Product Description

This book, which inaugurates the Princeton Monographs in Philosophy series, starts from Plato's analogy in the Republic between conflict in the soul and conflict in the city. Plato's solution required reason to impose agreement and harmony on the warring passions, and this search for harmony and agreement constitutes the main tradition in political philosophy up to and including contemporary liberal theory. Hampshire undermines this tradition by developing a distinction between justice in procedures, which demands that both sides in a conflict should be heard, and justice in matters of substance, which will always be disputed. Rationality in private thinking consists in adversary reasoning, and so it does in public affairs. Moral conflict is eternal, and institutionalized argument is its only universally acceptable restraint and the only alternative to tyranny.

In the chapter "Against Monotheism," Hampshire argues that monotheistic beliefs are only with difficulty made compatible with pluralism in ethics. In "Conflict and Conflict Resolution," he argues that socialism, seen as the proposal of extended political solutions for natural human ills, is still a relevant, yet strongly contested, ideal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #434126 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

Amazon.com Review
Justice is not harmony, but conflict, Stuart Hampshire tells us. No doubt, many readers will find his position hard to swallow, but his arguments are harder to refute. Hampshire, formerly a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a professor at Princeton and Stanford universities, is one of the leading lights of 20th-century philosophy. In Justice Is Conflict, he argues that because conflict presumes openness, diversity, and the questioning of final authority, it can be a safeguard against many kinds of tyranny. When we seek to eliminate conflict, in Hampshire's view, we are acting as heirs to the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition that sets up reason as an absolute arbiter of disputes. Hampshire wants us to shrug off the claustrophobic blanket of this tradition and embrace Hume's dictum that "reason both is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions."

Hampshire is pointing us toward a new understanding of justice when he hearkens back to what he sees as Heraclitus's picture that "our political enmities in the city or state will never come to an end while we have diverse life stories and diverse imaginations." What's important for Hampshire is not the elimination of conflict, but rather its preservation, moderated by fair procedures. But can procedure ever truly be fair to its participants? In the final two chapters--"Against Monotheism" and "Conflict and Conflict Resolution"--Hampshire turns his attention to procedural justice in modern society. Here he meditates on some of the main threats to and allies of fair procedure. Hampshire's crisp prose and penchant for succinctness render this slim book accessible to a wide audience. Still, there is plenty of philosophical muscle for an academic reader. --Eric de Place

Review
This book deserves a wide attentive readership. -- Glen Newey, Times Literary Supplement

This book deserves a wide attentive readership. . . . Hampshire . . . believes that the paradigm of deliberative reason lies in public forums like the courts rather than individual delibertation, which has dominated recent philosophical treatments of the subject. . . . [He] denies reason can show some particular conception of justice to be best. -- Review

Review
This elegant small volume . . . offers a novel account of how to reason about the universal and particular in politics by examining the tensions between them in the workings of the human mind.
(Mark Lilla The New York Review of Books )

This book deserves a wide attentive readership. . . . Hampshire . . . believes that the paradigm of deliberative reason lies in public forums like the courts rather than individual delibertation, which has dominated recent philosophical treatments of the subject. . . . [He] denies reason can show some particular conception of justice to be best.
(Glen Newey Times Literary Supplement )

Customer Reviews

Incredible Insight-Transformational observations
The title is slightly misleading-it is ideas that are always in conflict. The measure of Justice is how those conflicts are dealt with. The transformational concept presented by Hampshire is that which side of the argument prevails is not nearly as important as the system used to determine which side prevails. He observes that there are always arguments to be made on each side of a difference of opinion whether it be pro or anti abortion or pro or anti assisted suicide or pro or anti welfare state or pro or con on ethnic cleansing. The important thing to a civilized society is that when decisions are made on these issues that both winners and losers in the debate accept the outcome peacefully rather than degenerating into violence. The measure of Justice is the willingness of the interested parties to accept the result peacefully rather than resorting to violence. If there is to be any hope of peace in the world it is through the kind of Justice that Hampshire describes, where parties in conflict are willing to trust institutions rather than war to eventually determine which side will prevail. As a measure of Hampshire's power of persuasion, he won me over even though I am quite conservative while he describes himself as a liberal who holds a number of opinions on social issues I strongly disagree with.

The foundations of our justice
Like the superb book "A Darwinian Left" by Peter Singer, this is a marvelous discourse on one of the fundamental principles of our society -- for anyone who wonders about the meaning of life, both are fascinating excursions into the realm of new thought.

This book is founded on an image out of the Middle Ages -- when two men, wrapped from head to toe in gleaming steel, carrying wicked lances, mounted on massive horses, charged full speed at each other to settle disputes about truth and justice in the confrontational medieval way.

That, in essence, is the basis of `Justice is Conflict.' It's been the basis of Anglo-Saxon justice for at least a millennia, and for unknown hundreds of years before that. It's far from the idea that "might is right," instead it embodies that God is on the side of the just. Movies always depict it in that manner. From the meekest knight to the American fictional cowboy with a six-gun on his hip, justice always triumphs. It's a confrontational system of justice based on combat, as explained by Thomas Jefferson when he said he was not afraid to tolerate error "so long as reason is left free to combat it." The key word is "combat." Today, when lawyers challenge each other in court battles, they are staging a ritual re-enactment of those old jousts.

In contrast, the Navajo spirit of K'e emphasizes a consensus system of justice. The goal is not that God can be counted on to favor the just; instead, it is a search to find truth and thus assess blame properly. There's usually no clear "Guilty" and "Innocent" verdict; instead, blame is assessed on a proportional basis. In other words, even if you are guilty, perhaps you are only 90 percent guilty. Perhaps the other person did contribute somewhat to the problem. Perhaps the solution requires a compromise to achieve justice. Harmony, rather than win-loss absolutism, is prized.

Hampshire is undoubtedly correct in asserting that our society is based on the ethics of confrontation; he asserts this eternal "conflict" produced our modern world. He's very persuasive; and, as a friend used to say, "Interesting . . . if true." But, what was the situation a thousand years ago when Europe was the weakest and most backward region in the world. The question then, is whether transforming the direct confrontation system of justice into a careful and precise ritualized procedure made all the difference, or were other factors involved in European society becoming dominant.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Plato argued for the Navajo approach -- reason should be used to achieve agreement and harmony among warring ideas. That was at a time when society worshipped a pantheon of gods; two thousand years ago, the concept of a single God began to take hold. The same idea took hold in matters of justice; instead of a panopoly of truths, people began to seek one truth -- a person was either guilty or innocent, with no Mr. Inbetween. Justicfe became an all-or-nothing decision. Forget about the middle of the road, the only thing you find there are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. As Thomas Paine said in 1792 in `The Rights of Man,' "moderation in principle is always a vice."

Hampshire, like Singer, goes to the heart of what makes our society tick -- perhaps. It's a book for readers who like to think about philosophy and the fundamental roots of our society. These books will make you think; for people who love ideas, Hampshire and Singer are two original thinkers. Both are eminently worth buying.