Political Philosophy and Political Theory

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version: 23 August 2019

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Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder

I may as well confess here that while I am strongly on the side of a lot of causes that get described, these days, as "social justice", I find myself more and more puzzled as to exactly what constitutes social justice, and the proper borders between seeking a more just society, and rectifying other social problems which, however awful, aren't injustices. (It's not like individual justice is transparent, of course.) This may not matter very much, and I strongly suspect it's a "me problem", but it does make me uneasy to see so many people seemingly certain of what social justice requires...

See also:
• Democracy
• Feminism
• Ernest Gellner
• Liberalism
• the Left
• Plato
• Karl Popper
• Socialism
• Totalitarianism, Its Intellectual and Social Roots

Recommended (misc.):
• al-Farabi, "The Political Regime" and Summary of Plato's Laws
• Joseph Heath, Cooperation and Social Justice
• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and The Discourses on Livy
• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom

To read:
• Danielle S. Allen, Justice by Means of Democracy [Interesting review by Margaret Levi]
• Samuel Fleischacker, A Short History of Distributive Justice
• Gerald Gaus, The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society
• David Miller, Principles of Social Justice [= "desert", "need", "equality"]
• Rawls, A Theory of Justice
• Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice
• Ian Shapiro, Political Criticism