Take the example of the capitalist who believes that people...

Take the example of the capitalist who believes that people are equal in their right to enjoy freedom even if their shares of subsistence vary, and the socialist who believes that all people are equal in their right to be sustained, and ask both of them this question: “Is there a thermometer for justice like the one for measuring temperature so that I may be able to know the degree of justice in a society where people’s shares of freedom are equal even when their shares of wages and subsistence vary?

Are the ‘rights’ enjoyed by the members of society a natural phenomenon which can be felt as we can feel their own colors, heights, intelligence, voice, etc., in order to study such rights through the use of scientific methods based on the senses or the experiment?” The answer, of course, to these questions is a plain “No.” Equity has no thermometer because it is not a phenomenon that can be realized through the senses or through observation; nor is the right of people to achieve it one of their own characteristics such as height or intelligence so that we may apply science to determine such right.

The conclusion we draw from this is that as long as it studies the issues from the angle of equity and truth, the doctrine can derive the method it prefers to use in regulating the economic life from its own concepts of equity, from the principles and ideals in which it believes, or from its general attitude towards life. Previous…