The Two Faces of Justice [Hardcover]

Justice is a human virtue that is at once unconditional and conditional. Under favorable circumstances, we can be motivated to act justly by the belief that we must live up to what justice requires, irrespective of whether we benefit from doing so. But our will to act justly is subject to conditions. We find it difficult to exercise the virtue of justice when others regularly fail to. Even if we appear to have overcome the difficulty, our reluctance often betrays itself in certain moral emotions.

In this book, Jiwei Ci explores the dual nature of justice, in an attempt to make unitary sense of key features of justice reflected in its close relation to resentment, punishment, and forgiveness. Rather than pursue a search for normative principles, he probes the human psychology of justice to understand what motivates moral agents who seek to behave justly, and why their desire to be just is as precarious as it is uplifting.

A wide-ranging treatment of enduring questions, The Two Faces of Justice can also be read as a remarkably discerning contribution to the Western discourse on justice relaunched in our time by John Rawls.

Cis account of justice is perhaps one of the most in-depth discussions on the subject published in recent years. Showing an impressive understanding of the works of the major philosophers that have helped to shape western philosophy, Cis work is an attempt to address some of the frequently debated philosophical questions about the nature of social and personal justice, reciprocity, altruism, egoism, forgiveness, resentment, and virtue. The authors approach is refreshing though demanding in terms of the philosophical literacy it expects from its reader. Ci attempts to bring together the objective and the subjective aspects of justice to show how justice is both an institution of society, while the law must seek to protect in order to ensure reciprocity between its members, as well as a personal disposition and human desire. Thel³)