In daily life, it is not difficult to observe the following phenomenon: an orderly queue in front of the ticket window caused a commotion in the queue because of individual jumping in line. If this illegal behavior is stopped in time, the order of queuing will still be maintained. Once left unchecked, people who once stood on the same line with peace of mind will have resentment, even unbearable, eager to try, and finally break up into a chaotic situation of rushing headlong into battle and winning by force. According to Tzu Chi Wei, the origin of "two sides of justice" is based on similar experiences. Of course, the author's summary should be more accurate and academic: "If the unjust behavior of some people in society is not effectively stopped or sanctioned, other people who were originally eager for justice will imitate this behavior to varying degrees, and even lead to the proliferation of unjust behavior." This is certainly not a remarkable observation. For example, Hume once pointed out in Research on Moral Principles that "the social virtues of justice and its components can be compared to a vault building. Every single stone will automatically fall to the ground, but the whole building will not collapse because the stones in the corresponding parts support each other and unite. " [2] Hume's problem is that, like most moral philosophers, he easily put down this common sense and did not systematically ask the psychological mechanism of justice that may be hidden behind it. However, after listening to the thunder, Tzu Chi was keenly aware of the hidden theoretical problems, and summarized them as "the fragility of just situation" or "the easy circulation of unjust situation" as a breakthrough to "understand the essence of justice, especially its psychological essence"

Why is justice so fragile? According to Tzu Chi Wei's explanation, this is because "whether a person with a desire for justice can actually abide by the norms of justice depends on whether others do the same" (page 1). Tzu Chi Wei called it "conditional" of justice. To put it more bluntly, justice is first and foremost a rule of interest exchange-no one wants to be a "big head" except saints and fools. But the other side of the problem is that there are always people who like to take chances and undermine the just norms in social life. For the sake of social stability, it is increasingly impossible to let it spread. In view of this, justice as a moral imperative must be "unconditional". Obviously, only literally, the conditional and unconditional nature of justice constitutes a seemingly irreconcilable tension. The purpose of this book is to explain how and how these two seemingly contradictory and incompatible aspects of justice coexist.

I interpretive and non-normative.

By presenting the two sides of justice, Tzu Chi Wei seems to dominate the two branches of modern justice theory in one fell swoop: Hume's understanding of justice (emphasizing the conditional nature of justice) and Kant's understanding of justice (emphasizing the unconditional nature of justice), but the self-expected task of this book is not to rebuild a set of "normative theories" of justice, but to propose an "explanatory" study of the essence of justice. Its purpose is to find the structural feature of "not changing with the change of normative content" in the essence of justice, so as to explain "what is justice (that is, how it works) and why it works like this (that is, why it works like this), without proving what justice (content) should look like." (Page 4)

What is the difference between normative theory and interpretation method? To make an inappropriate analogy, the so-called normative theory is an activity of "three chapters of contract" facing the future, while the explanation method is the work of "looking back" and reflecting on "presupposition" One looks forward and the other looks back. Although there is some overlap between them, they are basically two levels of philosophical works. The former belongs to normative ethics and the latter is closer to the level of meta-ethics. When Liu Bang entered Xianyang, he made a covenant with his elders in Guanzhong to appease the people in one fell swoop. This kind of work is of course very important, but it is always limited by the local conditions at that time. In contrast, the interpretation method focuses on the inherent characteristics of righteousness, and because it does not change with the specific norms, it is more universal and constant. Judicial interpretation method is an undeveloped concept in contemporary judicial theory. Although it has been involved from Kant and Hume to Rawls and Habermas, the real core topic is based on the opinions of many people, especially from the perspective of moral psychology to carry out conceptual analysis and theoretical construction. Tzu Chi Wei should be regarded as the first person. Only at this point, this book fills a gap in the theory of justice, and its significance is great.

At first glance, this kind of explanation of seeking "invariance" in change seems to coincide with the original "metaphysical" impulse, but throughout the book, there is no metaphysical atmosphere. On the contrary, the author is quite alert to the theoretical background of post-metaphysics. On the one hand, he explicitly opposes "philosophical fiction based purely on theory" in methodology and advocates the thinking of sticking to the ground based on feeling. When talking about the structural features of justice, he also repeatedly stressed that although this feature is "owned by just people under different social and historical conditions", it is neither innate nor natural human nature, but the product of social construction. On the other hand, he did not escape relativism, but emphasized that justice still has some kind of "relative constancy".

How to ensure this relative constancy? On page 42 of this book, we can find the author's simple answer: "Compared with the huge choice space of socialization in instilling justice norms, socialization has little flexibility in shaping and changing the' minimum reciprocity'." In my opinion, this sentence is worth pondering repeatedly, because it not only represents the author's basic position, but also defines two core concepts to understand the purpose of this book: reciprocity and socialization-reciprocity refers to the unchangeable "conditional" nature of justice, and socialization explains how the "conditional" nature of justice may be changed to "unconditional" nature. It can be said that it is with the help of these two core concepts, seemingly contradictory two sides of justice, that a certain degree of * * * can be achieved in the process of moral historical changes.

Second, the absoluteness of "reciprocity"

According to Tzu Chi Wei's explanation, the so-called reciprocity means "reciprocity under reasonable norms". According to this definition, reciprocity is an inherent feature and constant factor of justice, while the specific content of "reasonable norms" is a variable factor, which has different definitions in different views of justice.

In order to thoroughly understand the moral and psychological mechanism of reciprocity, it is necessary to introduce the concept of "resentment". Anyone who has experienced queuing knows that if you spend a lot of time waiting in line with peace of mind, but the last person who cuts in line buys the last ticket first, then you will have a strong reaction of "blood surging", which is the so-called "resentment" emotion in moral psychology. What is resentment? According to Peter Strawson's definition, it is "we ask others to think for themselves". Strawson attributed resentment to one of three basic reaction attitudes, "in interpersonal communication dominated by the concept of justice". The other two are indignation and guilt, which correspond to "we ask others to think of others" and "we ask ourselves to think of others" respectively. [3] Tzu Chi Wei accepted Strawson's distinction, but thought that their emphasis was different, because at the empirical level, "our initial request was for ourselves and others", and accordingly, "the first reaction attitude we experienced was resentment." (page 14) In contrast, indignation and guilt are the result of long-term moral education, so they are secondary and derivative.

Tzu Chi Wei believes that although resentment belongs to "we ask others to think for ourselves", not all "dissatisfaction caused by others not meeting their own requirements" is resentment, which should be made clear, otherwise the sense of justice characterized by resentment "is tantamount to egocentrism". On the basis of drawing lessons from and criticizing Strawson, Habermas and others, Tzu Chi Wei pointed out that the necessary conditions to make someone angry include the following: 1, others' behavior violates "impersonal norms"; 2. This behavior of others infringes on someone's personal interests; 3. Someone hasn't violated impersonal norms or moral norms for a long time, especially for those who violate someone. (Page 15- 17)

According to the above judgment, people who queue up are disgusted with people who jump in line, not only because they violate the social norm of "no jumping in line", but more importantly, the behavior of jumping in line seriously damages the personal interests of the people who jump in line. Thus, resentment is a "special emotional response, which includes both moral indignation and interest calculation". As a moral emotion, it is different from pure resentment-those who didn't buy tickets because they came late are resentment rather than resentment; As an emotion involving self-interest, it is different from pure indignation-as a passer-by, I stopped queuing out of indignation rather than resentment. Resentment is both conditional and moral. It can be said that on the one hand, it embodies the reciprocity of justice, that is, it is conditional. On the other hand, the unconditional nature of justice requires that this resentment be transferred, released or resolved in various ways. Because resentment plays a central role in Two Sides of Justice, Cixi even once wanted to name the book Justice and Resentment.

Let's go back to the concept of reciprocity. Reciprocity is translated into reciprocity instead of usual reciprocity, because reciprocity is only the specific normative content of reciprocity under specific historical conditions, and there is no possibility of exhausting reciprocity in both extension and connotation. For example, empirically, we can at least fill the pure concept of reciprocity into the following four possible normative models: mutual hatred, mutual disinterest, mutual benefit and mutual goodwill. Obviously, no matter what kind of normative mode, its structural characteristics are "mutual" or "conditional". To this end, Tzu Chi Wei put forward the concept of "minimum reciprocity", which is considered as the most basic element of justice. (Page 4 1)

For example, the inherent feature of justice seems to be "flying device". Whether it is "interest" or "goodwill", it is bound to require "going back". Once going back, it will violate the basic characteristics of the flying device; Not only that, this "occasional" thing must be the same: either hatred, indifference, interest or goodwill. Therefore, both "good for evil" and "blood for blood" are in line with the basic characteristics of reciprocity, and both "good for evil" and "good for evil" are mutually beneficial transcendence. Although the former is affirmative and constructive, the latter is qualitative and destructive. It is in this sense that Tzu Chi Wei believes that justice is a moral character between pure altruism and pure egoism, because pure altruism and pure egoism are both unrequited communication modes, which destroy the most fundamental feature of reciprocity. Therefore, Tzu Chi Wei said: "If a society cancels the' minimum reciprocity' in interpersonal relationships and replaces it with unconditional altruism or unconditional egoism, then the essence of justice, the concept of justice and the justice system itself will no longer exist." (page 42)

Among the four possible forms of reciprocity, mutual hatred is closest to the natural state described by Hobbes, which will only lead to the disintegration of social order; Mutual goodwill is the perfect state closest to morality, but the lack of power resources can not be regarded as the "premise" of a just society, but only the "expected result" of a just society; Comparatively speaking, mutual care or mutual benefit is more practical and feasible. It is easy for us to imagine that even a group that doesn't care about each other morally and psychologically may create a mutually beneficial situation out of rational egoism-this is the lowest condition that human society can achieve, and it is also the logical starting point for Cixi to explore the theme of justice.

Taking mutual benefit as the logical starting point of justice, some people may think it is too humble, too philistine and far less solemn and lofty than Kant's absolute command. However, in Tzu Chi Wei's view, abandoning the concept of self-discipline and taking heteronomy (that is, the condition based on interests) as an indelible factor in the essence of justice not only conforms to the tolerant attitude of contemporary justice theory to heteronomy, but also fully makes up for Habermas' lack of motivation in post-traditional morality. In contrast, the moral ideal of appealing to conscience, kindness and selflessness is certainly high-profile and charming, but there is always a false feeling of "wanting to eat fat". Comparatively speaking, I appreciate Tzu Chi Wei's "realistic" attitude. Furthermore, the choice of "interest-based conditionality" as the logical starting point to explore the essence of justice is also in line with Rawls' "Archimedes point" in the methodology of moral philosophy: it will not be damaged by being involved in the world too much, nor will it be deprived of qualification because of being detached from things; It is not a certain perspective outside the world, let alone a transcendental view of existence, but a certain form of thought and emotion that all rational people in the world can accept. [4]

Although mutual benefit can provide sufficient power resources for people to practice justice, justice, as a moral virtue, is not equal to the strategic compromise of all parties to the conflict. It is necessary to transcend and overcome people's selfish desires and show some attention from others. At the level of social system, because strategic compromise is only an expedient measure and lacks the stable desire to realize justice, it is far less than moral knowledge to form the foundation of social unity and stability. However, in such a post-traditional era with insufficient motivation, how easy is it for people to overcome selfish impulses and realize moral cognition, from mutual benefit to mutual goodwill? Because this is an explanatory book, readers who want to find "how to do it" in it may be disappointed, because the author just tells us "that's the truth". This is like facing a finished work, the interpreter's job is just to go back and rub the context and texture along the way and mark the mutual position of various concepts. Interpreters neither deal with production nor predict any possible future.

Third, the limitations of "socialization"

By resorting to "socialization", Tzu Chi Wei explained how the conditional nature of justice was transformed into the unconditional nature. Generally speaking, there are two roads leading to unconditional justice: first, the society monopolizes the right to punish unjust acts, thus making itself the only legal force to safeguard the conditionality of justice, so that individuals do not have to and have no right to adhere to the conditionality of justice, but must unconditionally abide by the norms of justice ("unconditional" here refers to individual behavior rather than motivation), which is also the key to understanding the relationship between justice and law; Second, through moral education, the conditional justice will be transformed into moral "absolute command", so that justice is no longer a means for individuals to pursue self-interest, and justice itself is an end. Once an individual's desire for justice is no longer based on the same desire of others, justice is unconditional (unconditional here includes both behavior and motivation).

But this "proviso" is very important. Once the condition of justice is truly overcome, the "just disposition" that Cixi strives for will no longer exist. Therefore, Tzu Chi Wei must prove that no matter how it changes, this "unconditional" is only an illusion after all, and justice cannot completely forget its original motive, that is, mutual benefit. In order to prove this point, Tzu Chi Wei deals with the concepts of punishment, theism, forgiveness, forgetting and sympathy in the last five chapters of this book to see if they can help overcome the conditionality of just motives and thus produce unconditional moral aspirations. Tzu Chi Wei finally concluded that none of these concepts can completely change the essence of justice, that is, conditionality. Even though people may give up the "original motive of justice" and realize the unconditional nature of justice through social education and the cultivation of compassion, this process is still "impossible to be a moral achievement once and for all." On the contrary, the unique significance, difficulty and consequences of this process will surely reappear in every generation and even everyone. " (Page 200) For many people, this may be an overly pessimistic conclusion, but throughout human history, as long as human beings do not get rid of their own limitations, unconditional justice will always be an ideal that will collapse at any time. This is the fate of mankind, and the greatness of moral achievement lies in its eternal overcoming of human limitations.

As mentioned above, "reciprocity" and "socialization" are two core concepts in constructing the logic of this book, but from the perspective of methodology, "motivation resources" and its "stability" are two important indicators for Tzu Chi Wei to weigh various arguments. This is of course thanks to "moral psychology". Moral psychology is a branch of ethics, which mainly studies the psychological types of actors in moral action practice. It generally asks the following questions: Is such an actor psychologically possible? What kind of motives does he need? What are the possible sources of these motives? What emotional and cognitive mechanisms have been transformed into actions, and so on. According to the questioning logic of moral psychology, when investigating political principles and system design, we must consider whether the actors have enough "motivation resources" and whether the motivation itself is "stable". Of course, these are extremely enlightening methodological judgments. This is why justice in this book is different from rational egoism and pure altruism. Although rational egoism helps people to maintain a relatively reciprocal social situation to a certain extent, the stability of this just situation is quite fragile due to the lack of stable desire for justice. Once there is an opportunity, rational egoists will not miss any unfair opportunity to harm others and benefit themselves. Although pure altruism can transcend the conditions of justice and reach a more complete moral realm, because compassion is the result of a well-ordered society rather than the starting point and lacks sufficient motivation resources, pure altruism cannot become a universal social phenomenon.

I am not familiar with the research of moral psychology, so I can't judge the gains and losses of applying moral psychology in this book. According to my limited reading experience, moral psychology, especially abstract moral psychology in the philosophical sense, mainly has three schools of views, one is the tradition of Aristotle, the other is the tradition of Kant, and the other is the tradition of Hume and Nietzsche. Obviously, the author of this book prefers the last tradition, rarely mentions Aristotle, and criticizes Kant a lot. For example, when discussing "the motive of justice and the role of law" in the sixth section of the first chapter, the author wrote: "Here, Kant only involves the category of justice, not the category of virtue and a series of problems related to motivation." (Page 34) Intuitively, I completely agree with the author's basic position, but theoretically, I will be a little dissatisfied. After all, as a practical model of moral psychology, there is no special chapter to discuss the methodological principles used, which always makes people feel a little shaky. In addition, it is somewhat disappointing to use such old sayings as "socialization" and "internalization" to illustrate the "overall logic" of justice from conditional to unconditional. Of course, the truth of the world may be so simple that we can't ask philosophers to be magicians.

Fourth, the "theory of human nature" of individualism?

Throughout the book, the repeated combing of "reciprocity" is the most exciting and easy to attract criticism. In fact, Cixi's argument logic can easily give people the impression of "interest reductionism" and even presuppose "selfishness of human nature". For example, when discussing resentment, Tzu Chi Wei once said that "people are naturally biased towards themselves, so they will feel resentment because others have hurt them." (Page 14)

Professor Liang Zhiping criticized in a book review that putting individualism at the center of justice virtue shows that the author's view of justice is "dependent" on specific social and historical conditions rather than "beyond". The implication is that Cixi's so-called "just disposition" is not a universal structural feature, but a particularity based on "the historical and cultural experience of western society". Liang Zhiping, for example, said that the popular concept of justice in many traditional societies is based on "collective responsibility" rather than "personal interests". [5]

I think that although Liang Zhiping's criticism is right, it misses something more fundamental. Let's look at the following statement:

"Justice has this loose feature because it is a moral concept based on individualism. In other words, the basic premise of the moral concept centered on justice is that individual interests are the first in both ontological and moral sense, while collective interests are only the sum of individual interests. " (page 57)

Although the two sentences in this passage are connected by "in other words", they actually have different meanings. The first sentence means that justice is "based on individualism" by definition; The second sentence means that "the moral concept centered on justice" must be based on the premise that personal interests are the first priority. Note that Cixi did not say that "all moral concepts including the concept of justice" presupposed the first priority of personal interests.

Let's discuss the second sentence first. As we all know, Rawls said at the beginning of A Theory of Justice that "justice is the first virtue of social system" [6]. But this proposition is not self-evident. It is not difficult to imagine that in a society that advocates "giving priority to interests and giving consideration to fairness", the injustice of infringing on minority interests in the name of overall interests can be highlighted; Similarly, in a society that advocates "stability first", the first virtue is naturally "social stability" rather than "justice". Therefore, when Liang Zhiping pointed out that the concept of justice in some traditional societies takes collective values as the priority, it does not constitute a rebuttal to Cixi, because the scope of this book is strictly limited in the context of "justice-centered morality", and such a society must take individualism as the primary color-Cixi has quite strict restrictions on the context of this book.

Look back at the first sentence. I think what Tzu Chi Wei wants to say in this sentence is that, in terms of concept definition, justice is a personal moral and social value stained with the primary color of "self-interest". Although it is not equal to pure self-interest, it is at the junction of self-motivation and other-motivation, and it is more inclined to self-motivation. Therefore, when discussing justice, we must take human self-love and selfishness as the logical starting point, which is the proper meaning of the concept itself, and has nothing to do with the author's personal position, and there is no need to presuppose a certain philosophy. In this regard, we refer to Annette Bell's point of view: "For the statement of the origin of justice, we must first clarify what problems the invention of justice aims to solve. Once we think that the problem to be solved by justice is that people are stingy with things that can be changed hands, then the general outline of the solution will be clear. " [7] In other words, if people are not stingy with what can change hands subjectively, then there will be no justice and injustice, and the concept of justice will lose its reason for existence and become a purely altruistic or benevolent issue. It is in this sense that we can even say that "justice is a moral concept based on individualism" is an analytical proposition. Although this argument is hidden in Two Sides of Justice, it is extremely critical, and I even think it is one of the most important contributions of this book to the theory of justice.

Third, Liang Zhiping said that "many popular justice concepts in traditional society are based on' collective responsibility' rather than' personal interests'", which may be correct, but it is not enough to refute Cixi, because in the framework of Cixi's explanation, these facts only show the success of traditional society in "socialization". If we want to refute Tzu Chi Wei's "minimum equivalence" as a counter-evidence.

Although Tzu Chi Wei tirelessly analyzes the "two sides of justice" from "up and down, back and forth, positive and negative, left and right", the basic position of the book is very clear and can be summarized in one sentence: the constraint of justice (that is, reciprocity) is analytical, absolute and root-rooted; The unconditional nature of justice is the result of socialization, which is relative and derivative. As a virtue, justice always lives between benevolence and self-interest, and abides by its own territory. For the post-traditional era, building a just society may be the only moral achievement we can count on. Although a just society is not necessarily a beautiful society, an unjust society must be an unpleasant society.

Five, the "two principles of justice" sequencing problem

Finally, I would like to briefly introduce Tzu Chi Wei's handling of Rawls' "two principles of justice", because this interpretation is an "extra" interference with normative theory. As we all know, the first of the "two principles of justice" is the principle of equality and freedom, and the second is the principle of difference. Rawls believes that when two principles conflict, the first principle is superior to the second principle in dictionary ranking. Although these two principles of justice are derived from the "original state" in argumentation logic, their priority is based on Kant's belief that human value is above everything else and Rawls' own moral intuition that self-esteem is "the most important basic good".

Tzu Chi Wei agrees with Rawls' moral intuition. He believes that Rawls' difficulty lies in the handling of the relationship between "self-esteem" and "distribution of resources and interests". On the one hand, Rawls believes that "self-esteem is guaranteed by the equal civil rights of all people recognized by society", while "the distribution of material means is arranged according to the concept of procedural justice" [8]; On the other hand, he realized that "this idea may not be completely realized." To some extent, people's sense of self-worth will depend on their social status and income share. [9] Tzu Chi Wei seized Rawls' argument and thought it would lead us to link self-esteem with the distribution of resources and interests: "We need to redefine the role of justice: justice should not only solve people's conflicts over material resources, but more importantly, solve people's conflicts over social conditions that form the basis of self-esteem." (page 80) in this case, we no longer have reason to think that the principle of difference is necessarily inferior to the principle of maximum equality and freedom in all cases, just like Rawls:

"If in a society, income and status constitute the basis of self-esteem, then, for this society, the principle of difference is not necessarily as important as the principle of maximum equality and freedom. In other words, the two principles of justice should not have a fixed priority, but should be decided according to specific factors that affect self-esteem. "

This is a very important conclusion (in an article entitled "Reasons for Taking Human Rights Seriously" published in the April 2005 issue of Political Theory, Tzu Chi Wei once again expounded this argument). Although Tzu Chi Wei only stayed in theory and did not continue to play its realistic political significance, this argument is undoubtedly realistic. I believe that Tzu Chi Wei has opened a fairly open discussion space for us. What is more important is whether the sense of self-esteem formed by equal political status is based on income and status. What needs to be pointed out in particular is that Tzu Chi Wei's proposition is a hypothetical proposition, and its premise is "if the self-esteem of this society is based on income and status". Obviously, in this sense, the basic judgment of political reality has become the primary issue. [ 10]

Conclusion of intransitive verbs

Philosophical works do not talk about the life of heaven, but start with familiar daily experience. It was originally a philosopher's heirloom. Confucius said, "Learning to be excellent is to be an official". Socrates also pulled a passerby on the streets of Athens, and then talked about justice and happiness from eating and drinking Lazar. However, later philosophers became more and more skilled and their thinking and writing lacked a sound sense of common sense. That kind of lively and enthusiastic energy has long been lost back to grandfathers. In contrast, although the author of this book has received strict overseas academic training, and the book frequently engages in "hand-to-hand combat" with various philosophers, he has always maintained a true moral intuition and a clear sense of problems, and has not been submerged in various theories of justice. This kind of consciousness and determination is amazing. This book is not only creative in conception, but also a masterpiece of scalpel-style conceptual analysis. The author walks among various concepts, without considering anything, and shows exquisite and wonderful philosophical exercises that are rare in China's philosophy in recent years.

Since the book was published in February, 2000 1,1,although it has attracted favorable comments from academic circles, it is regrettable that there are few book reviews and introductions in the main body at present. J.S. Muller once complained in his autobiography that "it takes a long time to write a book that can create future thinkers, and once a work is written, it usually takes too long to attract public attention and appreciation." [1 1] We might as well take this complaint as a prediction: it will take a long time for all outstanding academic works, especially those that can arouse future thinkers' attention and appreciation. Before that, all we have to do is read it, understand it and spread it.