Flew on entitlements and Justice

Lorenzo Peña «FLEW ON ENTITLEMENTS AND JUSTICE» International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 4/3 (autumn 1989) pp. 259-63. ISSN 0267-9655 FLEW ON ENTITLEMENTS AND JUSTICE Lorenzo Peña In «Equality, yes, surely; but Justice?», Antony Flew (Flew 1986: 197-204) puts forward some new arguments in support of his well-known stance to the effect that egalitarianism and collectivism not only fail to be grounded in any conception of justice but are even incompatible with the very concept of justice, on which they ought to ‘mount a bold and radical onslaught’, denouncing it as an irretrievably reactionary notion. In this Note I propose to criticize Flew’s arguments. Here are Flew’s main lines of reasoning. Anyone who talks about justice is bound to stick to the traditional concept expressed through that word, unless he is prepared to convey a new meaning with it. This latter would be in no-one’s interest, since, once you waive the usual and traditional (and common-sensical) use of a word, replacing it with a quite different use and meaning, whatever you thenceforth say about what at the new stage you convey by that old word, interesting though it may be, is not relevant to the old and usual concept and therefore fails to constitute a conception of what used to be meant by that word. Now, the old and usual concept of justice is that of giving (or assigning, or resigning, or allotting) everyone his due (or his own).