Social Justice - Part II

Upon consideration, I felt it prudent to start with the basics - definition. If we can't agree on what we're talking about, we have no basis for debate.

Therefore, from Dictionary.com:

Social means 1) pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations, 2) living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation, 3) of or pertaining to human society, esp. as a body divided into classes according to status, 4) of or pertaining to the life, welfare, and relations of human beings in a community or 5) noting or pertaining to activities designed to remedy or alleviate certain unfavorable conditions of life in a community, esp. among the poor.

In Webster's Dictionary from 1913*, "social" was known to mean 1) Of or pertaining to society; relating to men living in society, or to the public as an aggregate body; as, social interest or concerns; social pleasure; social benefits; social happiness; social duties 2) Ready or disposed to mix in friendly converse; companionable; sociable; as, a social person or 3) Consisting in union or mutual intercourse.

For expediency, I left out the definitions that included references to zoology, botany and parties. :)

As you can see, the word has metamorphosized from meaning simply "about society/relationships" to include ideas about status, unfavorable conditions, the poor, etc. I point this out only to emphasize why the definition itself may be fuzzy as it is currently used. For our discussions, I will be referring to "social" as merely regarding the "group" or "collective" and leaving out subjective terminology such as status and poor.

That being said, the definition of justice has proved to be much more difficult and will be the subject of my next post.

*As an aside, I found it rather interesting that the 1828 version of Websters included the sentence "True self-love and social are the same" and then went on to define self-love as synonymous with selfishness. This sentence was removed in the 1913 version.