Nas fronteiras das instituições : exigências personalistas e éticas na teoria de John Finnis para uma teoria da justiça no âmbito político

Abstract

The present work seeks to challenge the contemporary paradigm that understands justice as an institutional virtue. The thesis proposes that justice is fundamentally an ethical virtue of the person’s character, which brings practical consequences for the good of a political community. There are two major models of justice theories that are labelled as Ethical Personalism and Political Institutionalism. Ethical Personalism includes the theories of justice that ascribe it's central case to people and the Ethical sphere, as is in the case of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and John Finnis. Political Institutionalism contemplates those contemporary theories of justice that consider it as an attribute of political and juridical institutions, being fundamentally concerned with the reasonableness and justice of the criteria of goods' distribution and charges in a political community, such as John Rawls. Thus it is held that fair institutions are a necessary condition for society to be just, yet they are not a sufficient condition for securing the common good. A better guarantee can only be offered if there is a concern with the character of citizens and rulers, which makes it a requirement for public reasonableness that the political community be concerned with the formation of civic virtues that embrace the Ethical sphere. Therefore, John Finnis' theory of justice plays a central role in this demonstration.