Abstract

The contemporary scene opposes deontological and consequentialist views on the nature of justice. The article goes back briefly to early modernity, and to Hobbes especially, to see that things were not always so. In Hobbes we find an understanding of justice tied to the obligation we owe to the sovereign, which is based though on the knowledge of the tendencies of the actions. At the same time such knowledge depends upon the availability of ordinary experience as opposed to the reasoning and the language of the learned. It is a novel scene from our contemporary perspective. Justice may be tied to tendencies (which is not our notion of consequences), yet this requires a rehabilitation of the concept of the ordinary life.