Okay, interesting. Rather than say that absolute justice applies in one case, and the Golden Rule applies in the other cases, it seems to me that they are simply two different principles. As I said in <my more recent post>:Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 24th, 2022, 7:21 pmMaybe big/small wasn't the best way to put it. Try again, Egg.Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 22nd, 2022, 8:58 pmTo be clear, you would say that equality and the Golden Rule are not central when it comes to the big things, but only "when it comes to the small things"?
On the other thread, we were discussing whether there are eternal objective moral truths. Some tend to talk of morality as if it is all objective truth. Others see the absence of any moral proposition that commands universal assent as evidence that morality is entirely subjective.
If you think that murder is objectively wrong, then it's wrong for a reason other than contravention of the Golden Rule. Thinking of the school shootings and other mass killings in the US in recent decades, we don't think that these are justified - made just - by a death wish on the part of the perpetrator. "You wouldn't want to be killed therefore don't kill others" is thus an inadequate basis for forbidding murder.
Whereas if you think that privacy or free speech is an issue on which people can legitimately hold different views - i.e. that there's no right answer to which we can reason our way - then a golden rule ethic ("whatever rights of free speech or privacy you claim for yourself you should extend to others") still works. Telling us to apply our subjective standards universally may be the best we can do in the absence of objective standards.
In other words, where (if ? When ?) there are objective moral rules, you should follow them regardless of how you would like to be treated. So no, the golden rule is not central to justice. Whereas, if there don't seem to be accepted moral rules, a necessary condition for just action might be to follow what you think the moral rule should be (I.e. apply the golden rule). If you're not even doing that, how can you possibly claim to be just ? So the golden rule comes into play in the grey areas.
"Okay, interesting. So you would say that someone who follows the Golden Rule acts justly at least in some sense, even when he is acting immorally or contrary to "absolute justice." For instance, the man who steals from others and doesn't mind when others steal from him is more just than the man who steals from others and gets angry when others steal from him, and this difference is explained by the Golden Rule (and also by Kant's Categorical Imperative). Sound right?"
It seems to me that these two principles each apply to all cases. Of course, as you say, if absolute justice is unknown in some scenario, then we would have to make do with the single principle of the Golden Rule.
So again, the equality of the Golden Rule clearly does not say that we must treat Bill and Fred the same. Your claim that the Golden Rule asserts equal rights for all seems to be an inaccurate formulation, as I argued in <this post>.Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 24th, 2022, 7:21 pmAnd then the other half of the disagreement is whether the golden rule is actually an equality principle. Does it inherently require you to treat Bill and Fred the same ?
It applies the same subjective (related to your own desires) standard to your treatment of both, but that's the weak equality of universality that any universal principle provides. Not knocking it - universality is important. But it's not what most people who argue for more equality mean by that.
...From that same post:
"To be clear, the Golden Rule seems to be saying that there needs to be an equality between <our treatment of others> and <the way we would like others to treat us>."
...So the Golden Rule does not say to treat Bill and Fred the same. It does not say, "Treat every person you meet the same as you treat every other person you meet." The equality that the Golden Rule asserts is an equality between our actions and our desired passions (where "actions" are what we do to others and "passions" are what is done to us).
Hmm. Let's talk a bit about punishment and restitution, for that is one of the explananda you enumerated in <this post>.Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 24th, 2022, 7:21 pmThe sense of fairness that might impel you to treat them equally is not, it seems to me, rooted in the golden rule, but rather to do with the value of impartiality.
Which doesn't prevent you having a subjective desire to be treated the same as your peers, which the golden rule then impels you to follow in your treatment of Bill and Fred. But that's not inherent in the golden rule. You might equally have a subjective desire to be treated better than others whenever you've done better than they have in any way.
I'm not sure how you understand the inner workings of punishment and restitution. Presumably you believe they are based on some absolute principle of justice that is known without reference to equality? Do you have any ideas about how that might work, or thoughts on the <questions I raised>? Namely, "Nevertheless, we must still ask what restitution is, why it is necessary, and how it is determined (that is, how much restitution an offender is required to make...)."
Some quotes from Aquinas that bear on the topic were already brought up in <this post>. For Aquinas <contrapassum> is the principle of retributive justice:
"Retaliation [contrapassum] denotes equal passion repaid for previous action; and the expression applies most properly to injurious passions and actions, whereby a man harms the person of his neighbor; for instance if a man strike, that he be struck back. . . In all these cases, however, repayment must be made on a basis of equality according to the requirements of commutative justice, namely that the meed of passion be equal to the action."
The example of theft comes later in that same article, and it is the same one that I quoted earlier:
"(I)n like manner when a man despoils another of his property against the latter's will, the action surpasses the passion if he be merely deprived of that thing, because the man who caused another's loss, himself would lose nothing. . . " (Summa Theologiae, II-II.61.4).
Aquinas is clear that the problem with the solution that <AverageBozo> proposed is that the passion repaid for the previous action is unequal to the previous action. That is, in the case of theft, to impose a passion on the thief by which he loses the $50 he stole would be less than the action that the thief imposed on his victim. That is where the remainder of the injustice lies, and that is why the thief must pay more than the $50 he stole. The restitution and retribution are in a sense re-establishing the relation of equality between the thief and his victim.
I am going to leave it there for now, because that is probably a lot to take in, but you can perhaps now begin to see how the other questions about restitution can begin to be answered by Aquinas' account. Here is the body of the relevant article in full for those who are interested:
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"I answer that, Retaliation (contrapassum) denotes equal passion repaid for previous action; and the expression applies most properly to injurious passions and actions, whereby a man harms the person of his neighbor; for instance if a man strike, that he be struck back. This kind of just is laid down in the Law (Exod 21:23, 24): He shall render life for life, eye for eye, etc. And since also to take away what belongs to another is to do an unjust thing, it follows that second retaliation consists in this also, that whosoever causes loss to another, should suffer loss in his belongings. This just loss is also found in the Law (Exod 22:1): If any man steal an ox or a sheep, and kill or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for one ox and four sheep for one sheep. Third retaliation is transferred to voluntary commutations, where action and passion are on both sides, although voluntariness detracts from the nature of passion, as stated above (Q. 59, A. 3).
In all these cases, however, repayment must be made on a basis of equality according to the requirements of commutative justice, namely that the meed of passion be equal to the action. Now there would not always be equality if passion were in the same species as the action. Because, in the first place, when a person injures the person of one who is greater, the action surpasses any passion of the same species that he might undergo, wherefore he that strikes a prince, is not only struck back, but is much more severely punished. In like manner when a man despoils another of his property against the latter’s will, the action surpasses the passion if he be merely deprived of that thing, because the man who caused another’s loss, himself would lose nothing, and so he is punished by making restitution several times over, because not only did he injure a private individual, but also the common weal, the security of whose protection he has infringed. Nor again would there be equality of passion in voluntary commutations, were one always to exchange one’s chattel for another man’s, because it might happen that the other man’s chattel is much greater than our own: so that it becomes necessary to equalize passion and action in commutations according to a certain proportionate commensuration, for which purpose money was invented. Hence retaliation is in accordance with commutative justice: but there is no place for it in distributive justice, because in distributive justice we do not consider the equality between thing and thing or between passion and action (whence the expression contrapassum), but according to proportion between things and persons, as stated above (A. 2)."
(Summa Theologiae, II-II.61.4)