In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume offers up a number of virtues and qualities which are valued for any of four reasons: they are useful to the individual, useful to society, agreeable to the individual, or agreeable to society. One of the qualities which Hume elucidates is justice. This quality, however, according to Hume, is valued solely for its usefulness and not upon any agreeability to anyone. Hume explains his position thusly.
Hume imagines a scenario in which all things are both readily available and easy to obtain. In this situation, he says, justice is worthless, as there would be no squabbling or conflict over property rights, as replacing that which someone takes from you is easily done.
In addition, Hume postulates that if all humans were perfectly benevolent, then there would be no necessity for justice. There would be no injustice, and therefore no justice either. This claim seems illogical, since by eliminating justice’s opposite, then justice itself would cease to be a discernible quality and would simply be a status quo. Since this is the case, I will not address this consideration.
Hume’s last formal scenario is a situation of dire need, in which thousands are starving or in some other equally dire straits. In this situation, justice (in terms of property justice) would no longer be beneficial; the landowner should neglect his just duties and provide his own commodities to those less fortunate.
A final case which Hume proposes is an imagined world in which another caste of rational beings exist. These beings, however, are inferior to humanity in mind and body; they pose no threat whatsoever to man. In this case, Hume argues, there is no necessity of keeping to the laws of justice in dealing with these beings, for it is not useful. Since these entities cannot possibly harm us, nothing is gained from acting justly toward them. Therefore we might exploit them in any way.
In each of these cases, whether they entail a utopia or a dystopia, Hume argues that justice is valuable only when useful. This merits some consideration as well: it would appear that Hume believes justice to be that which enhances social utility, that is, what makes life better for the most people. I do n...
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...appeared. Numerous slave uprisings occurred, but they posed no serious threat to most of humanity, so justice’s usefulness says, “Keep the cotton-picking cheap”.
Justice is also valued because of the inherent moral qualities within human beings. As Hume himself says, we feel certain ways about certain things, and one of these things is about suffering. This is why it is not justifiable to exploit a lesser individual, despite their utility. Justice serves as a bulwark of virtues, is in itself a virtue, and is easily respected for its own intrinsic value. In Hume’s “absolute benevolence” example, there would be no word for “justice”. As it is, however, there are two words that relate, justice and injustice.
The significance here is that each of these are useful in certain situations. Hume is absolutely right in ascertaining that justice is of absolutely no use whatsoever in the case of being kidnapped. In this case, injustice has much usefulness indeed. However, no one on earth would ever claim to value injustice. We value justice, partially because it is useful and partially because it is, for lack of a better word, right.