Social justice and the distribution of republican freedom

Bibliographic Data

ID6259865
AuthorsJonathan Peterson (0000-0002-8432-9924, Department of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans, LA, USA, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume19
Issue1
Pages67-86
Publication date2020-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Political Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-8851 • E-ISSN: 1741-2730
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1474885116684759
OpenAlexW2724170822
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited6

A republican theory of social justice specifies how republican freedom should be distributed. The goal of this paper is to assess the plausibility of two recently proposed principles of republican social justice: an aggregative maximizing principle defended by Philip Pettit in Republicanism and a sufficiency principle of republican social justice offered by Pettit in On the People’s Terms. The maximizing principle must be rejected because it permits under-protecting vulnerable members of society in favor of increasing the freedom of the powerful. The sufficiency principle avoids the most basic objection to the maximizing principle, but it is at best an incomplete theory of social justice. Social justice requires principle(s) for determining the justice of distributions above the sufficiency threshold and republican theory does not determine which principle(s) should govern distributions above this threshold. Republicans must therefore decide whether they will incorporate an independent commitment to equality within their theory of social justice

Distribution (mathematics · Economic Justice · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Mathematics · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Political Philosophy and Ethics

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub