A Solution to the Semantic Challenge of Justice

The intellectuals on justice research have proposed various definitions of justice though irreconcilable. How may one get the true meaning of justice from among those many definitions? Some of them are formal merely developing a framework for different fields without any criterion for its application on realities. On the contrary, content-based definitions highlight determined criterion or criteria for the realization of justice.  The author is first of the view that formal definitions take precedence over those of content in term of the explanation of conceptual principles of justice. Content-based definitions concern issues of justice, rather than the boundaries of its "conceptual principles". Secondly, from among those conceptual definitions, "giving the right to the rightful" is the most complete one. We can get closer to the true meaning of justice if we make use of Allamah Tabatabaii's theory of mental considerations adding two terms of "wisely and mental construct" to it. According to this definition, a justice researcher seeks for the rights and advantages that the system of creation has not given to the people, nonetheless, it is necessary to construct them -they are rooted in concrete realities outside- in the mind in order to create a desired social life. As to those rights, we cannot say that they are true or false. If their consideration is rooted in concrete realities, then it is wise to act upon, or else they are null and void. This definition proves the significance of philosophical discussions for gaining the wisely constructed rights, and also shows the secret of discrepancies of the researchers in their explanation of the criteria of justice.