The Difference Between the Concepts of Justice, Righteousness, Fairness, and Equality

In Chinese context, the concepts of justice (“gongzheng”) and righteousness (“zhengyi”) differ in several ways. Righteousness, as a value of the highest level, is a purely deontic matter, while justice is the “is - ought problem”. The contents of righteousness are transhistorical and relatively constant, while the contents of justice will change as the times change. Righteousness is something that few people can do, while justice is something that most people can follow. The distinctions between justice and fairness are as follows: justice is a significant “value orientation,” focusing on the “basic value orientation” of society and emphasizing the legitimacy of this value. Fairness, however, is more “instrumental,” stressing the “same scale” of measurement standards to prevent the problem of double (or multiple) standards in social treatment. Regarding justice and equality, equality may become “excessive,” but justice will never be. The scope of justice is much broader than that of equality. The idea of justice tends to identify with the actual society, while equality tends to contradict society.