The wisdom to know the difference
Adam Smith's Three Justices, Part 3, Estimative Justice
This week I am wrapping up my three-part series on Adam Smith’s Three Justices. In today’s essay, I will address the more subtle, but essential estimative justice (EJ).
Adam Smith’s Three Justices:
Commutative Justice: Not messing with other people or their stuff, and not breaching contracts.
Distributive Justice: A becoming use of one’s own.
Estimative Justice: Accurately evaluating relative importance and worth.
Links to the prior two essays are above. To briefly refresh:
Commutative justice (CJ) addresses the basic right to be left alone. Commutative justice prohibits us from mess with other people’s stuff, including their person and their property. It also requires us to follow through with our contractual obligations. The laws of CJ are like grammar - they are general rules with limited exceptions (e.g., thou shalt not kill - except in self-defense). Violating CJ makes us the proper subject of punishment. Following CJ does not make us praiseworthy, it simply makes us adequate for being allowed to remain in society (as opposed to exile, prison, or death). Following CJ is necessary for living a worthy life, but compliance with CJ is not sufficient to say one’s life is worthy. For that, we must follow the rules of distributive justice (DJ).
Distributive justice (DJ) builds on CJ. Something cannot comply with the rules of DJ while violating CJ. Distributive justice encompasses all of the social virtues, such as self-control, temperance, courage, patience, generosity, kindness, etc. One can be brave, patient, and exercise self-control while committing a bank robbery - this is not complying with DJ because it is a blatant violation of CJ - it is the taking of someone else’s property. The tenets of distributive justice build on the becoming use of one’s own - one’s own property, time, talents, and so forth. So first one has to fulfill CJ, then one can start to work on DJ. Following the rules of DJ are tricky - whereas CJ is grammar-like, DJ is all about relationships, timing, and circumstances. Smith calls these rules, “loose, vague, and indeterminate” because what is good and admirable in one circumstance can be just the opposite in another. But our virtue and worthiness arises from doing the right thing. Discerning the right thing is the challenge, and is the realm of today’s topic - estimative justice (EJ).
So what is estimative justice? I think of it as the last line in the serenity prayer -
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Estimative justice is properly evaluating the value of things - objects, ideas, actions, etc.
There is yet another sense in which the word justice is sometimes taken, still more extensive than either of the former… It is in this last sense that we are said to be unjust, when we do not seem to value any particular object with that degree of esteem, or to pursue it with that degree of ardor which to the impartial spectator it may appear to deserve or to be naturally fitted for exciting. Thus we are said to do injustice to a poem or a picture, when we do not admire them enough, and we are said to do them more than justice when we admire them too much. (TMS, p. 270; emphasis mine)
If you’ve gotten to this point in the essay and you are losing focus and kind of mumbling to yourself, “This week’s newsletter is a waste of time”, you have made a value judgment - you have evaluated the essay and found it wanting. Probably if that is true, you haven’t even made it this far, so you are missing this clever, reflexive example. But let’s say you have. Now you are evaluating the object - the letter - but also my effort. If you find this newsletter not worth your time to read, it was certainly not worth my time to write. I have not made a becoming use of my own - my time and effort. Thus you have effectively judged two things: the final product, and my choice to make this product. If you are right, and this newsletter is a time-waster, and you would have been better served watching a rerun of Keeping up with the Kardashians, then you have done justice to the product, and my efforts. You have done it justice, in the sense of EJ. But if you are wrong, and this is in fact a deeply insightful essay, then you have failed to give it its due, and you have treated both the essay and, by extension, my efforts unjustly.
Estimative justice is about properly esteeming things - “a poem or a picture” aggregate up to the products of an artist, and thus the artist’s work. They can aggregate farther to a collection of artists making up a movement - Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism (blech), etc. And as we evaluate each element as worthy or unworthy, we can aggregate up and make larger judgments. This person is a good artist, and therefore worthy of praise. This person is a bad artist and should really do something else to make a becoming use of her/his time and resources. Those are DJ judgments based on an accumulation of EJ judgments.
I think EJ is really about good and accurate judgment. At a basic level, EJ helps us sort between CJ and DJ. Does this action violate CJ? And then it operates within DJ to construct DJ judgments. Is this a becoming use of my own? Is an EJ evaluation that helps us resolve if we are living a worthy life. Dan Klein talks about Smith’s three justices as “tri-layered”, with EJ laying over DJ, and DJ laying over CJ (Klein, 2023, p. 26). I see that, but I see it more as an operator, rather than like a blanket. It is “more extensive” in Smith’s words because it is the application of proper judgment, interwoven throughout the decisions that lead up to CJ and DJ, and the decisions that lead us toward a worthy life. But, I think Klein would say, EJ applies to things that we are not necessarily incorporating into our CJ and DJ judgments. There are pure aesthetic judgments that do not reflect on our own virtue that are far enough from CJ and even DJ, that they are only in the realm of EJ.
If I say, This song is good, that is an EJ judgment. We could imagine such a statement being made in such a way that it is not possible to roll it up into your judgment of me. Then I would be in the realm of pure aesthetics, and only subject to EJ and the appropriateness of my judgment. I might be wrong, I might be right, but only an omniscient being able to see all the interweavings of all human action and value would be able to say with finality one way or the other. Regardless, we can’t have CJ or DJ without the accurate judgment of EJ.
I do agree with Klein’s sentiment that as we move out from CJ that the judgments become more loose and vague. EJ applied to CJ is relatively straight forward; EJ applied to DJ is much harder to trace through and be certain about our right judgment. And yet, developing good judgment is fundamental to being a good person, and ultimately living a worthy life. Wisdom could be described as a well-developed sense of EJ. It is not only knowing the difference between what I can change and what I cannot, but what I should do with the things I can change.
OK - so that’s it - that’s my interpretation of Adam Smith’s three justices. I plan to refer to them going forward, and I’ll just link back to these essays in the future when I reference them. I hope you find them useful tools for your own moral analysis.
Klein, D. (2023). Smithian Morals. CL Press.
Smith, A. (1976). The theory of moral sentiments. Liberty Fund.