INTRODUCTION

In any ordered society, two contrasting attitudes may describe the positions that persons take, one toward another, in evaluating and organizing their relationships, whether these be personal, social, or political. A person may consider and treat others as “natural equals,” as potential players in the cooperative-competitive game who are capable of reciprocating behavior and hence deserving of respect. Or, by contrast, a person may consider and treat others as determined by classification of their positions in a “natural hierarchy,” as superiors or inferiors and hence deserving of either deference or domination—a stance that may or may not be informed by ethical standards. The attitude toward others taken by any individual will embody some mix of these two contrasting positions, and, by extension, so will the social interaction structure for any particular society.

My thesis is that differences along this attitudional dimension may make it difficult to extend precepts of justice across political boundaries because the basic meaning of justice becomes different in the two positions. A society that is primarily described by institutional structures derived from precepts for “justice among natural equals” may seem to fail when measured against criteria that apply to treatment among classified unequals. My subordinate thesis is that the societies of the United States, on the one hand, and Western European welfare states, on the other, are sufficiently distinct along the dimension emphasized to offer at least a partial explanation for differing public support for particular institutional practices, for example, the practice of capital punishment.