Divided SoulsJustice Is Conflict, Stuart Hampshire

In his short, lucid book Justice Is Conflict (1999), philosopher Stuart Hampshire argued that strife among alternative visions of the good is not only the natural state of society but also the precondition for rationality itself. Hampshire urges us to see the potential of the clash among rival visions of the good as an opportunity to hone judgment, test arguments, perhaps even change minds and stoke imaginations. What ails a rancorous society are not its divisions per se but the breakdown of the shared procedures to debate and adjudicate them and the erosion of shared intuitions of fairness that legitimate such procedures.