Morgan Conner - Setiya Chapter 5: Injustice

Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya

Chapter 5: Injustice

by Morgan Conner 

In the 5th chapter of Kieran Setiya's "Life is Hard", titled "Injustice", there are several points made by the author: 

- Injustice is prevalent in our everyday society.

- We're indirectly responsible for injustices around us. 

- In a world full of worry and chaos, it is important that we always look on the bright side of life. 

Life is never simple, but some periods of history feel particularly heavy. The COVID-19 pandemic was one of those periods. During the long moths on lockdowns, isolation, and uncertainty, Kieran Setiya and many others including myself formed a new and troubling habit: doomscrolling. 

Ah, yes, the compulsive consumption of bad news. The threat of World War III on the horizon, the death toll rising, political dysfunction, apocalyptic speculation, et cetera, et cetera. The more chaotic the world seemed, the more tightly we clung to our screens, seeking information yet finding only more despair. 

Philosophy might seems distant from practical life: abstract, conceptual, preoccupied with theoretical puzzles. But in its best moments, philosophy is a survival tool that provides frameworks for compassion, activism, justice, and personal resilience.

By exploring philosophers like Plato, Simone Weil, and Iris Marion Young, Setiya uses philosophy to offer intellectual insight as well as practical guidance for living through difficult times.

Plato and the Question of Whether We Are Good

It's helpful to begin with a very old and persistent question: Are people naturally good?

In this chapter, we are introduced to Plato's Republic, a work where Socrates engages in a series of debates about justice. One of the most striking contributions comes from Glaucon (who was inspired by Plato's own brother), who challenges Socrates with the story of the Ring of Gyges. 

The story is simple but unsettling. Glaucon states:

"Now, no one, it seems would be so incorruptible that he would stay on the path of justice or stay away from people's property, when he could take whatever he wanted from the marketplace with impunity, go into other people's houses and have sex with anyone he wished, kill or release from prison anyone he wished, and do all the other tings that would make his like a god among humans. Rather his actions would be in no way different from those of an unjust person, and both would follow the same path." 

For Glaucon, the lesson is clear: People behave ethically only because they fear consequences. Remove accountability, and even an ordinary shepherd becomes a tyrant. The Ring Gyges challenges us to reflect honestly on our motives: Are we moral because we want to be, because we want to appear moral? What would we do if our actions were invisible? And how do we maintain integrity in a world that often feels it's slipping towards chaos? Philosophy first lesson, then, is about self-examination: understanding why we act the way we do when the world feels out of control.

Simone Weil and the Dedication to Moral and Ethical Seriousness

If Plato challenges us to be moral despite temptation, Simone Weil challenges us to consider how much we owe to others. Weil, born in 1909, lived a life of radical empathy and moral seriousness almost without equal. Where others contemplated suffering, she tried to inhabit it. 

Weil gave away her teaching salary to those in need. She insisted on taking physically exhausting factory and farm jobs, believing that true understanding required shared experience. She demanded of herself a level of solidarity that, in retrospect, feels both awe-inspiring and terrifying. 

Weil's life ended due to starvation while suffering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium in 1943 because she refused to eat more than her wartime rations, believing she had no right to nourishment no available to others. 

Weil offers a stark contrats to the cynicism Glaucon warns about. If The Ring of Gyges shows how easily we can embrace selfishness, Weil shows how far some will go to reject it. 

Peter Singer and William MacAskill and Effective Altruism

From left to right: William MacAskill & Peter Singer

If Weil represents moral passion, then effective altruism represents moral optimization. 

Philosophers and founders of the effective altruism movement Peter Singer and William MacAskill popularized the idea that altruism should be guided by evidence. According to effective altruism, it's not enough to give generously; we should donate to the most effective charities, and those charities should devote considerable acumen to rating effectiveness by dollars per quality adjusted life years saved. 

However, effective altruism faces significant criticism:

1. It can feel emotionally detached. 

Reducing moral life to calculations risks overlooking care, community, and particular relationships. 

2. It treats charity as a substitute for political action.

Sometimes the most effective intervention is activism, not donation. 

3. It often ignores systemic causes of suffering. 

Poverty is not a lack of resources. It's linked to political structures, historical injustices, and global power imbalances. 

Effective altruism helps us recognize our power to improve lives, but it also forces us to ask: Is doing "the most good" simply a calculation, or does it require changing the systems that cause harm in the first place? 

Iris Marion Young and Structural Injustice

Here we turn to Iris Marion Young, one of the most influential political theorists of the late 20th century. Young argues that much of the injustice we encounter is structural; produced not by individual malice but by social patterns, institutions, and norms. 

Consider the gendered division of labor. Even in households where no one holds sexist views, women often perform most of the unpaid childcare and domestic work. This limits their income, time, and opportunities. The injustice is real, but no one caused it. 

Young's crucial insight is that structural injustice demands a special kind of responsibility. Young does not lay guilt on any one individual or party, but call every person to participate in the change of structural injustice. Young states, "Taking responsibility involves joining with others to organize collective action to reform the structures." 

Her theory reframes the experience of helplessness that many felt during the pandemic or feel now in the face of global inequality. Instead of asking, "How can I fix this?" Young asks us to now consider: How can we work together to change the system itself? 

Nowhere is the need for structural thinking more urgent than in the climate crisis. Climate change is a paradigmatic case of structural injustice. It disproportionately harms people who contributed the least to the problem. No one single person, corporation, or government caused the crisis, yet all of us are implicated in its continuation. This makes individual actions important: recycling, eating differently, or driving less matters, but structural transformation matters more. 

On the MIT campus, Setiya describes a time where he was greeted by strips of blue caution tape marking the heights of potential floodwaters that would result from a five-foot storm surge. It's a visual reminder that climate change is not distant future problem; it is a present, physical reality.

Movements such as Fossil Free MIT show what collective responsibility looks like in action: students, faculty, and community members pushing institutions to divest from fossil fuels, adopt sustainable policies, and advocate for climate justice. 

The climate crisis brings together all the philosophical themes explored so far: 

- Plato's emphasis on moral integrity

- Weil's demand for ethical seriousness

- Effective Altruism's insistence on doing effective good

- Young's focus on structural transformation

Individually, none of these perspectives is sufficient. Together, they point to a richer understanding of responsibility in an interconnected world. 

Life is hard. It always has been, but certain moments make the difficulty unavoidable. The pandemic exposed our vulnerabilities. Climate change magnifies them. Economic inequality, political instability, and technological upheaval all shape our sense of uncertainty. 

Philosophy, unfortunately, does not remove these hardships, but it helps us navigate them. From Plato, we learn to examine our motives and cultivate integrity, even when no one is watching. From Simone Weil, we learn to take suffering seriously, while remembering that compassion must be sustainable. From effective altruism, we learn the importance of intentional, evidence based aid. From Iris Marion Young, we learn that our greatest moral challenges are structural, and thus our most effective solutions must be collective. 

Philosophy offers not escape, but orientation. Not certainty, but clarity. Not comfort, but courage. 

In a time marked with uncertainty and chaos, philosophy reminds us that while we may not control the world around us, we can shape how we respond to it. We can act with intention, work toward justice, and find hope in collective responsibility. 

Remember, life is hard, but we are not alone, and we are not powerless, no matter how much it feels like we are. Philosophy helps us remember that. 

(For your viewing pleasure and amusement, a bass on a plaque singing "Don't Worry Be Happy":)