Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

THE INJUSTICE OF JUSTICE AND THE JUSTICE OF INJUSTICE 231
Here we have a very clear, albeit a bit cynical, expression of
how the nature of justice is revealed in acts of injustice, of how
injustice can flow out of justice, and of how the reverence for a
particular concept of or belief in justice can lead to acts of
injustice. Also revealed is the contradiction hidden in the
attempt to identify justice solely with impartiality. For Kohlberg,
justice consists in a respect for persons because it is universal
and impartial. However, Masters’ character reminds us that this
same blind impartiality and universality makes justice “no
respecter of persons.” Persons are after all, among their many
other defining qualities, individuals. No doubt those who
burned the press and attacked the author of a critical poem did
so in the name of respect for justice. Masters knew that people
take their belief in justice very seriously, perhaps even more
seriously than their obligation to see the realities of justice and
injustice as they manifest themselves concretely in the real
world. The crime of the fictional Carl Hamblin was that he
defamed their faith in justice itself, and this in their minds
justified their destruction of his property and the silencing of a
metaphorical clarion voice which proclaimed that what some
perceive to be a blindfold symbolizing the impartial blindness of
justice, for others is nothing but a bandage covering the
festering wound of an unseeing, uncaring madness. 3
This very tension, that the same acts of justice can, when
looked at from alternative perspectives, be seen by some as acts
3
In all fairness to Kohlberg, he recognized this difficulty with his
definition. His whole theory of moral development according to invariant
stages had as its purpose the specification of precisely this reality: Different
people reason about justice according to different criteria: “The problem,
however, runs deeper than just what goes into the bag of virtues, it’s what we
mean by any one of them when we stop to think deeply about it, itself. As I
say, honesty and responsibility are good words, involve little controversy, but
it’s also true that a vague consensus on the goodness of these terms conceals
very real disagreement about what they mean. What is one man’s integrity is
another man’s stubbornness, what is one man’s honesty and openness in
expressing his true feelings is another man’s insensitivity to the feelings of
the other person.” L. KOHLBERG, “The Implications of Moral Stages for
Problems in Sex Education,” Paper for Sex Information Council of the United
States Conference (July 1972), p. 12.