Personal virtue cannot remedy injustice embedded in the situation itself

Evidence

Here too it is useless to allocate excuses and criticism: justice can never be created within injustice. It is impossible for a colonial administrator to conduct himself well with the indigenous population, or a general with his soldiers; the only solution is to be neither colonialist nor military leader; but a man cannot prevent himself from being a man. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1974

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the colonial-administrator impossibility argument in Memmi’s ‘The Colonizer and the Colonized’ and connects to the fundamentalist’s dilemma in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. — connects to: No personal virtue can make good a structurally wrong relationship. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1242; Just exchange is a precondition for overcoming injustice, not a future standard — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1571; Individual charity cannot substitute for systemic justice. — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 317 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies Beauvoir’s ‘situation’ concept — the structural position that makes individual ethical conduct structurally impossible.

Broader Connections

• No personal virtue can make good a structurally wrong relationship. #corroborates (0.95) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1242