What is wrong with Justice?: Giving up the Summum Bonum

Abstract: Hobbes ' theory of justice depends on certain assumptions about human nature. Specifically, he doubts our ability to reason about justice and moreover, our ability to come to some agreement about what is just. From this, he infers that we should rely on contract and give up the search for the Summum Bonum. This paper will analyze Hobbes's various contentions and argue that much of the contemporary psychological research confirms many of his suspicions about how people reason about justice. More interestingly, the literature also seems to confirm the effectiveness of his suggested solution to the problem. I will review the psychological literature about how people support the legitimacy of institutions despite the perceived illegitimacy of certain specific policies from those institutions. I will also review the literature on the differences between the perceptions of outcomes versus procedural justice. The paper ends with a discussion about the relevance of Hobbes ' normative theory of justice in contemporary society. The suggestion is that using justice in our rhetoric in political deliberations and in our political system’s mythology is counterproductive. 2 Thomas Hobbes responded to hundreds of years of philosophical inquiry into the natur