Social Injustice

Social Injustice is a collection of thirteen essays addressing a variety of topics including methodology in applied political theory, exploitation, torture, contractarianism and democracy. Only two of the essays are previously unpublished. These sandwich the other essays. The first is a defence of the idea that social injustice is an important research topic. The last is a taxonomy of three varieties of socialism (liberal, democratic and market) and an analysis of the core values these varieties share (equality and community). As the first essay is on the theme of the book, and is supposed to connect the other essays, I will dedicate the majority of this review to it. Much political philosophy of the past fifty years has been concerned with identifying what a socially just state should look like. Social injustice has received relatively little attention. One explanation for this is the prevalence of the view that there is nothing interesting to say about injustice other than that it occurs when justice is absent. Bufacchi's central claim is that this view, and the corresponding focus on identifying a socially just state, is mistaken. For him, injustice may arise from a number of distinct sources. In order to begin to redress injustice, we must have an account of these sources. The study of injustice should therefore be given a kind of priority over the study of justice. Or, as he puts it rather more strongly, ‘before we can say anything meaningful about social justice, it is imperative to have a clear idea of what social injustice is, and why social injustice is the paramount social problem to be resolved’ (p. 3).

Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Injustice · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Redress · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics