14 - Value, Stringency, and the Frame-of-Human-Life Conception of the Political

Summary

Justice is a political value that holds across reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I introduce the notion of a frame of human life. For Aristotle, the polis does that job, but nowadays the institutions and practices that do so are embedded into the human web. To call something a “political value” – beyond the generic sense of pertaining to the creation of order – means that it pertains to the design of that frame. Justice is the value of giving each their own within this frame. The political value of distributive justice gives rise to principles of justice, which generate rights and duties. Justice honors the distinctiveness of each within the distinctively human life. That is why the value of distributive justice is the most stringent value. Justice as a value radiates into different domains of practical reasoning in ways that principles, rights, or duties do not. It takes exceptionally strong considerations to offset justice.