Social Justice Isn't What you Think It Is (Book review)

Michale Novak, Elizabeth Shaw and Paul Adams' new book looks interesting:

The book Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is isn’t what you think it is. The dust jacket of the latest from Michael Novak (with coauthors Paul Adams and Elizabeth Shaw) promises to rescue the term from “its ideological captors” by clarifying “the true meaning of social justice.” What it provides is a careful reading of select papal encyclicals, and application of them to the concept of social justice and contemporary social work—especially that being done from a Roman Catholic perspective. The book’s aim, in practical terms, is to make social justice safe for conservative Catholics both in theory and in practice. Novak humorously notes that this anti-market rallying cry of the Left has an “operational meaning”: that “we need a law against that.” One response to such social justice boosterism—Friedrich Hayek’s, in fact—is to reject the phrase altogether. Novak summarizes Hayek’s critique succinctly: Either social justice is a virtue, and so is about individuals and not about redistribution; or it is not a virtue and “its claim to moral standing falls flat.” Because its advocates treat it “as a regulative principle of order, not a virtue,” the slogan serves as an instrument of coercion, not a call to good habits of character, so the Hayekian conservative should set it aside.

From Library of Law and Liberty here (review by James Bruce)

I haven't read the book so can't do more than point it out as a potentially interesting read. But the review does suggest a few points:

a) Catholic social teaching mustn't be taken as a simplistic rule book. Justice and concern for res publica requires the application and development of the virtue of prudentia (practical wisdom). There are themes and basic observations about human nature, but how these are to be applied in concrete historical and cultural circumstances is a matter for that virtue of prudentia.

b) One of the biggest issues in modern Western societies (and particularly in the United States) is the role of government in achieving justice. In particular, there is a tendency in some countries to allow the state to destroy the associations of civil society and the family. On the other hand, in other countries, there is a failure of the state to support such associations. Catholic social teaching is clear that the family and the associations of civil society cannot rightly be replaced by government action. Equally, the state is more than a nightwatchman state the purpose of which is simply to protect basic physical welfare: it is there to promote human flourishing. Between these extremes, there is a range of possibilities which might be required in particular circumstances.

c) Politics essentially involves debate and disagreement. That some positions are clearly excluded by Catholicism does not imply that we should expect all Catholics to agree on what remains. (We might, however, expect Catholics to conduct that debate virtuously.)

One message I'd like this blog to reinforce is that Catholic social teaching is not some simplistic package which can be reduced to chucking a few more pennies in the SCIAF tin (laudable though such efforts are!). It is essentially an application of theology and philosophy to the hugely complex area of the social nature of human beings. It requires hard thinking and engagement with the fullness of the Catholic intellectual tradition.


Related post here.