Research On Thoughts Of Justice: Marx And The Scotts

The concept of Justice has been developed through the long river of the history of human thought from the civil justice to the Scotts'virtual justice to Marx's radical justice, whose developing logics is consistent though its definition is different in very stages. The Scotts, an important part of the whole European enlightenment, what it describes as virtual justice had got rid of a pure moral merit, but a combination with historical and social thoughts. This perspective with reality has been taken by Marx through a further application and development of the concepts of Labor division, civil society and the approach of historical and empirical analysis, by which, Marx has made a further critique to the phenomenon of social injustice, and develop the theory of Historical Materialism. This thesis tends to make a comparison between Marx and the Scotts in the perspective of justice. Firstly, on the basis of the domestic and foreign references of the subject of justice, the thoughts of justice before and during enlightenment should be deeply observed. From chapter one, it is clearly that there is a transformation from outside to inner, from theodicy to virtue of the idea of justice of Greece, while the concept the justice goes through a changing period based on the framework of political practice from Rome to Medieval. During the early period of Enlightenment, the idea of justice has been associated with such concepts as state power, citizen, political freedom and ownership of property constructing the modern research framework of justice. Chapter two is trying to dig the thinking resources of justice thoughts of the Scotts in the framework of enlighten modernity. What the implication of justice described by Francis Hutchison's sense of virtue, David Hume's formulated virtue and Adam Smith's different distribution presents the Scotts'attempt to establish a normative justice, and their quest to a virtual life in the context of modern market through combination with the real society, history and economy. Chapter three focuses on Marist thoughts of justice from a radical debate between Alan Wood and Ziyad Husami to the relationship between exploitation and justice, state and justice to comprehend Marx's views of justice. Therefore, it is determined that Marx's concept of justice has not just one dimension but dialectical ones, which not only criticizes the capital logics based on distribution according to needs, but also improves the civilization that capital developed. At last, this thesis mainly deals with the similarities and differences between Marx and the Scotts through the comparison of three concepts:labor division, civil society and analyzing approaches. This thesis is trying to combine the perspectives of the Scotts'thoughts of justice with Marx's, needless to say, which will contribute to grasp the development of the concept of justice on one hand and comprehend the Scotts'and Marx's thoughts of justice respectively on the other, which will be helpful to provide profound academic values and practical enlightenments to conquer the social injustice during the construction of a harmonious society. At the same time, it can clarify a radical misunderstanding of contemporary Western scholars regards to Marx's thoughts of justice:overemphasis on the moral dimension over the reality. If we understand justice by its duality:synchronicity and diachronicity, we can find that Marx's belief about the future of Communism is not just a utopia.