110 The Nature of Political Theoryarch-concept. Some also saw it as the major preoccupation of the history of political
theory from the Greeks to the present. In this sense, it replaced the concept of the state,
quaStaatslehre, which performed the same linking function earlier in the twentieth
century.^1 Another way of putting this is that, in the same way as theorists earlier in the
century saw the state as the crucial supposition for politics, so post 1970s normative
theory saw some minimal sense of justice as the logical presupposition to politics.
The argument was that unless there was some conception of justice, society could
not exist. This point was though contentious in itself and not all subscribed to it. For
some, justice was one virtue amongst others (Campbell 1988). It was also clearlynot
one thing. There were a range of contested meanings. There was another important
reason as to why justice was focused on. Justice was seen to be synonymous with
reason, in a formal sense. Put simply, to be reasonable was to grasp the centrality of
justice. This was an enormously important contention, which reveals much about the
conception of justice at the close of the twentieth century. There are, though, several
issues to analyze here.
If one asks the question what is meant by justice?, the first answer would be that,
like equality, one has to distinguish theformalandsubstantivesenses of the concept.
This distinction relates back to Aristotle, who distinguishes between the generic sense
of justice, as proportion and balance, and the various substantive species of justice. In
Aristotle, this notion of balance is the central plank of both ethics and justice. Justice
is regarded as the most perfect of all the virtues and injustice the whole of vice. Justice
is a mean or measure at the centre ofallvirtues. Correct proportion or measure
between two extremes constitutes the doctrine of the mean. All virtues exemplify this
balance between extremes, therefore, it follows that justice is at the heart of all the
virtues.^2 In its most perfect form it is the ideal disposition of the soul. For Plato, also,
justice is a balance and proportion between the soul (or internal faculties) and state.^3
Justice and perfect reason are achieved when there is a precise balance between the
ordering of an individual’s faculties and their place in society. This is the soul-state
analogy in Plato’sRepublic.
The generic or formal sense of both justice and reason is concerned therefore with
correct weighting and proportion in judgement. Another way of putting this is that
reason and justice are concerned with treating equal cases equally and unequal cases
unequally. Both justice and reason can be therefore defined as treating like cases alike,
which is equivalent to the universalizability rule. Thus, reason and formal justice
are conceptually coordinate. This idea is given a strong reading in Chaim Perelman’s
bookThe Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument(1963). For Perelman, the
injunction ‘like cases should be treated as alike’ is the core element of justice; it is also
a principle of formal logic. Formal justice is thus ‘a principle of action in accordance
with which beings of one and the same category must be treated in the same way’
(Perelman 1963: 16). Thus, it is illogical to treat differently those cases, which are alike
in relevant respects. In effect, this might be considered as a rule of logical impartiality.
Cognitively, impartiality is essential to our experience of the world. Without it we
cannot re-explain, re-identify, or act self-consistently. For Perelman, therefore, the
fundamental rule that governs theory and practice, and respect for which manifests