unjustify

present singular third person unjustifies · participle present unjustifying · participle past unjustified · past unjustified

1. To remove or negate the justification for.

   The fact that our best-justified moral judgments and standards are not accepted by others on our grounds for them does not unjustify us in holding them.

   2007, Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics

   2 more examples

   If we were to come to see justice as, like love, something which involves the transformation of existing interests and the creation of new, shared, interests, then we would be less inclined to judge every case of suffering through justice as a case of unmitigated disaster, and less incliend to think that every such case must unjustify the agent's commitment to acting justly.

   2000, S. Mendus, Feminism and Emotion: Readings in Moral and Political Philosophy

   As Susan Mendus rightly says: "Failure to attain a particular end serves to unjustify the political moralist, but does not unjustify the moral politician, who still has the assurance that his aim was the right one.

   2007, Peter Johnson, Frames of Deceit, page 62