However, we can go beyond merely asserting (or assenting to) "X is a just peace" and present fundamental philosophical reasons for this answer. That is, we could say, as I later do, that freedom promotes a just peace because it best enables each individual and group to assert, test, and satisfy its own sense of justice, while minimizing collective violence. And these reasons can be further elaborated until a full theory of justice based on freedom is detailed.

I could give such a theory of a just peace here in a workmanlike manner in only a chapter or two. Since previous volumes contain all the elaboration necessary, my job would be to focus their contents on freedom and add practical details. However, my answer as to what is a just peace would then have only a first-order respectability. For a complete response must also justify both my prescriptive meanings and supporting reasons. In short, I must answer these questions: What is justice? Why? And how do I know?

To further clarify what is involved here, observe that for empirical truth we fundamentally distinguish ontology (what is) and epistemology (how one knows this and can justify this way of knowing). In ethics, of which questions about justice are a part,¹ we similarly divide ethics from metaethics.² Ethics is the assertion³ and justification of what is good, right, proper, or just. Metaethics concerns the nature of ethics, how ethical terms can be defined, what methods of justification are appropriate to ethics, and how we can know any of this. If our ethics insist that human rights are good, metaethics would question what we mean by a "human right" and "good" and how we know or justify this "goodness." If "natural law" is the answer, then metaethics would ask why.

Therefore, a complete answer to what is a just peace must provide an assertion, its explanation (theory), and the associated metaethics.⁴ This I will attempt here.⁵ It is a complex task, especially if it is to be accomplished within these several chapters with clarity and persuasiveness.⁶ Many questions need be answered. What, more precisely, are ethics and justice? How do metaethical theories differ about this? Is ethics basically different from irenology or any other empirical discipline? Why? What is my metaethic? How do I view justice? What methods will I use for determining justice? My responses will proceed in this order.

First, I hope to clarify in the next section the meaning of ethics and describe several important metaethical schools whose arguments usually concern the nature and status of morality, ethics, and sometimes values. Seldom is justice mentioned per se. However, as will be discussed subsequently (Section 4.4), statements about what is just or unjust are ethical statements, and thus a particular metaethical view is also a metajustice one. For this reason I begin with metaethics and then narrow my focus to justice. With the description of metaethical schools as background, this metaethics will also require a detailed analysis, in the same section, of analytic, synthetic, empirical, and ethical statements, among others. This will help pinpoint similarities and differences between empirical and ethical assertions. Of special importance here is the prescriptiveness and universality of ethics and its logical independence from facts. Of course, this analysis presupposes my own metaethics, which I then present.

Second, in Section 4.3 I want to show that, regardless of whatever logical independence exists between reality and ethics (morality), there is an overlap giving us freedom to choose our empirical and ethical perspectives. Establishing and understanding this overlap is essential to my later methodology.

Third, with the above metaethics in hand, I then will outline my metajustice in Section 4.4. What is a statement about justice like? What are its formal and empirical properties? Here I will point out that justice is descriptive, prescriptive, universalizable, moral, and (like ethics) logically independent of facts.

Finally, all this is prologue to the method for determining a just peace, which I will describe in the last section (4.5). This method hypothesizes a convention of all adults meeting to answer, under certain conditions and restrictions, the question of what just peace they want for themselves and their children. This is a social contract approach, much used in political theory (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) and currently also applied to justice by John Rawls.⁷ However, although similar in approach, the content of my theory will differ significantly from classical and contemporary contract theorists.

The next (Chapter 5) and subsequent chapters will unfold various aspects of this theory of a just peace, beginning with the universal convention, its attributes and the attributes of all those involved. Then, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8 will consider the convention's decisions about the nature of a just peace in terms of society, the political system, and public policies.

I have much more to say about ethics,⁸ but to provide a foundation I first must sketch various theories about ethics.

A. Ethical Objectivism. Objectivists, believe ethics exists outside of us--there is something in reality called good, right, justice. They agree that ethical statements are true or false statements. But they disagree among themselves in explaining how we know or determine an ethic. Objective intuitionists argue that we apprehend ethics through some kind of insight or perception, a special intuition about what is right and wrong. Some believe that what is good or just is seen by a sixth sense through which we perceive differences between right and wrong, as we perceive differences between hot and cold, hard and soft, red and blue.⁹ Others believe that while ethical good or bad, right or wrong, involve no special sense, the qualities of what is perceived are undefinable, as the color green cannot be defined or described to one who is color-blind. Yet other intuitionists argue that we know ethics as we know the axioms of mathematics--they are self-evident, perhaps a priori.¹⁰ Objective naturalists, however, agreeing with intuitionists that there is an objective ethic, argue that we come to know it as we do any empirical phenomena, which is through observation and scientific research.¹¹

Objectivists of either kind agree that ethical statements are empirically true or false.¹² Therefore, while perhaps conceding a conceptual or logical separation between descriptive and ethical statements, they emphatically deny that facts and values are distinct empirically.

There appears much to be said for the objective naturalist view. Often we justify ethical statements by empirical reasons. For example, the statement, "The minimum wage is unjust," could be supported by saying that the minimum wage creates unemployment among the least skilled, hampers on-the-job training, and raises the cost of goods to the consumer, all empirically true or false reasons. Even at higher levels of abstraction empirical reasons can be given for ethical assertions, as for the justice of redistributing wealth, which may be argued to increase the sum total of pleasure and stabilize democratic institutions. However, by looking closer at such empirical reasons we find that they assume other ethics. Why should pleasure, overall, be increased or institutions stabilized? Of course, additional empirical reasons can be given, but ultimately the chain of reasons, if not circular, will lead to some fundamental, axiomatic ethics, such as that we should be treated equally, have equal opportunity, be free, or have our needs satisfied. These become ultimates for which there are no empirical justifications.

The objective intuitionists would respond to this: the axiomatic just statements are known through our ethical intuition to be true.¹³ Consider, he might argue, that all would agree with the patent immorality of a farmer promising to pay a hungry family for a week's labor in the field and then, after they finish, kicking them off the farm without compensation. All cultures would agree on this being morally wrong, the intuitionists would argue, without further reasons being given. However, this claim is itself an empirical statement whose truth is unclear. If the family were Jews in Germany under Hitler, or a formerly rich family who had cruelly exploited the farmer, some might not see the farmer's behavior as bad. Moreover, given the great diversity among cultures and subcultures, where within some criminal subcultures the most beastial murder and tortures are accepted (where, for example, an old person can be painfully and slowly killed for the torturer's amusement), such examples are not patent.¹⁴ And were justice directly perceived, as one would perceive a color or hardness (which are impossible to define), then again the fact of large-scale disagreement over justice would be telling. For no such disagreement exists over, for example, the color green. Finally--and this is similar to Kant's argument for the autonomy of morality from phenomena--we cannot establish ethics that is universal¹⁵ from contingent, particular, empirical observations. Universals cannot be proven by statements limited to particular times, places, and people.¹⁶

B. Ethical Subjectivism. Subjectivists believe ethics to be an expression of or reference to people's feelings or beliefs. Ethics is in our hearts or minds, not in outer reality. What else is involved, however, is disputed. One school, composed of autobiographical subjectivists,¹⁷ claims that ethical statements merely describe the speaker's feelings or emotions. Thus, to say "Inequality is unjust" is to say, elliptically, "I believe that inequality is unjust." In this sense, an ethical statement is an empirically true or false psychological statement--true if it is in fact what I believe..

However, to say "X is good" is different from saying "It is my belief that X is good." While the latter is undoubtedly an empirical statement, this simply finesses the question about the nature of ethics by transforming ethical judgments into descriptive empirical statements. To see this, consider that people's feelings and beliefs change and cease empirical existence when they die. Is one willing to argue that ethics correlatively changes or ceases to exist? Moreover, contradictory ethics would still be true. For example, Mary's statement that "Abortion is moral," and John's that "Abortion is immoral" can both be true, since they are--according to the autobiographical school--expressing the beliefs of Mary and John. All this hardly makes one comfortable with this view of ethics.

Another school of subjectivists, composed of emotivists, believes that ethics express the speaker's feelings, beliefs, or attitudes, and, some emotivists also argue, are meant to invoke similar feelings or beliefs from others.¹⁸ Ethical statements are therefore interjections like "Wonderful!" or "Ugh!" Were I therefore to say, "Liberty is a first principle of justice," I would be saying implicitly, "I believe liberty a great good, and so should you." Ethics to the emotivist are neither true or false, but simply emotional or rational ejaculations.¹⁹

Emotivism often ignores or defines away the fact that people generally support their ethical judgments by reference to external facts and not their emotions and beliefs.²⁰ Is this to mean, then, that the ethics in practice is quite divorced from the actual meaning of ethics? Moreover, most people, I believe, would argue that there is a meaningful difference between the statement, "I feel equality is good," and its supposed surrogate, "Equality is good." Surely, many might not call the former an ethical statement at all. Finally, emotivists generally appear to ignore the possibility of analytic ethical statements, logically necessitated by the nature of reason and morality. All this is not to deny emotivism entirely, but to strongly question whether it captures most ethics in its net.

C. Relativism and Other Theories. Perhaps the most popular metaethics among modern social scientists and irenologists is relativism. This denies that there is always one true or correct ethical statement or any method by which one can be proven.²¹ Some will go further and assert that whatever, a person thinks is ethical for him; or, in another version, if a society, culture, or class thinks something ethical, then it is ethical for its members. Ethics is thus made relative to the context, person, class, society, or culture.²²

The argument for relativism is usually based on the great divergence and diversity of ethics across cultures and ethical disagreement within cultures. There are two problems here. One is that these differences may really be over different facts and explanatory theories, not over fundamental ethics.²³ For example, two cultures may believe that the welfare of the aged is a moral duty. Yet, by virtue of different religious beliefs about the nature of life and death, one culture may discharge its moral duty by leaving the aged on a mountain top to die; while the, other culture may satisfy its morality through absorbing the aged into an extended family. Or, at an individual level, two people may feel morally obliged to help the poor, but one sees welfare and government programs as the best route, while the other may see economic growth resulting from the free market as the solution. It is by no means empirically established that great differences in fundamental ethics (or values) exist.

The second problem is an implicit non sequitur. By virtue of assumed ethical diversity, many relativists believe different ethics ought to be treated equally (or at least given "a place in the sun"), that no standard should be imposed on the other standards. However, this argument, however phrased, is deducing an ought (how different ethics should be treated) from an is (ethical diversity). But an "ought" cannot be logically derived from an "is," as will be discussed below.²⁴ Besides, is this not making one ethic ("no standard should be imposed...") dominant over all others? Is this not a violation of the rule that all ethics are equal. Anyway, I don't believe for a moment that these relativists accept that the ethics of a culture justifying slavery and the cold blooded sacrifice of thousands of prisoners of war are equal to those of a culture that values peace, tolerance, and cooperation.

The above and previous subsections provide a broad view of major secular, metaethical theories.²⁵ Theological theories have been omitted (ethics is objectively based on divine authority),²⁶ and a more refined discussion of secular theories would include ideal observer theories (ethics define what some "ideal" observer would assert were he to exist),²⁷ ethical nihilism (nothing is really good or bad, moral or immoral), ethical skepticism (no criteria of ethics will ever be justified), ethical egoism (ethics is simply that which maximizes one's own interest), ethical hedonism (ethics is what maximizes one's own pleasure), deontological intuitionism (some behavior is morally and intrinsically our duty, regardless of the consequences), and natural law ethics (there are a few basic, objective principles of ethics, self-evident to reason). It is not necessary for my purposes to further distinguish these schools. It suffices to establish the major divisions and the great diversity of metaethics. This will be a useful fact later.²⁸

B. Analytic Statements. Line 3 defines the traditional way those writing about peace classify statements: as true or false and sometimes conditional. This seems straightforward enough, but philosophically and semantically the world is actually more complex than this tripartite division, which is usually thought of empirically. It makes no provision for logical truth, an essential aspect of any reasoned argument; or mathematical truth, which structures much modern work in irenology (as in Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace). Therefore, let us move to line 4 and three different types of statements.

First, there are analytic statements, which are necessarily true: they must always be true, never false, by virtue of the meaning of their terms or their derivation according to certain rules from other statements (that is, they are true as theorems within a deductive-analytic-system).³⁰ For example, "All bachelors are unmarried," is necessarily true by the definition of "bachelor" and is therefore an analytic statement. Also, the statement "A * C" (read as "A implies C") is necessarily true given the premises "A * B" and "B * C." As shown on line 2, a particular word is used for the truth of analytic statements, which is "valid." A statement is valid if logically or mathematically true.

Analytic (i.e., valid) statements divide into two subtypes (line 5). One is the purely logical statement, which contains only pure symbols such as x, y, A, *, #. These symbols have no descriptive content, as do terms such as house, dog, peace, nation, person. Purely logical statements can be of formal logic (line 6), containing symbols that stand for nonnumerical qualities and qualitative relationships; or of pure mathematics, where the symbols are numerical. Line 7 gives an example of each.³¹ Purely logical statements are systems of thought completely and formally independent of reality.³²

However, purely logical statements do not exhaust the analytic possibilities. For there are descriptive analytic statements as well (line 5), such as "All bachelors are unmarried." Another example, shown in Figure 4.1, line 7, is "Freedom reduces violence or it does not." This statement is analytic because it cannot be false: freedom must logically do one or the other. It is descriptive because its terms refer to something in reality.

C. Contradictory Statements. Referring now to those statements just to the left of the double vertical lines in Figure 4.1, I need only note that they negate the analytic ones on the left: they are necessarily false (line 3), invalid (line 2), contradictory (line 4). "All bachelors are not unmarried" is an example of such an absolutely false statement. As with analytic statements, contradictory ones can be pure or descriptive, depending on whether pure symbols or descriptive terms are involved. A purely illogical statement (line 7) is "A · (-A)" (read "A and not A"). A descriptive contradictory one is "Freedom reduces violence and it does not." I trust these volumes contain no such invalid statements.

D. Synthetic Statements. Analytic and descriptive analytic statements compose much of these volumes. Underlying this effort is an interpreted--thus descriptive--analytic system I call social field theory, and mathematical and logical deductions of various sorts.³³ However, were this effort entirely analytic, as in "model building," it might be interesting, but hardly important unless we could also warrant the analytic system's empirical truth. More generally, we are also concerned with synthetic statements, as defined by reference to the middle section of Figure 4.1, line 4. Synthetic statements are neither analytic nor contradictory,³⁴ but can be empirically false. All synthetic statements are descriptive (note carefully that all descriptive statements are not synthetic--see Figure 4.1), meaning they contain reality-referencing (substantive) terms.

Synthetic statements are of three kinds, as shown on line 3. One is empirically true statements, such as "Freedom reduces violence"³⁵ (line 7), or "National power is highly correlated with foreign conflict."³⁶ The truth of an empirically true statement is not necessitated, as for an analytic statement, but established through observation or intuition; in principle it is potentially, empirically false (that is, there is no logical reason for it to not be false, no matter how apparently true).

Opposite to the empirically true synthetic statement is the empirically false statement, such as "Freedom does not reduce violence" or "Cats bark."

Finally, between empirically true and false statements are those that are empirically conditional. These are statements whose truth or falsity are yet unknown, which are those making empirical predictions or forecasts about the future. For example, the forecast, "Political freedom will increase by the year 2000," cannot yet be true or false (without necessitating that the future be fated to so happen),³⁷ and is thus conditional.

E. Empirical Statements. Now consider level 1, that of empirical statements. An empirical statement is correlative to descriptive (on the left of the vertical line) but not synthetic. Not all empirical statements are synthetic. They may be empirically true or false (or conditional), but they can also be valid or invalid. In any case, they always contain substantive terms of some kind and are in the indicative mood (something is asserted about reality).³⁸ Note also that empirical does not mean here necessarily quantitative or scientific, but refers to any existential, observational, or experiential statements, intuitive or otherwise. "God exists" is empirical in this sense.

F Exclamations and Commands. So much for the region to the left of the double vertical line. What is on the right? Not all statements we make are analytic, synthetic, or contradictory, however. There are outcries, complaints, proclamations, such as "Good." "Great!" "Ugh!" "Ouch." "Wonderful." These are all exclamatory statements. Finally, there are commands (imperative statements). This is the second kind of statement to the right of the double line in Figure 4.1.

Note that exclamations and commands contain descriptive terms. For example, even "Ugh!" describes the speaker's emotion. However, these descriptive statements are not indicative--they do not directly assert something about reality--and therefore they are not empirical.

What is my position here? Ethical statements, in my view, have four properties, as shown in Table 4.1. They are descriptive, prescriptive, universalizable, and moral.

A. Descriptiveness. Ethical statements are descriptive as previously defined: they contain terms that refer to reality in some sense. This does not mean that they are therefore empirical, as naturalists and intuitionists sometimes deduce. For as shown in Figure 4.1, exclamations or commands are also descriptive, but not (indicative) empirical statements. Ethical statements may yet be another type of descriptive statement to be included in Figure 4.1 somewhere.

B. Prescriptiveness. Ethical statements are prescriptive descriptive statements.³⁹ This means that without loss of ethical meaning, ethical statements are or can be reworded to be ought statements. Following are four ethical statements, each translated into an ought statement, given in parentheses.

• Keeping promises is good. (Promises ought to be kept.)

• Torture is wrong. (Torture ought not be done.)

• A bad peace is better than a good war. (War ought never be made.)⁴⁰

• Capitalism is evil. (Capitalism ought to be eliminated.)

Of the two types of prescriptive statements shown in Table 4.1, one is fundamental. It is a nonreducible ethic that is accepted without justification or reason. It is intrinsically good, just, right (perhaps self-evidently so). Such might be "We should not lie," "Promises ought to be kept," "We ought to treat others as we would want to be treated," or "Each ought to count as one."

The second prescriptive type of statement is instrumental. Its prescription is really a means to achieving a higher-order ethic. Many of our legal and political prescriptions against certain crimes or for particular rights are meant to achieve greater happiness, reduce the totality of pain, or make behavior conform to higher religious morality.

Fundamental ethics stand to instrumental ethics as axioms to theorems. That is, instrumental ethics are in principle logically deducible from fundamental ones (oughts are deducible from oughts).⁴¹ This is not to imply that all ethics form one deductive system from one set of fundamental prescriptives. For, given the diversity of fundamental and instrumental prescriptions and apparently wide disagreement over what is fundamental, ethics appears more a field--a plane (Section 4.3.2)--of different and overlapping clusters of logically related prescriptive statements.

In any case, a deductive system is an analytic system, and instrumental statements are therefore potentially analytic. This means they may be logically valid--"true" by definition.⁴² For example, consider the deductive argument:

(1)We are all equals.
(2)Equals ought to be treated equally.
(3)We are treated equally by redistributing wealth.
______________________________________________
(4)(Therefore) We ought to have our wealth redistributed.

The prescriptive conclusion (4) follows logically from prescription (2) and empirical statements (1) and (3)⁴³ and is therefore valid (analytic).⁴⁴

C. Universalizable. Descriptivity and prescriptivity are necessary properties of an ethical statement. Also necessary is that it be universalizable: it should be a universal statement covering all people, times, and places; or a particular statement that is logically deducible from a universal (that is, a universal prescription is entailed).⁴⁵ The statement, "Human rights ought to be protected," is universal. So is the statement, "Concentration camps ought to be eliminated." Both refer to all subjects (all human rights; all concentration camps), wherever, whenever. However, the statement, "Mary ought to be able to get an abortion if she wants," is a particular statement. It limits the prescription to Mary. It is universalizable, however, to: "All women should be free to get an abortion if they want."

Certainly, all particular statements are formally universalizable. The rub is whether a person (group, culture) subscribing to a particular prescription is willing to accept the corresponding universal prescription, especially since it would also include him. To be clear, therefore, it is not the formal property of universalizability that is the ethical property of interest here, but the property of being actually or implicitly universal in application. By virtue of what it is to be ethical, universalizability means that ethical statements apply prescriptively to all. For example, to say, "John ought to keep his promises, but not Mary," would be patently unethical (unless there are ethical reasons to the contrary--for example, if Mary were an undercover police agent in a criminal gang). If a person insists that certain ethics apply to others and not himself (for example, if he can lie to others but insists they should not lie to him), he would be widely considered ignorant of ethics (or morality) at best and dangerously unethical at worst.⁴⁶

D. Moral. In common English there are subtle differences in meaning between "morality" and "ethics." The latter seems more refined and intellectual, dealing with higher qualities. We can ignore these connotations here. In general, ethical statements are moral, prescribing what is right, wrong, good, and bad about human character, behavior, and relationships. It is necessary to point out this property of ethical statements in order to separate them from technological, scientific, and functional oughts. "To get elected you should . . . " "States ought to watch over the balance of powers . . . " "You ought to exercise," and so on. All these are instrumental oughts toward some goal. What distinguishes them from ethics is that they lack a moral quality.

This moral quality is that of obligation and duty. One has a moral responsibility to keep promises, for example. One who fails to do so is morally lacking, deficient, or bad. To act contrary to a moral ought is to be morally questionable, subject to guilt; an object of public criticism, scorn, possibly ostracism (as with incest). Moral oughts comprise our moral attitudes, our superego.⁴⁷

Technological, scientific, or practical oughts have no such power. We do not equate a lack of their performance with deficient character. To reiterate this point from Section 4.2.1, people quite incompetent to do complex or difficult tasks still may have esteemed characters. However, let a great scientist, singer, or speaker knowingly break his promises to us and as a moral person he will be significantly diminished in our eyes.

I argue that this moral quality plus descriptiveness, prescriptivity, and universalizability are jointly necessary and sufficient to define an ethical statement. But in order to fit ethical statements among the other types in Figure 4.1, one derivative property of ethical statements must be specified.

E. The Is/Ought Dichotomy. As prescriptive--ought--statements, ethics cannot be logically derived from statements of what is or was--that is, from empirical statements. A logical conclusion containing the copula "ought" (or any of its forms, e.g., "should") cannot be valid unless one of its premises also contains an "ought." No ought statement can be validly derived from "is" premises alone. For example, the prescriptions, "All people should be socioeconomically equal because people are alike," or "Equality is just because it maximizes happiness," are invalid, since their justifications (because ... ) state an "is" to support the previous "ought."

This logical separation is sometimes called the fact/value, or is/ought, dichotomy.⁴⁸ This dichotomy, or what may be termed Hume's guillotine,⁴⁹ not only creates a formal separation between ethical and empirical statements but also helps establish the necessary hypothesis of free will--a required assumption for allegations of immorality and thus injustice.⁵⁰ We can pass over this free will argument (an assumption of this Vol. 5: The Just Peace) since I have given it elsewhere.⁵¹ Here I want to be sure the is/ought dichotomy is clear. To this end, consider the following incorrect syllogism.

(1) War does not occur between libertarian (liberal democratic) states.⁵²
(2) Many states are nonlibertarian.
___________________________________________________________
(3) (Therefore) All states ought to be libertarian.

Statement (1) is empirical, stating what empirically does not occur. Statement (2) is also empirical. However, the concluding statement (3) prescribes what ought to be. Premises with "is" copulas cannot alone imply statements with an "ought" copula. Therefore, the argument is improper. To make the argument valid an ought statement must be among the premises:

(1) War does not occur between libertarian states.
(2) Many states are nonlibertarian.
(3) War ought not occur.
_________________________________________
(4) (Therefore) All states ought to be libertarian.

Statements (1) and (3) provide the necessary logical premises, while statement (2) is logically superfluous to the conclusion.

F. The Nature of Ethical Statements. We can now return to Figure 4.1 and ask where ethical statements fit. I have suggested that ethical statements are descriptive, prescriptive, and can be analytic. They are nonempirical and also nonderivable from empirical statements alone. They are therefore not empirically true, false, or conditional. This does not mean that empirical statements cannot be used as premises to derive ethical statements from other ethical statements, but that, while an ethical statement can be valid or invalid, it cannot be empirically true or false.

All this means that ethical statements cannot be fitted into the two-dimensional classification to the left of the vertical double line in Figure 4.1. There is no way on a two-dimensional surface to overlap ethical statements with analytic and descriptive ones while also including synthetic statements that do not overlap ethical ones. Thus, ethical statements would have to be included on the right of the vertical double line as exclamatory statements or commands, or as a separate type.

Some fundamental ethical statements, principally the categorical imperative of Kant that establishes the universality of ethical statements,⁵³ are descriptive analytic statements, the necessary consequences of our reason and the prescriptiveness of morality. Other ethical statements express the emotions, sentiments, or beliefs of the speaker and are therefore a subtype of exclamatory statements.⁵⁴

To be clear on this, an ethical statement does have empirical features: its descriptiveness. Moreover, an ethical statement can be justified empirically, where scientific or intuitive empirical statements are premises among a deductive set including at least one ethical premise.⁵⁵ Therefore, I must agree with the objectivists that external facts do play a role in ethics, and I can agree with the naturalist or intuitionist interpretation of these facts, depending on their nature. Moreover, some fundamental ethical statements can be justified by reason. On this I agree with the rational intuitionists.⁵⁶ However, other fundamental ethical premises are expressions of ourselves⁵⁷--a projection onto reality of what we believe or feel good and right and just.

The metaethics, and hence metajustice, of this volume is thus a consistent⁵⁸ blend of naturalism, intuitionism, and emotivism.⁵⁹

Reality is therefore a plane of potentialities and dispositions rather than a determinate structure as implied by simply focusing on empirical statements. It can be transformed in different ways through different perspectives or paradigms⁶⁷ but nonetheless imposes a limiting discipline on them. Like a blackboard, it can be written and drawn on in various ways, but all must conform to the board's two-dimensional length and width. Our writing on this board, the determination of our view of reality, is a perspective transformation.⁶⁸ Previous volumes and chapters presented my perspective transformation of conflict, violence, war, and peace. The purpose was to understand their reality within a particular direction (intentional humanism). Intuition, reason, and experience--that is, philosophy, theory, and empirical data--were the routes to this understanding. And this understanding comprises interrelated facts,⁶⁹ theory (social field theory),⁷⁰ methodology,⁷¹ and philosophy.⁷² In sum, this understanding--this perspective--defines what is. We harden and make determinate this understanding through our empirical statements.

The characterization of ethical statements given in previous sections should make clear that the plane of morality is independent of that of reality. The plane of reality is; that of morality ought to be. We harden our view of reality through empirical statements;⁷³ of morality through prescriptive statements.⁷⁴ The latter cannot logically be derived from the former.⁷⁵ The plane of morality is that of our choices--potential, dispositional, manifest--for guiding our behavior.⁷⁶ It is our sphere of practical reason and free will.⁷⁷

Third, the plane of reality for us is a vast ocean of interwoven facts, observations, and sensory impressions on which we are tossed about by waves of empirical methods and techniques while being moved along by underlying theoretical and philosophical currents. Without morality--the kingdom of ends--we are without a rudder, navigational aids, and practical destination. In the words of John Stuart Mill:

That is, without morality we have no practical reason to select one perspective transformation of reality over another. Which empirical perspective we adopt becomes a matter of unconscious sentiment and personal inclination. All perspectives become relative, all are equally right, in so far as they accord with reality's potentials and actuality.⁸¹

Therefore, there is a dynamic overlap between the two planes.⁸² For our ethical "ought" to imply "can," we must relate to reality to know whether our prescriptions are possible and to practice them. And for our empirical perspectives to be practically meaningful to us, we must find guidance in our morality.⁸³ But this overlap does not determine our specific moral principles, nor does it define a specific perspective. Many competing or contradictory moralities are empirically possible.⁸⁴ All Jews should be exterminated" is an empirically possibility, although fanatically inhumane ethic, almost achieved by Hitler. This "ought" can be, but so can this statement: "Public law should not discriminate between Jews and other ethnic-religious groups."

Thus, the overlap between the two planes is a region of transformation in which we, as rational creatures, select that perspective and those moralities that best match in some sense. What this is will ultimately depend on our axiomatic, higher-order morality and associated empirical perspective. That is, we are free to choose that perspective consistent with reality which accords with what we want our selves and humanity to be⁸⁵ and the necessities of reason defining the moral plane.⁸⁶ My higher morality guiding this perspective transformation is part of intentional humanism: that is,

• humanity should be the center of our reality;

• we are creative and free, intentionally and future directed;

• understanding ourselves and creating a better world requires balancing intuition, reason, and scientific knowledge.

The importance of all this for justice I hope to make clear in the next section.

• Equals ought to be treated equally and unequals unequally.

• The working poor should not be taxed to subsidize wealthy farmers.

• Society ought to redistribute wealth to provide for the needs of the poor.

• Politicians should not exempt themselves from the social security taxes they force others to pay.

However, not all statements assert what we believe to be just. Few, if any, would say that the following have anything to do with justice: "People ought to exercise for their health." "Houses should be painted every five years" "People should not litter the highway." A just statement is, then, a particular subclass of ought statements that can be prefixed with (after proper grammatical changes) "It is just that . . ." or "It is unjust that . . ."; and the resulting full statement will accord with the speaker's sense and beliefs about justice. For example, there certainly are people who agree with the following rewording of the above four statements:

• It is just that equals be treated equally and unequals unequally.

• It is unjust that the working poor be taxed to subsidize wealthy farmers.

• It is just that society redistribute wealth to provide for the needs of the poor.

• It is unjust that politicians exempt themselves from the social security taxes others are forced to pay.

A just statement does not require unanimity or consensus about its prescription. It need only be an ought statement that someone feels reflects his sense or belief about justice.

From this another property of just statements follow. A just statement is universalizable. It is either universal itself or a logical particularization of a universal just statement.⁸⁹ For example, the just statement, "People ought to be treated equally before the law," is universal. It covers all people, all times, and all places without exception. "John was unjustly denied the promotion" is a particular statement. But it implies (by virtue of being a moral statement) a syllogism of the following form:

(1)For a person to do x, y, and z on his job and not be promoted is unjust.
(2) John did x, y, and z and was not promoted.
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(3) (Therefore) John was unjustly denied the promotion.

Statement (1) is a universal just statement, (2) is an empirical statement, and (3) is a particular universalizable just statement. Any particular just statement implies that it can be restated in a universal form.

These properties of just statements have an important implication. A just ought, like any moral ought, "implies" can. To assert what is just is to imply that it is empirically possible.⁹⁰ This implication is critical to our subsequent discussion of a just peace. What can be, empirically, is a complex matter depending on the plane of reality and our associated perspective. Contending interpretations of justice are often disagreements over what is and can be, and not what is fundamentally just. For example, the difference between libertarian and socialist is not over the justice of improving the conditions of the poor and disadvantaged, but over whether effects of private or public ownership of large-scale production does this in reality. The difference is over economic facts and theory.

All this is to say what was asserted of morality in Section 4.3.3: there is an overlap between the plane of reality and the space of justice. Our feeling for or belief in justice orients and guides our perspective transformation of reality; our reality disciplines our conception of justice. This relationship is especially obvious in politics, for the joint perspective transformation of reality and justice is what we call an ideology or political "ism": a view of what public institutions and policies are just, with associated facts and explanations (empirical theories). Classical liberalism, Marxism, socialism, fascism, monarchism, welfare-liberalism, constitutionalism, and their variants are all perspective transformations of the overlapping plane of reality and space of justice.

• different qualifications of justice as retributive, remedial, commutative, distributive, proportionate, legal, or social;

• the different definitions of justice as rules of social behavior, giving people what they are due, treating equals equally and unequals unequally, satisfying rightful claims or entitlements, gratifying basic needs, granting liberty and civil rights, loving others, maintaining legal order or having peace;

• the different characterizations of justice as fairness, treating others with impartiality, acting conventionally, making claims, requiring reciprocity, answering conflicts of interest, limited to human actions (thus society or its institutions cannot be just or unjust) or to law.

It is tempting at this point to probe this diversity and seek commonalities and outer substantive limits. For, diversity and contradictory definitions notwithstanding, there is a common meaning implicit in our assertions that x is just or unjust. We do communicate.⁹¹ But as enjoyable as it would be, for my purpose here I need only indicate this diversity and range.⁹²

Given this variety of just statements, then, what in any case is their empirical nature? Is justice a property of the real world? Is justice something to be discovered out there? Or is it an intuition, a sense for justice? Is it natural or subjective? Or is it, perhaps, an emotion? In making just statements, are we merely expressing our sentiments? These metajustice questions are asked of ethics in general, and the various metaethical answers apply to justice.⁹³ Metaethical theories were outlined in Section 4.2.2, and my own metaethics was presented in Section 4.2.4F. I should only point out here that I believe our fundamental conceptions of justice are partly rationally justified; partly an expression of our feelings, sentiments, and beliefs; ⁹⁴ while our derivative instrumental conceptions are logically⁹⁵ and empirically falsifiable.⁹⁶

Social contract theorists usually made rather unrealistic statements about humanity prior to the social contract, especially in reference to the state of nature. The growth of anthropology and modern sociology, and increasing acceptance of an ethical relativism and subjectivism that seriously questioned natural law, brought social contract theory into disrepute. Recently there has been a revival of social contract theory, as can be seen in the divergent work of Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971) and Ardrey's The Social Contract (1970), particularly in the understanding of the theory as an effective conceptual tool for critiquing society and government. It is a mechanism for framing such questions as: "Do individuals have rights above government?" "What would a society without the state be like?" "Are society and government voluntary?" "Can individuals withdraw from society or government?" "Under what conditions?" "When is the social contract broken by society or government?" The answers given need not be individualistic or reformist. They can be authoritarian (Hobbes) or totalitarian (Rousseau).⁹⁸

I will use a social contract theory here for a number of reasons. One, as mentioned above, is its conceptual power to frame pointed questions about society. A second is that it enables me to spotlight critical assumptions underlying, and the principles formulating, a just peace. Third, it follows from my definition of society as an implicit overarching social contract.⁹⁹ Fourth, it is consistent with my view of peace as a social contract¹⁰⁰ and as a method, therefore, most appropriate to my question as to what is a just peace. Finally, it provides a complementary framework within which I can work the ideas of free choice, perspective transformation, and "as-if."¹⁰¹

• I will structure a decision-making situation within which every one is empowered to decide on what just peace they want. This structure, called a Global Convention of Minds, will require a number of premises as to who is involved, their psychological characteristics, what they know, who will live under their just peace, their decision-making latitude, and so on. The establishment of these premises will fundamentally bound their conclusions as to a just peace and thence make explicit my own empirical and ethical assumptions about such a peace.

• I will then reduce the decisions of this Global Convention to as few basic principles as possible. These will be the principles of a just peace. Clearly, the premises of the Convention will be the same for these principles.

• The decision as to the desirable (in some sense) just peace comprises my first order of business. The second concerns its implementation. Given what is desirable and possible, how can this be effectively achieved? Clearly, a number of assumptions (premises) must be specified here as well, especially concerning the nature of the present world and available means.

• The decision about implementation will likewise be translated into principles and joined with those about the just peace. This will end the formal development.

• The volume will then conclude by synthesizing the principles of this and the previous volumes into a Grand Master Principle.

Now for the main course.