The Theory On Virtue Of Justice

During the long developing history of human society, justice, though has presented a variety of theoretical forms and has been endowed with so many different contents, its value has always owned a great importance. Just like Adam Smith once said, Justice is the main pillar which supports our society. China, as a socialist country, pays more attention to the status and role of justice, because justice is the key content of socialist core values, the essential property of socialism with Chinese characteristic, and it is determined by the realistic demands of social development.The realization of fairness and justice needs the guarantee of system, but single system can not drive itself, it acquires the systematic human consciousness, which could internalized into one’s faith, even one’s character, namely the virtue of justice. That requires the realization of system justice, which also requires the realization of individual justice, viz citizens should have virtue of justice. System justice is the foundation, virtue of justice for each citizen is the necessary support conditions, and neither of them can be dispensed. The so-called virtue of justice in this paper means the moral trait that people is voluntarily and persistently behaving themselves in the principle of justice.It is always from the institutional justice perspective to research the justice but it is lack of the specialized research and in-depth discussion on virtue of justice. Meanwhile, we always find some policies in real life which are well-designed and in line with justice principle. But if the perpetrators are lack of virtue of justice, the effect of its implementation will be compromised. Besides, the revival of virtue ethics provides a starting point for the study of justice and theoretical support for researching virtue of justice. The purpose of this paper is to research the concept, connotation, practical characteristics and structure of virtue of justice to reveal the problems which the citizen’s virtue of justice will face to and its cause. And it will explore the theory method of cultivating virtue of justice on basis of it.The paper starts with the theories exploration on virtue of justice. And both the concepts of "justice"and "virtue" set up the base. For "justice", its basic definition, the constituent elements, the main types and the theoretical origins are explored; while for "virtue", it is held that there are two forms of it, namely the Aristotelian and the virtue from the nominative ethical perspective. Both forms have their own advantages and limitations, which calls for mutual complementation. And this is what the paper intends to reach in defining the "virtue of justice". In addition, in an attempt to solve the practical problem of cultivating the "virtue of justice", the dissertation further discusses the structure and features of this very concept.In order to understand the virtue of justice better, it is necessary to explain seriously the theoretical history of virtue of justice. Ancient Greece is the period which initialized and formed the western theory of virtue of justice. The period could be divided into myth period, pre-Socratic period, classical period, Hellenistic and Roman period. In those periods, virtue of justice showed different theoretical modes, which includes the succumbing to cosmic order and one’s destiny, playing each social role and keeping spiritual harmony, complying with existing laws and concrete justice. During this process, the scope of virtue of justice spread from small city to broader, as connecting with the spirit of law observance closely. In Middle Age, virtue of justice was considered to constant quality that one was supposed to adhere to; the ultimate power of this principle was from God; righteous people must abide with the law of God and pay reverence to the latter. Among this period and previous history, justice was generally seen as a kind of moral virtue; but after Middle age, normative dimension in the research of justice overcome the dimension of morality, individual virtue of justice became the derivative of rules. In modern age, bourgeois revolution rose, freedom, equality, rights, fraternity became universal demands, virtue of justice showed people desired for those values, which meant democratic consciousness and the spirit of law. After the establishment of bourgeois regime, maintaining the rule of bourgeois became priority, virtue of justice embodied as obedience to state authorities and orders. When the Industrial Revolution started, productivity strengthened itself to utmost, utilitarian ideology and theory produces and became mature, utilitarian thinkers always considered virtue of justice as the natural emotion affected by moral principles. After entering modern society, theories of justice and virtue of justice came along into two different paths, one was Marxism, and the other was positivism, irrationalism and relativism. The former realized transcend over conventional theory, and pointed out the road which could realize the actual justice; the latter confined justice in the scope of factuality and canceled the rational aspect of justice which leads to pieces of justice theory. The standard of justice became so vague that it could not guide people; the virtue of justice of this period became mechanically abiding with laws or following irrational behavior. In face of this situation, Rolls picked the traditions of contract, and tried to set rational social regulations. He proposed two principles of justice, the principle of equality and the principle of difference. Virtue of justice or sense of righteousness became the desire and inclination of abiding the principle of justice. Rolls’s theory caused tremendous response. McIntyre was the typical representative of virtue ethic school. He advocated that community took priority over individual, goodness took priority over legitimateness, and the original virtue of justice of Aristotle should be reconsidered. In traditional Chinese culture, virtue of justice embodies justice; it is a demand of rationality and the concrete expression of benevolence.Virtue of justice has important significance to social existing and development; the significance could be embodied in every aspect of life. It is the bottom line of virtue, which could breed other virtues, thus it is the premise of realization of social justice. It could promote the formation of present Chinese modern ethics; it contributes to the solution of actual exiting moral issues, which could morally support social development; it is necessary demand of market economy, it also could promote the economy development. Virtue of justice could promote the formation of ideology of justice and the development of advanced socialist culture.However, some problems of virtue of justice emerge:in political area, abuse of rights, weakness of political rights consciousness, unwillingness of political participation; in economy, unfair competition and unfair transaction; in society, weak rights awareness, moral indifference, and weak civic awareness. Many reasons contribute to those problems. In area of thought and culture, the authority of principle of collectivism is doubted, social differentiation leads to the absence of social value consensus, extreme individualism prevails; in the aspect of construction of system, social relationship takes priority over systems, which leads to problem in actual system construction; in addition, there are many problems among the process of cultivating virtue of justice in campus nowadays, those problems lead to the shortage of science and effectiveness.Therefore, it is necessary to explore the training system for virtue of justice to increase the effectiveness. There are two ways to start, one is macro aspect, and the other is micro aspect. In macro aspect, it is better to optimize the training environment, to enhance the acceptance to all kinds of community, because community is basic place where it can breed virtue of justice; put socialist justice view as social basic consensus. In a society which is lack of justice system, it is impossible to be of virtue of justice. Thus, it is important to strengthen related system construction in order to train virtue of justice. In micro aspect, it is better to train people scientifically. The basic methods of moral psychology are adopted to do research of training virtue of justice. The moral development theory of Piaget and Kohlberg take fairness as the core of moral development, thus this should be the basic theory of training virtue of justice. But this theory over emphasized the development of moral rationality, moral judgment, neglected other sides of morality, for instance, emotion, willingness and behavior. So it is necessary to strengthen what is weak in that theory, promote the coordinated development of all aspects of virtue of justice as well as the virtue of justice.In short, through the research of related theories of virtue of justice, this paper is supposed to innovate in theory and give theoretical basis for cultivating and practicing virtue of justice;...