
A law good here may be bad elsewhere
Peoples differ in climate and customs; a law against their customs makes them unhappy.
A prince must be a philosopher
A king rules for everyone's good, a tyrant for himself; whoever mistakes false goods for true ones cannot aim at the common good.
Tradition
A just society relies on what the experience of generations has tested (customs, institutions, cautious reform) more than on a plan drawn up by reason.
4 argumentsSociety is a contract between the dead, the living and those yet to be born
Inherited customs hold the experience of many generations, richer than one person's reason: correct them with care, do not remake them.
Knowledge is dispersed: no central plan can gather it
Useful knowledge is scattered among millions of people: no central plan can gather it, while prices make it circulate.
Do not change a received law lightly
Touching one law shakes the whole structure, and the gain is often doubtful while the disorder is certain.
Chesterton's fence: understand why it is there before removing it
Someone put this fence there for a reason, and until we know it, we cannot judge whether it was reasonable.
One humanity
Before being a citizen of a country, each person is a citizen of the world.
7 argumentsPerpetual peace: republics, a federation of free states and universal hospitality
Peace is not natural and must be established: in a republic, those who pay for war must consent to it.
One law for Rome and for Athens
True law is the reason nature gave to all; if justice depended on votes, a vote could make theft just.
Citizen of the world
We all share reason, hence a common law, hence one city: the world.
Against war: one human family
Humans are born naked and weak, made for mutual help; each side thinks its cause is just, and war's evils outweigh its goods.
"They are slaves." No, they are human beings
The slave has the same nature as his master and only fortune sets them apart: he deserves the same respect as a human being.
The right to have rights: the stateless and the failure of the rights of man
When one loses every political community, the 'rights of man' protect no one: first comes the right to belong to humanity.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere
We are caught in a network of ties that no one can leave: what affects one affects all, so no one is an outsider where injustice is.
Other philosophers' positions arrive as profiles are completed. No position is presented as the winner.