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Because Taparelli did not systematically anchor his new phrase within the strict Thomistic categories of justice (which are strictly limited to commutative, distributive, and legal/general justice), he left the term dangerously ambiguous. Fortin famously complained, "We should all have been spared a good deal of muddleheadedness if Taparelli... had bothered to tell us what he meant by it". Because it lacked a rigorous Thomistic definition, the term was easily co-opted and distorted by later secular and economic ideologies.

taparelli social justice mention not thomist according to fortin According to the prominent theologian and political philosopher Ernest Fortin , Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio’s coining of "social justice" in the 1840s is not strictly Thomist , but rather a problematic 19th-century hybrid. While Taparelli aimed to spark a Thomistic revival, Fortin argues that his introduction of "social justice" and modern "natural rights" represents a significant, unacknowledged departure from the authentic political philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas . [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] Fortin's critique of Taparelli's "social justice" centers on three main structural arguments: 1. It is an Ideological Hybrid, Not a Classic Virtue Fortin famously designated "social justice" as a "typical nineteenth-century hybrid out of which nobody has yet been able to make much sense" . [ 1 ] The Classical View : For Thomas Aquinas, justice is always an individual vir...
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Taparelli has a good claim to being the father of Catholic social teaching. One of his students was the Jesuit Matteo Liberatore, who wrote the first draft of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of the Working Classes), the first papal statement on “the social question.” Leo himself, as we have noted, had been a student of Taparelli’s, his collaborator at the Civiltà Cattolica, and seems to have been influenced by him. [First pope to use term SJ was PXI] Pius XI used to recommend the study of Taparelli’s works in conversations with his friends and colleagues.

https://isi.org/the-origins-of-social-justice/
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Is “Social Justice” Justice? A Thomistic Argument for “Social Persons” as the Proper Subjects of the Virtue of Social Justice Not surprisingly, this problem, residing at the core of the definition of social justice, has led to considerable confusion in its application. As Ernest Fortin put it: As nearly as I can make out, social justice, in contradistinction to either legal or distributive justice, does not refer to any special disposition of the soul and hence cannot properly be regarded as a virtue. Its subject is not the individual human being but a mysterious society named “X,” which is said to be unintentionally responsible for the condition of its members and in particular for the lot of the poor among them.3 Given that the popes seemed to envisage an important role for social justice in modern society, it would be beneficial if this definitional problem (and thus the subsequently “mysterious” applications) could be resolved.

https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/a427133f-ffaa-4111-b2c1-7b708236134e/content
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Behr, who exhibits libertarian sympathies (he is associated with the libertarian Acton Institute), expresses some agreement with the criticisms of “social justice” voiced by Michael Novak and Friedrich Hayek, who hold that a virtue can only be possessed by someone or something that has The Journal of Social Encounters 172 a conscience, which societies lack, and thus that social justice is a “mirage” (Hayek) or “not what you think it is” (Novak).

https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1155&context=social_encounters   The Journal of Social Encounters Volume 6 Issue 2 Peace Bishops: Case Studies of Christian Bishops as Peacebuilders Article 24 2022 Review of Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought William J. Collinge Mount St. Mary’s University, MD, collinge@msmary.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/social_encounters Part of the Catholic Studies Commons, Christianity Commons, Ethics in Religion Commons, History Commons, History of Christianity Commons, International and Area Studies Commons, International Relations Commons, Peace and Conflict Studies Commons, Political Theory Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons, Social Justice Commons, and the Sociology of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Collinge, William J. (2022) "Review of Social Justice and Subsidiarity: L...
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Leo13's Taparellian Slip: By framing justice as "social," Taparelli shifted the subject of the virtue away from the individual soul to an abstract, systemic collective. Fortin dryly observed that its subject is not a human being but a "mysterious society named 'X,'" which effectively removed the personal moral agency foundational to Thomism.

  taparelli social justice mention not thomist according to fortin According to the prominent theologian and political philosopher Ernest Fortin , Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio’s coining of "social justice" in the 1840s is not strictly Thomist , but rather a problematic 19th-century hybrid. While Taparelli aimed to spark a Thomistic revival, Fortin argues that his introduction of "social justice" and modern "natural rights" represents a significant, unacknowledged departure from the authentic political philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas . [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] Fortin's critique of Taparelli's "social justice" centers on three main structural arguments: 1. It is an Ideological Hybrid, Not a Classic Virtue Fortin famously designated "social justice" as a "typical nineteenth-century hybrid out of which nobody has yet been able to make much sense" . [ 1 ] The Classical View : For Thomas Aquinas, justice is always an individual v...
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