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The Study On Marx's Conception Of Justice

Posted on:2012-06-03Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z H JiangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116330335455158Subject:Marxist philosophy
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After the trend of revival of political philosophy in western since 1970s, whether or not Marx has his particular conception of justice, the relationship between Marx and classical conception of justice and liberal conception of justice, becomes the hot spot that Marxist scholars and the whole western scholars research, In my point, Marx had indeed offered a unique conception of justice, unlike liberal conception of justice and classical conception of justice as a positive conception of justice, his conception of justice is simply a negative and critical conception of justice. The research of this conception of justice not only will help deepen our understanding of Marx's thought, but also help us spread interaction with the whole western scholars, providing an important theoretical resources for the solution to the justice problems for the whole world and contemporary china.Through the etymology and semantic textual research, we find that there are two broad types of conception of justice:classical conception of justice and liberal conception of justice which appeared before Marx's conception of justice. There are obvious difference between liberal conception of justice and classical conception of justice, for example, classical conception of justice emphasizes that community takes precedence over individuals; presuppose the existence of a divine substance; emphasizes that obligations takes precedence over rights, emphasizes the freedom based on ethics and universal public good; justice is the first virtue of city-state legislation; but liberal conception of justice emphasizes that individuals take precedence over community; rights take precedence over good; individuals is an atomic individual; individuals establish a justice relationship through contract; individuals are equal in personality and politics; natural and economic unequal have certain rationality; justice is the first virtue of political organization, and so on. But both classical conception of justice and liberal conception of justice regard justice as the first virtue in political institution and legislation; they affirm that justice is a basic construction principle in coordinating the relationship between people and people as well as the relationship between people and community; they talk about justice leaving production and suggest that justice decides material production and distribution, trying to cover the fact of class differentiation and class conflicts by the concept of justice, so as to defend the existing social institution and make it legal; they have reversed the relationship between social existence and social consciousness and regarded social consciousness as the basis of social existence; they have promised eternal humanity or eternal morality; they are based on abstract affirmation of empirical world; they have affirmed the non-historical theory about current social order. I think that, therefore, they are both positive conception of justice, in other words, they have affirmed the basic construction function of justice for social order and social life. On the contrary, Marx's conception of justice did not affirm the basic position of justice in constructing social order and social life, it is precisely to deny this view; more importantly, Marx suggests that if a society continues to use justice to measure its social order and law order,it means that the society is basically in defective production mode; human will surpass this stage in the communist society and cancel justice's construction role in social order and social life. Consequently we can regard Marx's conception of justice as a critical conception of justice, the word "critical " emphasizes the functions and limits of reflection and critical principles of justice in "prehistory of human society", and fundamentally deny the constructing value of principles of justice in the communist society.Marx's thought about justice is not immutable, but is in gradual development and evolution in the collision with other thinkers, in the process of internal evolution, it has undergone inheritance and criticism to modern liberalism and enlightenment thoughts, inheritance and criticism to Hegel's and Feuerbach's classical conception of justice, and eventually from humanistic positive conception of justice turns to the historical materialist view on critical conception of justice. We can roughly divide this complex process into three stages:inheritance of traditional conception of justice; criticism of traditional conception of justice; formation of Marx's critical conception of justice. In the first stage, Marx not only inherited some elements of liberal conception of justice, but also inherited some elements of classical conception of justice; in the second stage, he not only criticized some characteristics of classical conception of justice, but also criticized some characteristics of liberal conception of justice; in the third stage, through his five core texts, "German Ideology","Communist Manifesto","Das Kapital","Civil War in France" and "Critique of the Gotha Program", he gradually formed his own critical conception of justice. Of course, since Marx did not have a special text that focus on the issues of justice, his critical conception of justice is scattered in these different texts, and specific discussion is often mentioned when he discussed other topics, consequently it is not systematic in the surface and direct form. But this does not mean that Marx's critical conception of justice is not systematic, on the contrary, through our efforts, we can sort out Marx's point on critical conception of justice which scattered in different text and form a basic structure, helping us better understand its basic content of this conception of justice. This is exactly our task in the fourth chapter.In my opinion, to fully display the basic structure of this critical conception of justice includes at least two levels:one is to outline its philosophy foundation, the other is to outline its specific conclusions of this critical conception of justice, only when these two aspects mix organically, our display of this critical conception will be three-dimensional. Marx's critical conception of justice, as a kind of political theories, differs from classical conception of justice and liberal conception of justice, the ultimate cause is that the philosophical foundation that construct this critical conception of justice makes a shift. Classical conception of justice is based on the traditional metaphysics, and modern liberal conception of justice is based on abstract empirical theory of human nature. While the former had a integral teleological view of the world as a foundation and transcendental theory of virtue as a premise, but it is idealistic; while the latter abandoned teleological view of the world and used abstract atomic individuals'desire and impulse as the premise, but it was still an abstract idealistic assumption. Therefore, they have two aspects of consistency in philosophy foundation:one is that they both emphasized that existence takes precedence over essence, that is to say, they both presupposed that the essence of human exists in advance before the existence of human and suggested that the existence of human is only reasonable when it meet this essence; the other is that they both emphasize a kind of idealistic methodology. The reason that Marx can transcend these two kind of conception of justice is that his thing mode abandoned this abstract idealism and predestination theory of human nature and presented historical materialism that based on the conception of practice. From this new theoretical perspective, the theory defects of classical conception of justice and liberal conception of justice are fully revealed, and thus Marx transcend these two kind of conception of justice. The basic point of Marx's critical conception of justice includes two aspects:first, criticism of previous positive conception of justice; the second is that positive interpretation of his own critical conception of justice. About the first aspect, we will discuss in chapter IV and V in detail; in the second part of the third chapter, we will only show Marx's own interpretation of conception of justice, and it includes the following points:(1)justice is a kind of ideological discourse; (2)justice is a product of a defective mode of production; (3)justice is the product of a class society; (4)communist society is a super-just society. These four points constitute Marx's basic framework of positive interpretation of justice.In the fifth chapter and the sixth chapter, we showed Marx's criticism of liberal conception of justice and classical conception of justice in detail. Marx's criticism of liberal conception of justice is developed on two levels:one is that, in the theoretical presupposition of philosophy and thinking mode, Marx revealed that individual subjects of right promised by liberal conception of justice is abstract and the civil society emphasized by liberal conception of justice is self-interest; the other is that, so far as the specific theoretical defects, Marx thought that liberal conception of justice had masked the alienated labour and liberal conception of justice could not overcome the internal contradictions of capitalism, it is non-historical and idealistic, it had ideological characteristics. Marx's criticism of classical conception of justice is similar to his criticism of liberal conception of justice, it developed in two levels, but the key points that they emphasized are different. So far as the theoretical presuppositions of philosophy and thinking mode, Marx revealed that divine substance promised by classical conception of justice does not exist and the ethical community emphasized by classical conception of justice is illusory; so far as the specific theoretical defects, Marx suggested that classical conception of justice had neglected the material foundation of virtue thus it is non-historical and idealistic, classical conception of justice also had ideological characteristics. That is to say, from the new perspective of practice viewpoint and historical materialism, Marx found above defects of liberal conception of justice and classical conception of justice, consequently he transcended these two kinds of positive conception of justice in general, fundamentally denied the constructing value of principles of justice in future communist society, and actively explore a realistic way that form just society to of super-just society.The last discussion includes "from just society to super-just society" and "some reflective points". Under the subject of "from just society to super-just society", we discussed the operational principles and measures of Marx's conception of justice. According Marx's view, from just society to super-just society is not only inevitable, but also has many operable realistic conditions and measures. After meeting these conditions and measures, human society will be going into a super-just society. Under the subject of "some reflective points", we have reflected on the theoretical premise of Marx's critical conception of justice. I suggested that when we jumped out of Marx's logic and reflected on his premise, we will find that Marx's thought on this aspect is defective, for example, Marx did not provide us a perfect dynamical mechanism that from just society to super-just society; Marx stressed that a basic condition that from just society to super-just society is that the development of productive forces are so high that the whole human society will get rid of scarcity in general, but it presupposed the limitless of natural resources; Marx believed that the proletariat revolution leaded by the communist party can overthrow the old state machine and establish a new state machine, and then change the system of ownership, providing powerful guarantee for the death of state and the disappear of the political nature of public power, but it presupposed that human is completely rational and thoroughly selfless; Marx did not think about that, after stepping into super-just society, how do human society organizes its specific production, how do human society distributions material means of production and labour product, and how to achieve what he called "personal ownership" and "everyone is free to share the sum of the social productive force" or how did the whole society regulate production to avoid the blindness of the economic strength and thus avoid the appearance of the division of labour and alienation; and so on. Nonetheless, the effort that Marx tried to overcome alienation and reification of the capitalist society and find a way to help human individuals realize freely their objectivity is admirable. We should not deny the theoretical and practical value of Marx's critical conception of justice just for its defects. And we should not abandon or forget Marx, on the contrary, we should keep an running conversation with Marx in depth. Only in this way, human will have a brighter future.
Keywords/Search Tags:Marx, Liberal conception of justice, Classical conception of justice, Communistic society, Super-just society
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