Rosmini's First Statements

In exploring Rosmini's treatises, one is struck by the casual manner in which he introduced the term “social justice” and the lack of a precise definition. He first mentioned it in Society and Its Purpose while discussing political parties and their hostility to the common good:

This rich passage about the evils of political parties refers to social justice as part of the “social edifice” whose foundation is moral virtue in which citizens are taught that the public good takes precedence over the narrow interests of parties, classes, and individuals. Rosmini speaks of “social justice” in contrast to “individual justice,” using the former as a synonym for the “public good” as distinguished from the “private citizen.” He insists, however, that social justice begins “deep in the human heart” rather than being imposed by the state. In addition, Rosmini refers mysteriously to the theological dimension of politics by claiming that “the Providence of God” is the only real foundation stone for swaying citizens toward civic virtue—implying that social harmony is never solely within the power of human beings. Without elaborating, Rosmini first uses social justice as equivalent to the public good, in which the social nature of man is formed in accordance with virtue (meaning: moderation, giving others their due) in order to transcend private advantage. Rosmini seems to take for granted that social justice deals with the common good, as Aristotle and Thomas teach in speaking of “general justice” or “legal justice” where civil law is understood to shape citizens for the happiness of the political community.Footnote ⁸

Rosmini also refers to social justice in The Essence of Right as the common bond which holds society together:

In this passage, Rosmini equates the “science of social justice” with the goal of politics as a whole, namely, the preservation and cohesion of society bound together by shared notions of justice or right. The similarity with earlier passages lies in Rosmini's emphasis on justice as the “cement that binds society together.” It suggests an inherent link between “society” and “justice” that may have inspired the phrase “social justice” as the unity and social cohesion created by common ideas of “rights and duties” or “social rights.”

This impression is confirmed by a more elaborate discussion in Rights in Civil Society where Rosmini assesses the impact of the French Revolution and asks:

Rosmini's assessment is that the French Revolution overall was a mixed blessing—”an abyss of evil” in which “a good, salutary seed was at work.” On the negative side, it produced the terror of the Jacobins and the despotism of Napoleon; yet it also unleashed the passion for social justice whose seed is an ideal consisting of a “common, uniform mode of speech” arrived at by free discussion that creates a rational consensus—”a common, popular, national opinion about the principal maxims of social justice” (RCS, paras. 2105–6). In Rosmini's eyes, these events constituted a higher “third stage” of civilization after feudalism and pagan Rome because the French revolutionaries and even Napoleon asserted the rights of man as a social ideal over the dynastic principle of feudalism based on “seigniorial and family society” (RCS, paras. 2081–82, 2294). Rosmini sees this development as “progress” and even as providential: “a moral force superior to every material force is slowly being produced… a pure, incorruptible power destined by the eternal author of the human race to direct, dominate, and save all other forces. This supreme power is ‘the uniformity of thought of the masses concerning the principles of social justice’” (RSC, para. 2122). In these early statements, Rosmini sees social justice as a new historical force in which the common good of social harmony among citizens is brought about by shared opinions of justice, uniformly established by rational and free discussion that raises civilization to a new stage of human dignity.

Rosmini's next step is to give some content to this ideal by identifying the “moral” and “eudaimonological” goods of justice:

These statements seek to define the meaning of justice, although they are ambiguous insofar as Rosmini moves seamlessly from the language of modern liberalism (respecting people's rights as one of “the duties of government”) to the classical language of Aristotle and Aquinas (referring to eudaimonological good and to “human perfection” as “the end of politics”). Rosmini suggests that the philosophy of right, as the science of social justice, is a subtle synthesis of liberalism's rights of persons and property (now called “moral good”) and of Aristotelian principles of happiness through perfection or virtue (“eudaimonological good”). His challenge is to show that these two sets of principles, rights and virtues, are complementary.

In some places, Rosmini makes it seem like a smooth alliance, insofar as individual rights entail duties to respect others and to seek happiness through virtue:

Rosmini reconciles the principles by arguing that the inalienable nature of rights derives from “our right to true good” understood as the duty to seek virtue and the eudaimonological good of happiness. In other places, Rosmini points to the tensions that can arise between rights and duties and to their different assumptions about justice—whereby rights imply the arithmetic justice of equality, while duties and virtues imply the proportional justice of inequality. He shows that these two measures correspond to Kantian and Aristotelian ideals of justice:

Rosmini then draws a powerful conclusion regarding justice:

In this crucial passage, Rosmini recognizes two different metrics for measuring justice: arithmetic equality for human beings in their abstract or universal essence in which they are all the same in their common humanity (but which never exists in actual social reality) vs. proportional inequality for real people in their concrete or particular social existence in which everyone is different in talents and rank (their natural condition as social animals). The former he connects with Kantian ethical idealism, the latter with Aristotelian proportionalism. The implication is that social justice as a shared ideal must be concerned with people in their concrete social roles as well as their abstract humanity—and it is their concrete existence in society that determines “the true, real rights that bind people together.”

Using this distinction between abstract and concrete human beings, Rosmini criticizes the philosophers of liberalism for their inconsistency: they “begin by abstracting from human nature in order to determine natural rights among human beings”—meaning, they assert the state of nature doctrine where justice is arithmetic equality, and they deny the naturalness of inequalities in determining justice. Hence, “No author on rational Right has ever maintained from start to finish the abstraction of human nature on which… he has founded the science of Right… [or spoken of] equal relationships between human beings without referring to any accidental differences of state or circumstances” (ER, para. 349). To illustrate his point, Rosmini cites two concrete examples that must be counted as part of proportional justice, namely, the relationship of buyer and seller in a contractual exchange and the relationship of husband, wife, and children in the “natural association” of the family. These relationships display “accidents of human nature which do not belong to the essence of the human being” but which show “people endowed with accidents and inequalities, [whose] rights cannot be deduced simply by starting from the principle… that [everyone should have] an equal share” (ER, para. 350). In Rosmini's eyes, this is the false universality of abstract equality that lies at the bottom of Kantian ethical idealism and modern liberalism: they emphasize humanity in the abstract and deny that justice pertains to people in their concrete and particular social roles.

Nevertheless, Rosmini recognizes an important element of truth in Kantian ethical idealism, which leads him to embrace the dignity of the person as an end-in-itself. The dignity of the human person—or “personalism”—is a principle that Rosmini affirms throughout his works as a ground of justice, according to which the principle of moral virtue, simply stated, is this: “‘Respect the person as end; do not use the person as means for yourself.’ The object of virtue therefore is always the dignity of the person, and here precisely lies the origin of human association” (SP, bk. 1, chap. 2, para. 39). In Rosmini's statement, we hear clearly Kant's famous words in the second formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act so that you treat humanity in your person or any other person as an end, never as a means only.”Footnote ¹¹ Rosmini includes Kant's view of human dignity in the philosophy of right, but he incorporates it into the social nature of man because “personship” is an abstract truth that must be qualified by concrete social hierarchies. As Rosmini says:

The crucial point is that the Kantian ideal of the person in its abstract and universal “essence” is the basis of the dignity of the human person and of the equal rights of arithmetic justice. But Rosmini also affirms the Aristotelian ideal of the concrete inequality of human beings in their different social roles as members of families, political communities, economic exchanges, and social hierarchies that require proportional justice. Hence, Rosmini strongly affirms “personalism” (the dignity of the person), but he also combines it with Aristotelian eudaimonism: “personship is only an element, although the most important element, of human nature.”Footnote ¹² For Rosmini, human nature is Kantian personhood incorporated into Aristotle's social nature of man.

Accordingly, the philosophy of right must balance two visions of truth: “an abstract and one-sided universality which consists in… the common characteristics of things; and a universality which… embraces individual characteristics and the things themselves.” Rosmini's emphasis is on the latter, since “the largest part of rights between human beings has its special title in the accidents of human nature… [which] the science of natural Right does not exclude, if these depend upon natural laws and are not dependent on agreements” (ER, para. 355). It is important to note that Rosmini is here using precise Scholastic language when referring to the “accidents of human nature” or “individual characteristics.” Rosmini sees the different and unequal contributions of individuals or groups as having a natural basis, as Aristotle argued, because Rosmini embraces the Scholastic theory of perfection, according to which universal “essences” are brought to perfection by particular “accidents.” Hence, Rosmini sees human beings as equal only in their “abstract essence,” while viewing their “accidents” or particular characteristics as the “natural inequalities of talent, powers, and age” that actualize human nature in its social forms.Footnote ¹³

One may conclude, then, that Rosmini's idea of social justice as the common good of society is forged from a novel synthesis of two ideals: the abstract equality of persons in their universal essence as ends (reflecting Kantian ethical idealism) and the concrete inequality of particular people in their different social roles (reflecting Aristotelian proportionalism). This combination of “personalism” and “eudaimonism” is the basis of Rosmini's natural law philosophy.

Rosmini's Constitution under Social Justice

While composing his early treatises in the 1830s and 1840s, Rosmini was never detached completely from the political conflicts of his era regarding Italian nationalism, the Austrian empire, and the papacy. In 1848, Rosmini was asked by the local king of Piedmont to go to Rome on a diplomatic mission to convince Pope Pius IX to join the northern Italian kingdom in a war of independence against Austria. Rosmini accepted the assignment, but he failed in the mission with lasting repercussions for his reputation. However, the situation inspired him to complete a draft for a future Italian government, La costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale (1848).Footnote ¹⁴ Here we see an application of social justice that drew upon earlier ideas while adding a more precise meaning to the term.

In its broad outlines, the constitution that Rosmini proposed for Italy is a confederation of regions or states under a national kingship that includes aristocratic and democratic elements, represented in two legislative chambers, and protections for religious freedom along with a favored status for the Catholic Church. On the surface, Rosmini's constitutional project looks like an updated version of the classic Thomistic idea of a mixed regime—a constitutional monarchy that combines the three forms of good government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (or polity). As Rosmini says, “The state is held by a monarchic government tempered by laws. And… the deputies of the people, divided into two chambers and united with the king, represent the nation” (CSJ, 11, 35). The king would be a hereditary monarch with broad powers to convoke the legislature, execute the laws, declare war, make treaties of peace and commerce, appoint judges, and command the army. The legislative chambers would represent the two kinds of property—the upper chamber for “majority property,” meaning those with wealth who pay a high amount of taxes, and the lower chamber, for “minor property,” meaning the middle and working classes who pay a lesser amount of taxes. The national judiciary would be appointed by the king but made independent of political pressures by life tenure. The Catholic Church would be given freedom from the state rather than state support, with its bishops nominated by Catholic clergy and laypeople and confirmed by the pope rather than appointed by the king or legislature. As this overview suggests, Rosmini was proposing a constitution in the tradition of Aquinas and Cicero—a mixed regime of kingship, aristocracy, and democracy with a distinction between state and church that serves the temporal common good.

What is original in Rosmini's work is the way he justifies the proposed constitutional monarchy. While following Aquinas by appealing to an eternal law and natural law above the will of rulers, Rosmini incorporates principles of natural rights from modern liberalism. In the spirit of the French Revolution, he asserts that “the rights of nature and reason are inviolable for every man,” and he sees them as true inferences from the dignity of man as well as higher law limitations on the power of the state.Footnote ¹⁵ At the same time, Rosmini was horrified by the democratic despotism of the French Revolution, and he feared a new kind of centralized power—reflected not only in the Jacobinsim of the 1790s but also in the ideologies of socialism and communism unleashed in the 1848 revolutions. As a result of these conflicting sentiments, Rosmini sometimes sounds like Burke and de Maistre in criticizing the French Revolution, but he also sounds like Locke and Kant in embracing the rights of persons and property. Rosmini views the constitution itself as a mix of Burkean prescription that evolves without premeditation and a rational plan “emerging complete as theory from the mind,” combining tradition and reason, virtues and rights, arithmetic and proportional justice.

How does Rosmini blend these theories together? For the most part, he draws upon his earlier view of the common good as social harmony achieved through shared ideals of justice that recognize the abstract essence and concrete social existence of human beings. He also introduces something new: a clear distinction between the equal rights of all persons under God, which he calls “natural justice,” and proportionate rewards for unequal contributions, which he now calls “social justice” in the precise sense. Thus, “social justice” in this work refers not only to the general justice of the common good but also to the particular justice of fair distribution which protects the property of all classes, especially those who contribute most to society. The shift may be due to the political context of 1848, in which the leveling of inequalities in an age of democratic revolution appeared to be the most serious threat to social harmony.Footnote ¹⁶ But the new emphasis on proportionate rewards also affirms Rosmini's earlier intuition that the rights and duties of citizens are mainly determined by their different social roles rather than by their abstract humanity. The main challenge of this book is to reconcile the two claims in a theory of the common good that highlights legitimate inequalities in defining social justice.

A striking illustration is Rosmini's stirring appeal to end class warfare in Italy:

The heart of Rosmini's proposal is to overcome the historic class conflict between the rich and the poor by establishing “social justice”—understood as the harmony that results from giving all classes their fair share in representation according to proportional justice. It is based on two mechanisms: an equal rate of taxation on higher and lower income people, rather than a greater ratio on richer people (a flat tax, as it is called today); and a representation of electors in the legislative bodies that gives greater power to those who contribute more and a lesser amount to those who contribute less. Thus, the core of Rosmini's idea of social justice is the taxation of all classes at the same rate, and proportional representation in the two chambers of deputies. The assumption is that the poor will be satisfied that the rich are not exempt from taxation and pay more taxes in total; and the rich will be satisfied that they are taxed at equal rates and have more power proportionately in the legislature. Social justice thereby combines equality and inequality in the proper amounts to satisfy both classes.

Rosmini repeats this formulation many times in order to avoid confusion about social justice (emphases added):Footnote ¹⁷

From these quotations, one can see that Rosmini's “social justice” means proportional justice that rewards people according to the total amount of taxes they pay while taxing everyone equally rather than progressively. Rosmini uses “social justice” in this way because he believes that the common good (general justice) is mainly achieved by fair distribution (particular justice) that is proportional by contribution. Moreover, the phrase locates the crux of distribution in the different social roles of people that must be duly rewarded in order to achieve harmony. The puzzle is why Rosmini also distinguishes “social justice” from “natural justice” in this book.

In an extended passage on the French Revolution, he explains their relation:

From this extended passage, one can see that Rosmini seeks a way of combining the natural rights of men (in their common humanity as equals) with the social reality of different people being unequal in property and in their contributions to society. Rosmini recognizes that inequalities have different causes, such as merit or work and sometimes chance or nature, although he does not clarify the reasons here.Footnote ¹⁸ Despite the ambiguity, Rosmini agrees with Aristotle that different and unequal social roles have a legitimate status that deserves political rewards, and these inequalities are justified as the fulfillment of natural rights because they encourage contributions to society and secure social harmony by protecting everyone's property.

In reflecting on these passages, one should note that Rosmini traces this idea of social justice to Christianity's influence on the progress of civilization. Yet it seems odd to say that proportional justice is a product of Christianity, when that principle is more Aristotelian than Christian. Rosmini's reasoning seems to be that Christianity views social justice as a cause of peace and harmony—”unity in peace,” as Thomas calls it—which is more than simply treating people fairly; it means overcoming hatred and class warfare. Social justice promotes the Christian virtue of social peace by giving just deserts to all classes of society, to the rich as well as to the poor and disenfranchised. This is the negative lesson of the French Revolution—social peace requires the state to give due recognition to everyone in their different social roles as well as in their essential humanity, and this formula makes up the complete common good.Footnote ¹⁹

As if anticipating criticism of a Christian argument that defends inequalities of wealth, Rosmini makes a provocative remark about the Gospel's view of those who possess no property but are nonetheless equal in the eyes of God and man. Rosmini's view is that “the major property owners” should be represented in the upper chamber of the legislature and “the minor proprietors” from the middle and working classes should be represented in the lower chamber, while those with no property—the paupers—do not have a claim to social justice at all because they make no social contribution. Yet they are still equal in dignity and in natural rights before God and man:

Rosmini's distinction between natural rights and Christian charity, on the one hand, and the demands of social justice for proportional representation, on the other hand, is quite striking and disturbing to modern ears. He bluntly states that Christ's love for the poor and marginalized calls for a rejection of slavery and oppression, but it does not require democracy in the sense of empowering the poor to rule with other classes of society. And indeed, those who contribute nothing to the treasury do not make a contribution to the political common good and therefore do not deserve political power, even if they deserve the justice of equal rights and the charity of fellow human beings as brothers and sisters in Christ. In a way, Rosmini is making the simple point that Christian charity does not require democracy in the political sphere or socialism in the economic sphere because God's realm and Caesar's realm are distinct; but he states it so bluntly that it jars the reader. At the same time, Rosmini recognizes a Christian influence in the emergence of natural rights of all human beings: “It is now certain that Christianity today has brought the nations to a state of civil society and… to an end of the seigneurial element that was mixed in them, which was of violent or pagan origin. Men freed by Christianity have returned to exercising all their natural rights” (CSJ, 52; emphasis added). Rosmini credits Christian civilization with overcoming the patrimonial system of feudalism and inspiring equal natural rights as well as the proportional justice that inspires social harmony.

In seeking a balance between equality and inequality, Rosmini recognizes a need for the institutional enforcement of the natural rights derived from Christian teachings about common humanity, even if the state is not obligated to give everyone equal representation. To show the importance of natural rights, Rosmini proposes a special judicial institution, a Supreme Political Tribunal, which would serve as an enforcement mechanism for higher-law rights against the centralized state. The Supreme Political Tribunal would function as a direct appeal for any citizen:

It is striking that the idea of a Supreme Political Tribunal is here interjected into a discussion of a modern constitution. The Tribunal pertains to the natural rights of all people, especially those of weak citizens, and it includes a list—like a Bill of Rights—to be written into the constitution, such as the natural right to travel, emigrate, and domicile,Footnote ²⁰ as well as the right to association, free speech, a fair trial, and religious liberty (CSJ, 52). Although it is not entirely clear how the Supreme Political Tribunal would function, its purpose is to provide judicial enforcement for natural rights against the centralized state—which Rosmini says was missing in the French Revolution where rights were used to expand rather to limit the power of the state. The Supreme Political Tribunal would correct that massive betrayal by providing an enforcement mechanism for abstract rights and reassure all citizens of their place in the constitutional order. In sum, Rosmini provides institutional support for equal rights in the judiciary and for proportional inequalities in the legislature and executive, aiming at the common good of all classes.Footnote ²¹

Rosmini's Foundations

Let me now turn to the philosophical and theological foundations of Rosmini's political principles. One type of foundational argument supports the natural equality of human beings, which Rosmini understands in terms of the rights and dignity of the human person. Here, I will turn to The Philosophy of Right and Principles of Ethics where philosophical grounds for the dignity of the person are found in Rosmini's doctrine of intellectual participation in “ideal being.” A second type of foundational argument supports “social justice” in the precise sense of proportional rewards for unequal contributions to society. This grounding can be found in Rosmini's “eudaimonological principle” (named after Aristotle's eudaimonism) which emphasizes perfection or virtue as the key to happiness. A parallel argument for proportional justice appears in Rosmini's Theodicy, which explains how God's justice works through individuals of outstanding virtue manifesting the wisdom of divine providence. The implication is that inequality as well as equality is a part of divine, natural, and social justice.

Assessing Rosmini

Having surveyed Rosmini's “science of social justice” and its foundations, I would like to conclude with an assessment of its significance, which I will do first by looking backward and asking what it adds to the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, and then by looking forward and comparing it to Rawls's theory of justice and Catholic social teaching.

A recurring question is why Rosmini invented the term “social justice” when he had at his disposal similar expressions from Aristotle and Aquinas. They defined justice as the constant will of rendering to others their due, and they viewed justice as the social virtue par excellence because it deals with relations to other people, not merely to oneself. Hence, Aristotle and Aquinas had no need to speak of social justice because the phrase would be redundant. Instead, they divided justice into two kinds: (1) general or complete justice and (2) particular or partial justice. General justice, also called legal justice, concerns the common good of society, since the aim of the civil law is to inculcate moral virtues for the benefit of all or the best citizens (requiring them to be courageous, moderate, gentle regarding anger, not grasping, and so on). Particular justice is an abstract notion of fairness or equity in relations among particular citizens, derived from natural right rather than from legal or conventional right. Particular justice in turn is subdivided into two parts: (2a) distributive justice, based on unequal or proportional rewards for those who contribute more to society, and (2b) corrective or commutative justice based on arithmetic equality. Corrective justice is further subdivided into (2b[i]) rectifying justice in law courts where equity is used to redress injuries, and (2b[ii]) justice in economic exchange, based on arithmetic justice for material goods in bartering or using money as a medium of exchange and a measure of need.Footnote ³³

While he inherited these terms from the tradition, Rosmini was guided but not bound by them in developing a new version of justice. Sometimes he even used the Aristotelian terms in his own fashion, as in his assertion that “every person has some equality and some inequality” in which “jural equality is the foundation of commutative justice [and] constitutive inequality, of distributive justice… to attempt to destroy either… is a violation of right.” Sometimes Rosmini used Aristotle's terms faithfully: “The right to govern… must not be given to people at random, but according to the rules of distributive justice and equity.”Footnote ³⁴ The puzzle is to understand why Rosmini used Aristotle's terms occasionally but also created his own terminology of social justice for systematic use.

One reason can be inferred from the quotations above: Rosmini recognized justice as the supreme social virtue and sought to unify all facets of justice in one term—a single expression comprehending general and particular justice that also included commutative and distributive justice. Social justice served that purpose because it connects them as means and end: general justice aims at the common good, which is best realized through the particular justice of fair distribution. While Aristotle does not develop this means-end relation in the Ethics, it appears clearly in Politics III (1281a2–1283a23), in the classification of different regimes where the just forms of government are defined as seeking the common good through distributive justice. Rosmini developed Aristotle by defining the common good as social harmony among the rich, poor, and middle classes, and by arguing that the best means is a fair distribution consisting of a balance of equality and inequality—in Aristotelian terms, a balance of the democratic and oligarchic claims, and in Rosminian terms, a balance of equal rights for all and of unequal rewards for greater contributions. Hence, Rosmini can say that social justice sums up man's social nature as seeking the general or complete common good through the particular justice of fair distribution, including elements of equality and inequality.

Stated this way, social justice would be an updating of Aristotle and Aquinas with an expression especially suited for the period of class conflict from the French Revolution to the revolutions of 1848. It is crucial to see, however, that Rosmini's political philosophy is more than an Aristotelian revival. It contains something new, namely, the principles of modern liberalism and its ideals of natural rights and the dignity of the human person, derived from Kant (and other classical liberals) and Christianity. Hence, Rosmini sees the French Revolution not only as “an abyss of evil” but as a turning point in history whereby the patrimonial or seigniorial principle of feudalism, based purely on particularistic dynasties, was replaced by the idea of civil society in which justice itself as a shared ideal of abstract right could become the social bond or cement of society—creating an inherent link between society and justice that is implied in the phrase “social justice.” But the French Revolution also perverted that ideal by using the rights of man for despotism, so it required an Aristotelian correction, as it were: the abstraction of the equal rights and dignity of every person had to be balanced with recognition of the concrete inequalities of different social roles and particular characteristics of individuals based not on blood ties but on merit or virtue. The new Rosminian synthesis of “personalism” and “eudaimonism” produced the ideal of social justice as the complete common good of social harmony achieved by balancing arithmetic equality with proportional inequality in God's plan for the moral order of the universe. Rosmini thereby goes well beyond Aristotle by providing a minimum of equal justice for all people, including slaves, while retaining the goal of happiness through virtue.

Rosmini also challenges later advocates of social justice, both religious and secular, who share his concern with the common good of social harmony but shift the emphasis to abstract equality over concrete inequality. For example, Catholic social teaching, as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, treats “social justice” extensively under the theme of human community and the common good: “Social justice is linked to the common good and the exercise of authority. … Social justice can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society. … Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a creature… [and] are the basis of the moral legitimacy of every authority.”Footnote ³⁵ One hears echoes of Rosmini in these passages, where social justice is linked with respect for the rights and dignity of the human person that is justified by a three-fold claim about the nature of man: “Created in the image of God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature… redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ… all enjoy an equal dignity” (para. 1934).

On the other side, the Catechism acknowledges differences and legitimate inequalities arising from man's social nature:

The Catechism also calls attention to “sinful inequalities that affect millions of men and women” and criticizes “excessive economic and social disparities… [that] militate against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international peace” (para. 1938). The main departure from Rosmini is the emphasis on personal rights in defining the common good:

If we seek the essential core of Catholic teaching on social justice, it is the material and moral preconditions for the fundamental rights and development of the person in a national, international, and global common good. This is certainly a crucial component of social justice. However, when compared to Rosmini's conception, the definition seems incomplete because it speaks only vaguely of “development” or “a truly human life” without specifying the Aristotelian and Thomistic view of the perfection of the person in light of the rational and spiritual nature of man. It also fails to mention proportional justice which rewards those who elevate civilization to its highest peaks—namely, the great philosophers, artists, theologians, saints, scientists, entrepreneurs, athletes, generals, and statesmen who serve nations and humanity with their achievements. The omission of outstanding virtue is surprising, since Catholic social teaching is aware of its importance, yet the texts express a minimal rather than a complete idea of the common good.

Secular philosophers are often less balanced. In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls states that his “topic is social justice,” and, like Aristotle, he refers to “the social nature of the virtue of justice” (Theory, 7, 110). Rawls also argues like Kant for a procedural view of “justice as fairness” that assumes equal respect for all people as “moral persons” and rational agents (251, 505). The crucial difference with Rosmini is that Rawls takes “justice as fairness” to mean the essential equality of persons in a hypothetical “original position” where all existing social inequalities and personal characteristics are stripped away as arbitrary in choosing the rules of a just society. The key assumption is that inequalities are not deserved because they are products of luck, either as natural endowments or as social privileges. They have no moral standing as approximations of virtue or as superior contributions to the common good or even as defining characteristics of the individual (104–7). All particular traits of nature and society must be disregarded under the veil of ignorance (so that no one is a father, mother, or child or a Frenchman, Italian, or Greek, or intelligent, foolish, or average).

Compared to Rosmini, Rawls suffers from abstraction—an insistence on deriving justice from a social contract theory that treats humanity as a universal essence, while denigrating human beings in their concrete social roles and particular characteristics. Rawls thereby denies the social nature of man which is contextual, differentiated, and unequal. He recognizes the Kantian-like dignity conferred on all human beings in the abstract, but he invalidates the proportional justice of Aristotle in social existence whereby claims of birth, wealth, virtue, and even fortune have some legitimacy in determining just contributions to society (even if the precise amount is always disputed). Hence, Rawls asserts, “perfectionism would be rejected as not defining a feasible basis of social justice” (Theory, 331). Rawls also denies “social theodicy,” meaning the inevitable nature of inequalities that are put into human nature by its ultimate first cause, sometimes for the happiness of mankind but also reflecting the particularity of concrete existence and the uniqueness of persons in Christian theology. Of course, Rawls proposes his famous “difference principle” as a practical solution to the challenge of justifying inequality: he admits that some inequalities can be justified, but only insofar as they help the least advantaged to improve their condition (60–80). This sounds like Rosmini's proportional justice for those who contribute to the common good, in this case to improve the lot of the poor. But Rosmini also allows unequal rewards to promote social harmony among the wealthy, and he gives those with property greater proportional representation in legislative bodies; and, of course, he favors constitutional monarchy as well as heroic virtue for maximizing the good. In Rosmini's eyes, the dignity of the human person in the abstract does not negate the social nature of man in the concrete, which is essence of social justice whose very name emphasizes man in society.

In today's world, Rosmini sounds unfair and almost uncharitable in asserting that “a single human being can have an intrinsic moral and eudaimonological value exceeding hundreds of human beings.” To those who might object, it should be clear that Rosmini is not defending unjust inequalities, such as the strong exploiting the weak, since that would violate the equal rights and dignity of all persons. But neither does he allow the demands of Christian charity to diminish the legitimate inequalities that elevate and serve humankind. One could rightly criticize Rosmini for underestimating the difficulties of balancing equality and inequality in theory and in practice, but modern scholars could certainly benefit from studying Rosmini by being less abstract about social justice and by recognizing unequal rewards along with equal rights in the complete common good.