Foundations of a Just Society Essay

This essay explores the foundations of a just society, outlining key elements such as equality, basic needs, personal dignity, and solidarity. It contrasts these with the elements of an unjust society, including violations of justice, dishonesty, and inequalities. The essay further examines how art, architecture, music, drama, and literature reveal a civilization's values, moral truths, and concepts of social justice, emphasizing the role of culture in shaping human behavior and fostering empathy. The essay also references works by Thompson and Rapport.

humanities

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Table of Contents
Foundations of a just society.......................................................................................................................2
Elements of unjust society...........................................................................................................................2
The ways in which a civilization’s art, architecture, music, drama, and literature reveal its values,
redemptive rituals, moral truths, and concepts of social justice...................................................................3
References...................................................................................................................................................4

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Foundations of a just society
There are various elements which form the basis of a just society. These are given as follows:
 Equality
 Providing for basic needs- that is covering the needs for food, clothing, and shelter
 Providing for personal dignity (self-respect)
 Providing for solidarity
 Establishment of social structures- in such a way that everyone gets an opportunity to
achieve success.
 Living wage- this means that one should be given enough wages to provide for the basic
needs of self and family and where some part can be saved for emergencies.
 Intellect and free will (freedom) - this means that nobody shall exercise power to possess
the human soul (Thompson, 2016).
Elements of unjust society
There are certain elements which constitute an unjust economy, these are;
 Violation of principles of justice and fairness
 Faithless and dishonest practices
 No standards of fairness and justice
 Inequalities and discrimination in society
 Poor quality of life

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The ways in which a civilization’s art, architecture, music, drama, and
literature reveal its values, redemptive rituals, moral truths, and concepts
of social justice.
Our customs, values, and behaviors are nothing but the byproducts of our culture. It is a
universal fact that no one is born with bad values like hatred, prejudice, greed, and bigotry. All
these behaviors are learned over time. The practices of Art and culture plays the most important
role in dynamically and socially reforming the human behavior. Through Arts and culture, one
can generate empathy, foster new ideas, create dialogue and build healthy relationships where
one can express, share and shape their values. This concept is called as anthropology (Rapport,
2014).
The work of arts, drama, music and literature helps in influencing the beliefs of people by
making them understand each other and imagine things from a different perspective and giving
them the idea of what is wrong and what is right. Thereby, it creates such values which help in
understanding the concepts of social justice and also helps in representing our guiding principles
by influencing the attitudes and acts of people.

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References
Thompson, N. (2016). Anti-discriminatory practice: Equality, diversity and social justice.
Palgrave Macmillan
Rapport, N. (2014). Social and cultural anthropology: The key concepts. Routledge