A place where justice can’t exist
Reflections from the Middle East
As public philosophers we consider issues of political debate with a heightened awareness of right and wrong. Usually, this is a straightforward endeavor: it is possible to identify optimally just solutions (from your particular political philosophical perspective) to most public policy issues. This is not to say that there is a single just solution; instead, each political philosophical perspective will have its own. These solutions may not be politically realistic; they may not be economically affordable; they may not even be physically possible within the confines of today’s technology. But, at least theoretically, they exist.
Most issues are like this – you can at least imagine what justice would look like. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not.
I just returned from 10-days in the Middle East, immersed in a conflict I have long tried to avoid. As a philosopher, it is extremely difficult to participate in a debate that few of the most actively engaged individuals approach in a rational manner. But being there, I found myself forced to, at the very least, think about the conflict. During long, hot days wandering the cobblestone alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City, the bustling Salah e-Din Street of East Jerusalem and the yuppie neighborhood of Emek Refaim, I struggled to bring philosophical order to a conflict that has seen little progress in the last 65 years, despite a global focus on an order that few others historical issues have commanded.
What I discovered is that, at least from my political philosophical perspective, there exists no just solution. Not even in the “ideal world” that we analytical philosophers so often inhabit. The best analogy may be to the challenge of distributing one indivisible and indestructible unit of wealth between two equally deserving people who each have nothing. What is the right thing to do? Events of the past have created an analogous situation in the Middle East. Individuals (that clumped together we call Palestinians and Israelis) have equal claims to things that are ultimately indivisible. I’m stumped on what a truly just solution would look like.
When an optimally just solution exists but is unrealistic, the public philosopher is supposed to use it as guidepost; as an ideal toward which we strive in formulating a realistic most just solution. But how do we precede when this guidepost does not exist? When there is no ideal toward which to strive? Maybe we search for a most just solution anyway. But as someone who sees questions of right and wrong in very clear black and white, I confess, this is an exceedingly difficult endeavor.
Related posts:
- Justice? Yes, but at what cost?
- Swine flu and global justice
- Financial transparency and distributive justice
- Compromise
- A state by any other name
ShareComments
One Response to “A place where justice can’t exist”
Leave a Reply
It’s a pity that you don’t even mention the one-state solution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-state_solution) : because in this solution, the “indivisible and indestructible unit of wealth” has no more to be distributed. This could at least be considered as the “optimally just but unrealistic” solution. I believe that as moral philosophers, we should pay attention to it.