In his work, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume makes a proposition that justice is an artificial moral concept and that it is non-necessary. He proposes two situations where justice would be irrelevant or unnecessary and they are on the completely opposite ends of the spectrum. First, imagine the utopian society wherein all human needs are met. In a situation where there is no want, there is no need for justice. In the second situation, imagine the completely dystopian society, wherein there are nowhere near enough resources for all. Justice is irrelevant here as individual survival trumps the moral personality. It may be true that some would band together and share resources amongst them. However, there would always be some in need of resources that have no recourse for justice because there literally is not enough for everybody to sustain life.
Bok, in a chapter about lying in times of crises, says the following, explaining Hume's position.
In extreme and prolonged threats to survival, as in plagues, invasions, and religious or political persecution, human choice is intolerably restricted. Survival alone counts; moral considerations are nearly obliterated. People may still give each other help and protection in extremes of physical and mental stress; they may still forego lies and still share alike; but such choice goes far beyond duty. And for many, the moral personality is itself crushed; the ability to choose is destroyed.
Hume, describing such conditions, wrote that justice itself can be expected only in an intermediate range of scarcity and benevolence--when there is neither such abundance that all have what they need nor such scarcity that not all can survive; and where people are neither so completely good that they act justly and lovingly spontaneously, nor so incurably evil that nothing can make them do so.*
This asterisk denotes a footnote, where she adds and explains her partial disagreement with Hume.
*See David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Section III, Part I. While I agree with Hume about some floor beneath which justice cannot be expected, I do not share his optimism about its superfluity at the highest level of abundance and human benevolence. In the first place, we are coming to realize how limitless human needs can become. And second, we have the experience of situations where grave problems of justice and moral choice arise among well-meaning persons even where scarcity is not a problem. In hospitals, for example, there are times where resources are plentiful, yet where searing moral differences arises. Finally, benevolence can surely bring its own tyranny.
For a comparison with Hume, see Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 126-130 and H. L/ A/ Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 189-195.
I believe Bok's analysis and criticism are very good. However, I think some of her criticism arises out of a misunderstanding of Hume.
If I recall correctly, it seems pretty clear that Hume doesn't expect either of these two scenarios to ever come to fruition. He isn't trying to display real-world examples wherein a need for justice is absent. As with many philosophical exercises, he is only trying to highlight problems with our concepts of justice. While we tend to believe that justice is a natural and necessary concept, he does illustrate scenarios where it might very well be completely unnecessary or wholly irrelevant.
In addition, I don't think Hume intended "justice" to mean wholesale right-and-wrong. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, Hume's use is extremely narrow in comparison to our considerations. He only intends it to be used for "honesty with respect to property." In other words, material justice. The fact that Hume's two scenarios explicitly focus on the scarcity or abundance of necessities illustrates this.
If we adopt our contemporary perspectives on justice, we could easily add a question that would necessitate justice even in the most dystopian of worlds. We skip the question of, "How much should each person get?" and press with the value question of, "Who should get anything at all?" Clearly, we might be inclined to believe that certain people be exempt from their fair share in such a crisis, e.g. those who have committed crimes against others, those who cannot contribute to making the best of the situation through labor, etc. However, this would be expanding on what Hume was trying to drive at.
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