What Justice? Things as They Are

Abstract

Godwin’s An Enquiry concerning political justice was published in 1793; and one year later, the novel Caleb Williams, or Things As They Are. It is sometimes said that the second is, somehow, an attempt to put his Enquiry in other words and to convey his thoughts about justice, law or politics to a wider audience. Be as it may, in Caleb Williams we can find out important ideas about those topics (specifically about justice and law) and we can link those ideas to his political philosophy (developed in the Enquiry). Godwin shows in Caleb Williams how things are; how justice and law are made by and for the ruling class. And behind these ideas we can guess those others that are not expressed in the novel (i. e. what law should be in a fair world, or how things should be if they were not as they are).

Godwin was a supporter of anarchism (according to Kropotkin, the first to formulate the political doctrine in toto), and being so, we can be quite sure that a great amount of ideas not expressed in Caleb Williams have to do with this political theory. But he can also be considered as a supporter of utilitarianism, so that we can hold that the novel is, in the same way, a defense of this moral doctrine.