Smith, Locke, Harris, and Justice

 On page 79, Smith writes, "the violation of justice is injury: it does real and positive hurt to some particular persons," and thus it is a virtue that, unlike beneficence, warrants resentment if we fail to fulfill it. Upon reading this, I immediately thought, well how are you defining justice? It became very clear in the following pages that Smith's conception of justice is nearly identical to Locke's Law of Nature. On page 80, he writes, "Among equals each individual is naturally, and antecedent to the institution of civil government, regarded as having a right both to defend himself from injuries, and to exact a certain degree of punishment for those which have been done to them." He continues to say that justice is only those transgressions which spectators would have the right to, and would be compelled to, punish whoever commits them. After this, he explains that no one has a right to advance their own happiness at the expense of someone else's because while we are all very significant to ourselves, in the grand scheme of things, we are insignificant. There is an inherent equality of interests that must be upheld (to borrow from Brettschneider), and to act in a way that would violate that equality of interests would be to act in a way that no impartial spectator could justify through sympathy (Smith 80). All of these ideas have their genesis in Locke's second and third chapters of the Second Treatise: 

"The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it...that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. ...a. sedate settled design upon another man'a life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention...or anyone that joins him in his defence [sic], and espouses his quarrel."

After establishing in my mind that Smith and Locke had very similar accounts of justice (if not the same), I read on. Smith goes on to argue that breaches against one's life are naturally more abhorrent than breaches against their property. Likewise, breaches against one's property are worse than breaches of contract because one takes from someone that what they possessed whereas the other "only disappoints [them] of what [they] expected" (84). However, he maintains in the next sentence that among sacred laws are those "which guard are what are called his personal rights, or what is due to him from the promises of others." This immediately brought to mind "Whiteness as Property." In chapter 2, Harris explains the link between property and expectations through the following Jeremy Bentham quote: "Property is nothing but the basis of expectation, consist[ing] in an established expectation, in the persuasion of being able to draw such and such advantage from the thing possessed." So Smith seems to share Bentham's view—and, I believe, the view of many—that established expectations, like those originating from a contract, ought to be protected. With that, I got to thinking.

The United States prides itself on the implicit contract that being a citizen of this country will protect one's personal rights, chief among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We learned from Brettschneider that protecting rights through legislation only goes so far. We must make sure that our laws protect those rights based on how we interpret them. Many injustices are viewed as injustices because they violate those rights. Take racism, sexism, and homophobia, for instance. We recognize these as injustices because they violate one or more of these aforementioned rights and thus violate the contract that we all "sign" as citizens. But what about homelessness? What is good is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if your basic needs aren't being met? Though your rights are technically protected, this is of no moral weight if you have no means through which you can secure them. What is equal protection under the law if you can be moved off of the street (the only place you have to sleep) by the police, who are really only just the state's way of using force? What is equal protection under the law if you can't defecate and urinate outside, but you can't in public bathrooms because using them requires purchasing something, which you can't do because you have no money? Should we as a collective body not feel great, overwhelming shame for the contract we have all breached by not protecting the expectation these people have to their rights? I explored this question a little over a year ago the last time that I read The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I will admit that it was a shitty essay, but I was in my freshman fall so I give myself a pass. In that essay though, I argue that we don't feel shame because we don't sympathize with the homeless. The reason we don't sympathize with the homeless is because we believe they are culpable for their position. We wouldn't feel like a grave injustice had been done to us if we put ourselves in a bad situation, therefore we don't feel bad for the homeless. The position I had as a freshman is the same position I have now:

"...the tragedy of homelessness is one that should elicit sympathy from those who witness it happen to others. Yet those who are experiencing homelessness tend to be met with indifference, if not annoyance and disgust. Why is this so? I believe this happens because some people believe that the homeless are there for culpable reasons, and they are therefore responsible for their own suffering. Regardless of the morality of not feeling sympathy for someone whose suffering from their own doing, this line of thinking is highly illogical. This is because the onlookers have no way of knowing if it is indeed because of a homeless person’s blameworthy actions that they are in their situation. Furthermore, as it would be illogical to imprison someone before they’ve been found guilty for what they’ve been accused, it too would be illogical to assume the culpability of someone experiencing homelessness. I believe that those who lack sympathy for the homeless prematurely cast blame upon the homeless as a group, even though it is illogical to do so. If this is the case, then it would make sense that these onlookers may feel sympathy in the way Smith uses the word, but not in the way that we use it today. This is to say that these people would feel just as badly if they were homeless, but because they believe the homeless are responsible for their situation, they can’t feel sorry for them. We then perceive this as them being indifferent or annoyed at a person suffering from homelessness, when in reality, they are annoyed at the choices they assume that person has made."