Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

238 STEPHEN T. REHRAUER
purposes, justice and injustice fall within a specific domain of a
broader reality called morality. Thus our dialogue with the
relevant psychological investigations might also serve to reveal
some of those tendencies which help to clarify that often
ambiguous line separating justice from injustice in the daily
lived experience of our people who are sincerely seeking to
follow the way of justice taught and made possible by the Christ
event.
Broadly speaking, contemporary psychology maintains that
all human action is explainable in terms of motivation—driven
by a need or want related directly or indirectly to survival and
flourishing. Concepts of justice and injustice have a great deal to
do with the basic need people have to feel in control of our own
lives and surroundings. This same need is considered to be the
foundation of the activity of thinking itself. 23 Moral concepts, of
which justice is one of the more important, make it possible for
us to create and maintain stable expectations about our own and
other people’s behaviors within a shared social (moral) order. If
I know how people are supposed to behave in certain situations,
then I know what to do when I find myself in this same or
similar situations. I also know how to respond when people do
not behave in conformity with these expectations. Morality
concepts also enable us to make determinations concerning the
types of persons other people are. These enable us to predict
how they will behave in a wide variety of different situations and
circumstances. The world becomes psychologically and
emotionally a secure and controllable place in which to live
comfortably. But the socially shared life-space is extremely
complex. The partitioning of the social world into areas
governed by specific realms of justice makes life within the
shared social world much more manageable. Likewise, holding
people responsible for specific kinds of unjust behavior enables
groups to provoke social change according to desired
directions. 24
23
M. CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third
Millennium (New York: Harper, 1993), pp. 159-162.
24
B. WEINER, Judgments of Responsibility, p. 84.