On the Distinction Between Justice and Fear of the Law
I have written on the contrast between fortitude and prudence. It remains to consider the contrast between fear of the law and justice.
It would be wrong to seek the difference between our two virtues in “law” and “exceptions from law.” For fear of the law covers all rules, whether more particular or more general and determines when exceptions to a lower law should be made in order to obey a higher law. Thus, common law may be overridden by a statute which itself must be constitutional, while even the Constitution is not “a suicide pact,” to use that much abused phrase, and can be overridden in some cases. So, fear of the law is sensitive to numerous interactions between various laws and to how to adjudicate conflicts between them.
Now in ST, II-II, 57-120 Aquinas deals with justice in society instead of justice within an individual, a grievous error. Justice is first and foremost truth to oneself, authenticity, integrity, never betraying who one is, self-hood, identity. If science is abstraction from experience, and science is the domain of NTs, then NFs deal with whatever cannot be abstracted, the unique aspects of human experiencing. Clearly then, you cannot enmesh your life entirely into laws. There are things which no law tells you to do or not to do. You must look into yourself and see if you want to do it. Now this process may be governed by the law “do whatever makes you happy,” but this law does not specify what makes you happy. It’s your own unique character and unique self which determine your desires, identity, and destiny. Just as fear of the law presupposes authority, justice often inveighs against authority, if it is perceived as suffocating to one’s individual personality.
Just as Artisans and Rationals should normally stay away from each other (while Guardians do naturally stay away Rationals; and Artisans, from Idealists, having little to contribute to each other) and cooperate only with theory meets practice, so Guardians’ traits should not contaminate Idealists, and vice versa. Fear of the law insists on obedience or on being true to the external law; justice insists on obedience or on being true to one’s own unique qualities.