7 - Justice without Ethics: A Twentieth-Century Innovation?

Summary

For centuries discussions of justice and ethics were closely linked in European thought and culture, but they have now diverged in marked, interesting and unsettling ways. European traditions had seen them as contributing distinct but parallel answers to the classic question ‘what ought we to do?’¹ Duties of justice were widely seen as requirements both on individuals and on institutions that could, and in many cases should, be backed by legal sanctions, and could in some cases also define counterpart rights. Ethical duties were widely seen as requirements on individuals and certain institutions that did not need to be, and indeed on many views should not be, backed by legal sanctions and did not define counterpart rights. Yet by the start of the twenty-first century claims that justice and ethics were complementary and linked domains of duty – although still deeply embedded in European languages and culture – were often questioned, ignored or even explicitly rejected.