Donald Hubin

This paper critically examines the traditional account of the circumstances of justice formulated by David Hume and adopted by John Rawls. The central problem is defining the scope of justice—the range of cases where considerations of justice appropriately apply—a task crucial for both theoretical evaluation and practical moral guidance. Hume's conditions (moderate scarcity, limited generosity, rough equality, and interdependence) are analyzed across five interpretations of their relationship to justice (logical, epistemic, ontological, deontic, and utility presuppositions). I argue that Hume's conditions fail to define the scope of justice under the most compelling interpretations. Counterexamples—such as cases of absolute scarcity or utter selfishness—demonstrate that talk of justice and injustice remains conceptually coherent, morally obligatory, and socially useful, even when Hume's conditions are violated. Furthermore, I challenge Rawls's claim that these conditions represent the "normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary." Cooperation, especially for non-material goods like friendship and intellectual exchange, can be both necessary and possible outside of the Humean-Rawlsian constraints. The paper concludes that the traditional circumstances of justice unduly restrict the application of justice, compelling us to consider the requirements of justice under a much broader range of actual and hypothetical conditions.