Justice And Virtue: A Comparative Study Of The Theories Of Justice Between Hayek And Hume

In recent years, the debate of the two camps is in full swing between liberalism and communitarianism. Contemporary liberals are represented by Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin etc. They basically take"'the rights of the individual (or personal freedom)'as the core concept"and advocate that"the theory of liberalism is a reasonable verification of the political and legal systems". Communitarianism is represented by MacIntyre, Sandall, Charles Taylor, Benjamin Barber, Michael Walzer, etc. They pointed out:"Contemporary liberals take the legitimacy of individual rights as the coursely basic point and seek a kind of Ethic of just rules and liberal obligations, however they have totally ignored the value of community and hence ignored the research on the kind of Value Ethic being good of community as the value target or the kind of Virtue Ethic being personnal intrinsic character as the basic point."As we all know, the antagonism between the two camps highlights an extremely important issue of the relationship between justice and virtue almost throughout the history of western philosophy. Those greatest philosophers have quested the issue in different ways in history, which shows——such as what is revealed in the title of the first chapter of the works"Whose Justice? Which Rationality?"——many kinds of antagonistic concepts of justice and mutual competitive rationality. In other words, It has ever been created and recognised different order forms in specific time and space, as MacIntyre questioned:"Whose Justice? Which rationality?", the issue of the relationship between justice and virtue shows different physiognomy in the history.As we all know, the influence of Hume's philosophy of law and political philosophy on Hayek's theory is great. These issues like what is the internal logic of this lineage, what is the ideological content of it contains, how to evolve it is,etc., should be studied further today. The main purpose of this article is to construct the issue of the relationship between justice and virtue we cannot avoid in a comparative study between Hayek's and Hume's theory of justice. Of course, we see this issue constructed in different ways in history, especially in the level of antagonism between communitarianism and liberalism today. However, the approach taken in this paper will be constructed within the liberalism camp itself in the sense of comparison between Hayek's and Hume's theory of justice. On the one hand, it will further highlight the importance of the issue and hence provide a kind of reference of"ideal picture"or standards of justice for the research on the issue of justice in today's China; On the other hand, it will also foretell the possibility of communication between liberalism and community in a sense.In this paper, it is taken as the core view that justice is related to virtue, not independent of it. Specifically, starting from the study of the science of human nature, I think, Hume demonstrated the proposition that justice is an artificial virtue, which can be divided into two propositions:"the rules of justice is artificial"and"justice is a kind of virtue"according to justice attached to virtue. Hayek advocated"theory of negative justice"based on cultural evolution by the inheritance and development of Hume's study of the proposition of"justice is artificial", but Hayek did not inherit Hume's proposition of"justice is a kind of virtue", so there are some fractures between Hayek's and Hume's theory of justice. In other words, Hayek intended to evade the research on virtue based on his epistemology, but the issue is unavoidable in fact, so there exists a big flaw in Hayek's theory of justice.I need to deal with two major threads: the first thread is the inner logic of Hume's or Hayek's theory of justice, the second is the relationship of ideological inheritance between Hayek's and Hume's theory of justice. The first thread is the premise of the second. Without thread 1, no thread 2 and no meaningful questions can be opened up. Based on this thesis, the arrangement of the structure of this dissertation is as follows:Chapter 1 is devoted to the reconstruction of Hayek's theory of justice. Because Hayek's theory is very complex, it is not easy to grasp the essence of Hayek's theory. Therefore I take several key concepts closely related to Hayek's theory of justice on the basis of Deng zhenglai's study and move on to study the specific content of Hayek's"theory of negative justice"in this part.Chapter 2 dwells on the discussion of Hume's theory of justice. This chapter is started from the study of the key concept of"virtue"in Hume's theory. Based on this, I focus on explaining Hume's proposition of"Justice is an artificial virtue". Coursely, this proposition can be divided into two propositions:"justice is artificial"and"justice is a kind of virtue"in this paper. Therefore Hayek's theory of justice may be regarded as the reference to Hume's theory of justice in a sense. Chapter 3 foucses on the inheritance and development between Hayek's and Hume's theory of justice based on the above discussion. It includes the inheritance and development of Hume's study of the way of gaining just rules, of the specific content of Hume's idea of just rules and of Hume's exposition of the relationship between just rules and order, progress.Chapter 4 is contributed to the fracture and unavoidance between Hayek's and Hume's theory of justice. It points out: Hayek intended to evade the research on Hume's proposition of"justice is a kind of virtue"on the basis of the inheritance of Hume's proposition of"justice is artificial", while it is unavoidable in fact. Therefore the focused issue of the relationship between justice and virtue between communitarianism and liberalism today is highlighted by the comparison between two liberals'theories of justice.The last part is the conclusion of this paper. It outlines the key points of the paper and points out the need of further thinking about the issue of the relationship between justice and virtue.