Renewing Christian intellectual life in the world's research universities
Disciplinary scholars provide initial reactions and questions to help shape the final Theology Brief.
Yale University
The word justice has grown more popular in schools of architecture within the last few years. It is normally paired with the word social ; and while there is much within that movement that the Christian can celebrate, it strikes me that the foundations underlying the construct of social justice are …
University of Notre Dame
I liked this a lot -- its tone is generous and nuanced, and spot on in its recognition that concerns for justice are not "value added" but rather intrinsic to human being in the world -- but for some reason I liked it much more the second time I read it (when on my first reading perhaps I was feelin…
University of Alberta
Justice: What follows are some stream of consciousness thoughts on Professor Wolterstorff’s brief: I like the idea of subdividing justice into first- and second-order types. It strikes me that our fundamental calling as Christians is to establish, in a very bottom-up rather than top-down way, God’s …
University of Wisconsin-Madison
In one sense, especially among young people, “justice” - by which they mean “social justice” - is au courant to be sure. And yet in my undergraduate embryonic development course I find students are ill-equipped to think about the broad implications of “justice” as it intersects with the human condit…
University of Queensland
I agree with the paper. On just relations being “pervasively violated” in the university: I find it quite disturbing the way universities (and some of my colleagues) exploit international students, postdocs, and visiting scholars. Some labs are like ``sweat shops’’. Adjunct faculty is another issue……
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
In science and engineering/technology education these days there is a renewed emphasis on Ethics. But most universities have little idea how to address the need in a way that relates the topic to the major interests of science and engineering students. There are experimental programs growing in diff…
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Satellites tend to be expensive. How can the results of space based observation be made useful to all nations especially those who cannot afford them.
University of Hong Kong
Beethoven and the question of human freedom is not (as is often thought) about will and power (heroic and Promethean) but also about relations and therefore ‘first order’ justice. We could consider Beethoven’s humanism as an expression of ‘first order’ justice, even in something as seemingly simple …
Monash University
I’m interested in how one understands justice not on the level of individual relationships but at the level of whole societies, hence my interest in social contract theories.
University of Sheffield
Insofar as this argument depends on interpretations of texts from the Hebrew Bible and their contribution to ethics, this intersects with writing I have done on particular texts (in Genesis, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) and with my contention that there are significant impediments to Western thinkers unde…
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Saint Louis University
In recent decades, at least in certain philosophical circles, justice has lost some of its lustre as a virtue for establishing and sustaining good relationships in a society. In the view of some feminist philosophers, for example, ethics based on justice needs to be supplemented, or even supplanted,…
Auckland University of Technology
I found this Brief on Justice stimulating and timely. This is a core issue for us as Christians and scholars. I do however feel some discomfort – for reasons I am not yet clear on in myself - about grounding justice primarily in ‘rights’. This is not my area of expertise, but the rights discourse se…
University of Leicester
My research connects pretty directly with Nicholas Wolterstorff’s reflections, and with his published work on justice and rights, which I greatly appreciate. I’m preoccupied by the problem of injustice in Christian history:
University of Sydney
On Professor Woltersorff’s reflections on justice: I agree that the issue is very important, but I’m afraid that I see things differently. In my view the important distinction is not between his ‘first-order’ and ‘second-order’ justice, but between distributive justice and retributive justice. It is…
Jawaharlal Nehru University
There are many societies in the world, especially those that have been designated ‘tribal’, where social solidarity and individual rights are at the expense of each other. The societies that I have in mind are also Christian. A lack of social solidarity can mean at one level a loss of identity for t…
University of Calabar
The problem of justice at the first order level, both in the Old Testament Scripture and contemporary world can be traced to human natural propensity to be egocentric: How can this natural propensity be tempered so that the human person can see the external other as the extension of the self that is…
Bakke Graduate University
Prof. Wolsterstorff’s emphasis on justice touches pertinent questions which I raise in my research. Today there is a huge church structure with tentacles spread across the globe. There are issues of gender and racial discrimination, unequal treatments, exploitation, gaps between the clergy and the l…
University of Hong Kong
As a scholar studying the rule of law, the Justice Preview provides clear ideas on the concept of justice and rights and their inter-relationships. It confirms my understanding that the law should protect all the rights that a human person deserves to enjoy as a dignified being.
La Trobe University
The idea of justice underlies the study of law. As the preview identifies two fundamental forms of justice, first-order and second-order, there are also two essential notions of justice, procedural and substantial. My research on lawyers’ professional identity reveals lawyers’ general tendency to em…
The University of Queensland
The distinction between first and second order justice is important. I would suggest a further distinction however. The first order of justice is defined by reference to ‘interactions’. While actions are an important aspect, there is also the equally important, and perhaps even more fundamental, dim…
University of Hong Kong
My research on social and economic rights is closely related to social justice, as it looks at how resources should be fairly distributed in the society based on human rights norms. ‘Render to each what is his right’ can be applied to social and economic rights as well, as each person has a moral cl…
University of Melbourne
I found the Brief to be convincing. It affirms my view that we are confronted with justice issues in the micro and the macro events of our lives and our work. However, I find that justice understood as ‘rights’ can sometimes be too abstract. Disagreements as to what ‘rights’ or what ‘justice’ ought …
American Bar Foundation
The interactionist core to the preview’s treatment of justice resonates strongly with my sociological research, ranging from global lawmaking interactions inside international organizations to everyday relations among defendants, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, police in China’s justice system and its…
Universidad de La Sabana
As a commentary to Prof. Wolterstorff’s paper, I see a perfect alignment between the requirements of the first-order and second-order justice and my own commitment to promoting socially responsible business in Latin America, as well as my critical analysis on the jurisprudence of the Inter American …
University of Otago
The idea of first-order justice as predicated on the inherent excellence and dignity of persons resonates strongly with my current research into the notion of “sexual dignity”. I am also interested in collaborating with indigenous researchers to consider comparative dimensions of the dignity of pers…
Northwestern University
The relationship between individual and systemic (or social) conceptions of justice in the preview does connect with my research, as my work explores how what starts out as low-stakes individual claims for justice among narrow economic groups may sometimes bleed over into claims about threats to one…
Harvard Medical School
If being just in the first order is a virtue, it would seem relevant in mental health care – as a treatment goal for some individuals, perhaps as an ingredient in the process of therapy, and as a characteristic of a good therapist.
Columbia University
I am struck that the modern practice of medicine often challenges Wolterstorff’s treatment of justice (“rendering to each what is his or her right, or due”) in two key ways. First, the regnant principle in medicine is respect for autonomy, which means that treatment for patients often becomes mere w…
Harvard University School of Public Health
To what extent should forgiveness be considered a matter of public health and public policy? (VanderWeele, T.J. (2018). Is forgiveness a public health issue? American Journal of Public Health , 108:189-190.)
University of Nottingham
The Justice Preview that Wolterstoff outlines seems to fit intuitively with how we form understandings of interaction and justice. Some of my work examines how children understand fairness and I use stories to try to convey different scenarios to children. In some recent work it seems children have …
Brandeis University
This excellent discussion of justice grounded in rights, and rights being “what respect for worth requires,” closely links up with the equitable “distribution of [economic] benefits.”
University of Cambridge
One of the themes I trace in my work is the rise of what Professor Wolterstorff calls the ’Aristotelian’ notion of distributive justice in Anglo-American thought over the last century. I’d be interested in reflecting on what role Christian thinkers have played in shaping prevailing conceptions of ju…
Redeemer University
I appreciate very much Nick’s foundation of justice in relationships. This is, to me, a very Biblical picture. It also drives me into Scripture itself, searching after what a "right relationship" might actually be. How, after all, to understand the normative structure of a friendship, or a business …
University of British Columbia in Vancouver
1/ I used Wolterstorff’s work on justice a while back when I was giving a talk on the use of reading / literature and being a Christian. So this was a pleasure to read.
Australian National University
I’m very much looking forward to the fuller version. Two things came to mind when reading this two page version: I would be very interested to see Wolterstorff grapple with the global/international dimensions of justice - both with respect to the OT (e.g. Israel’s call to love the (often foreign) st…
Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Wolterstorff’s introductory pages on the meaning of justice and its connection to human dignity and rights is brilliantly clear and pertinent to my area of work, as well as to the wider field of scholarship. His distinction between first order and second order justice is very helpful, not …
University of Technology Sydney
J S Mills conception of society is that unless you harm others (in which case 2nd order comes in) the only thing that determines proper action is your unfettered freedom. I have criticized this framework.
University of Texas
The theme of the brief on human interaction at the core of acting justly connects with my work studying learning and teaching in different human populations. Largely these are NON-WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised, Rich, & Democratic) societies with varying levels of interactions with others ac…
University of Oxford
I found the preview very clear and helpful. Here are some connections with my current academic preoccupations: Is the desire for justice a fundamental human characteristic, and if so, what is its origin? How might a Christian understanding relate to those of evolutionary psychology and social constr…
Garrett-Evangelical Seminary
The Preview evokes for me the significance that language (Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English) plays in communication of shared, core ideas, such as the nuances of meaning in that English word and concept called “justice” or “righteousness”. I am intrigued by the OT meanings that associate justice with Go…
Fundación Universitaria Seminario Bíblico de Colombia
Here in Colombia, the armed conflict has resulted in literally millions of documented human rights violations; the government has responded by making human rights a major part of the educational curriculum for the past generation. Rights discourse is pervasive, and generally in a "second order" fash…
Yale Divinity School
To what extent is what is owed to another determined by their membership in a particular natural kind, i.e., their humanity? And to what extent is it determined by particular features of that individual, or of particular social groups or institutions to which that individual belongs?
University of Edinburgh
It will be no news to my friend Nicholas Wolterstorff, I am afraid, that I have profound difficulties with his approach to the topic of justice, since our differences on the topic have in the past appeared in print. The following statements of the disagreement are no more than Summary headings:
University of Oxford
If justice is about ‘interactions between human beings’ then the ‘actors’ or the ‘agents’ are clearly important, opening up an interesting question: What virtues might be necessary to underwrite the ability to interact justly – honesty, humility, gratitude?
Yale University
Wolterstorff’s rights-based account of justice has significant bearing on the ethics of home-making and home-maintenance, particularly in a world where there are millions who have no house to call home, no land that will treat them as belonging, or highly insecure habitations. It pushes in the direc…
No preview responses in that discipline.
