Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

THE INJUSTICE OF JUSTICE AND THE JUSTICE OF INJUSTICE 247
Sander’s division of the social and moral situation according to
the two bipolar axes of equality or inequality of members (the
vertical), and of low or high solidarity (the horizontal), in the
attempt to reveal the underlying influence of the mutual
interaction between macro level differences among differing
societies and micro level differences between roles within a
society. 42
In the first type of social organization, injustice is usually
conceived of as violation of the principle of equality. It is
grounded and defined in terms of a disruption of the equality
among all of the members, excluding some from full
membership and participation. In the second type of group,
since inequality of members is tempered by the role distinction
which specifies their place within the social hierarchy, injustice
is defined in terms of unfair or inequitable reward based upon
one’s performance of his task or one’s task assignment. Injustice
is a violation of a principle governing equity. The first group, in
which justice is egalitarian in nature, is closer to the traditional
Aristotelian ideal and tends toward Feinberg’s classification of
noncomparative justice. People’s rights and claims are grounded
in their membership, which is itself grounded in the natural
qualities which make them members. The latter type of social
structure more closely approximates the Platonic ideal of proper
ordering according to function and ability. Those who are best
able to fulfill certain tasks are slotted to those tasks, and they are
not asked to do those things for which they are not suited.
Because some roles are more important than others, they
deserve greater compensation and status according to the extent
that the role expectations are fulfilled by those who occupy
them. This is a comparative concept of justice, since one’s
abilities, place, and dues are only able to be evaluated by a
comparison of one’s self to others in the group. In the one
perspective, the source of the moral criteria inheres in the
R. HARRÉ, Personal Being (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp.
229-230.
42
V. L. HAMILTON and J. SANDERS, Everyday Justice: Responsibility and the
Individual in Japan and the United States (New Haven, Yale University Press,
1992), pp. 8-12.