William James on Justice and the Sacredness of Individuality

James's celebration of individuality is well known. That such an individualist perspective should have anything to contribute to our philosophical thinking about justice, however, is more contentious. Individuality is often thought to belong to the private, snobby, idiosyncratic part of our nature, not the democratic, egalitarian, or participatory part. To the extent that individuality flourishes, the common thought goes, justice wanes. Unlike John Rawls, and liberals more generally, who tend to construe justice in broadly institutional terms, as a virtue which applies primarily to what Rawls famously called the "basic structure of society," James focuses decidedly on the level of the discrete individual. This chapter argues that James provides a paradigmatic example of what George Kateb and others have called "democratic individuality" and that this goes hand in hand with a "personal" conception of justice (where "personal" most naturally contrasts with "institutional").

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