Onora O Neill's Towards Justice And Virtue

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In her book, Towards Justice and Virtue (1996), Onora O’Neill takes practical reasoning as the basis of her arguments regarding virtue and justice. To set the stage for her position, O’Neill carefully explains the anatomy of her concept of ethics. O’Neill prescribes to a constructivist approach to practical reasoning whereby the guiding activity is constructed on the basis of non-idealizing (reasonable) assumptions about the agents in a particular context. She focuses on the intelligibility of actions while arguing for the importance of abstraction in practical reasoning. Finally, she clarifies that her universalist reasoning only defines the basic idea of the principle and not necessarily the scope. With these considerations, O’Neill gives an account of principles guiding, albeit somewhat undermining, actions for justice which do not dictate how and by whom each action must be performed but provide an outline that is …show more content…

While not all injuries can be avoided, this definition given by O’Neill nonetheless provides an inclusive and complex understanding of justice. The framework provided by this definition should be adopted and followed according to the specific social demands of a particular domain by relevant institutions. Although we live in an increasingly interdependent world, O’Neill is not sure if adoption of a set of morals followed universally guarantees justice. Rather, she wants the principles of rejection of injury to guide the morals of the institutions and distribute specific justice appropriate to each context. John Rawls’s 1997 book The Law of Peoples, begins with the explanation of the title as “a particular political conception of right and justice that applies to the principles and norms of international law and practice” (p.3). Rawls sees justice as fairness where individuals are able to obtain primary goods and opportunities to lead a fruitful

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