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MÉTHODO : comment bien rédiger sa dissertation de philosophie ?

• Publié le 31 mars 2020
• Mis à jour le 16 juin 2021

T’entraîner à la rédaction de sujets est la clé ! Une bonne préparation te permettra de réussir et de peut-être t’assurer une bonne note à la dissertation et décrocher une mention au bac de philosophie.

Il y a 3 étapes à prendre en compte dans la construction de ta dissertation de philosophie, si tu les appliques tu auras toutes les cartes en main pour faire une bonne disserte.

1. Quelle méthode choisir ? Quelle architecture de dissertation est la meilleure ?

Les méthodes de dissertation sont variées. Entre ce que t’a dit ton prof, ce que tu as vu sur le net, ce que tu as lu dans ton manuel, etc., il y a souvent de quoi se perdre ! Voici quelques conseils pour choisir entre toutes ces sources.

4 éléments universels et essentiels à la dissertation, quelle que soit la méthode choisie.

D’abord, il faut se rappeler que, si les méthodes sont différentes, il y a 4 éléments qui sont universels et essentiels à la dissertation, quelle que soit la méthode choisie :

• Une problématique ;
• Une réponse personnelle et argumentée à cette problématique ;
• La définition détaillée et approfondie des termes du sujet ;
• Un plan en trois temps.

Dans tous les cas, choisis la méthode avec laquelle tu te sens à l’aise et n’en change pas. Attention, la méthode que tu choisiras doit obligatoirement proposer un plan en trois parties, les correcteurs sont assez sévères sur ce point.

Je te donne un exemple de méthode, d’architecture, de nomenclature ci-dessous, attention quelques éléments dont tu dois te souvenir :

• Les noms des parties ne doivent pas apparaître.
• Le plan guide la hiérarchisation de ton analyse.
• Tu dois introduire chaque partie par une phrase de transition.

Dans cet exemple de plan en 3 parties (voir ci-dessous), l’enjeu de la question sera de savoir dans quelle mesure le bonheur est le but de la politique .

La méthode que tu choisiras doit obligatoirement proposer un plan en trois parties, les correcteurs sont assez sévères sur ce point.

Partie 1 : qu’est-ce que le bonheur ?

• Aspect universel 
• Aspect singulier

Partie 2 : la politique, qui est la gestion des affaires publiques, ne semble donc pas devoir s’occuper du bonheur, qui finalement est quelque chose de propre à chacun.

• Définition détaillée de la politique  
• Si l’état prétend imposer sa conception du bonheur aux individus, il y a de fortes dérives totalitaires à craindre.
• Mais s’il ne s’en occupe pas du tout alors la politique n’est qu’un instrument au service de quelques-uns .

Partie 3 : en réalité, la politique, si elle ne s’occupe pas directement du bonheur, doit cependant faire en sorte que chacun puisse le trouver. Elle doit assurer les conditions de possibilités du bonheur.

• La politique doit permettre à l’homme d’être éduqué, soigné, etc.
• La politique d’un état doit assurer la paix intérieure et la paix extérieure, faire en sorte que la vie sociale et le bien commun soient possibles.

2. S’entraîner à définir avec précision les notions du programme de philosophie

Pour cet exercice, n’hésite pas à te faire des cartes mentales (mindmaps) colorées et personnalisées qui te permettront de mémoriser à long terme.

Je te donne un exemple ci-dessous :

Si tu as du mal à apprendre ton cours, et que tu as besoin d’aide, retrouve des cours synthétiques sur superBac ! Ces fiches sont rédigées par des professeurs certifiés.

 Tu trouveras aussi de nombreux cours et vidéos de notions sur la chaîne Youtube superBac by digiSchool .

3. Entraîne-toi !

Pour s’entraîner avec succès, il y a deux types d’exercices simples et ultra efficaces.

Entraînement à la dissertation n°1 : choisir – remplir – comparer

Choisir un sujet dont tu peux trouver le corrigé en ligne sur superBac. Par exemple, tu peux trouver : « La culture nous rend-elle plus humain ? »

Puis, remplir les étapes en écrivant seulement l’essentiel : définitions, références à un auteur, idée d’argument à mentionner, etc.

Problématique : …

Partie 1 : …

Partie 2 : …, partie 3 : ….

Enfin, comparer avec le corrigé proposé.

Le but n’est pas que tout soit absolument similaire mais que les éléments essentiels soient là : des définitions justes et complètes, des références judicieuses aux auteurs, une bonne méthodologie qui suit une logique de raisonnement, ainsi qu’une réponse personnelle.

Entraînement à la dissertation n°2 : l’exercice de conviction

Pour cet exercice, il vous faudra donc :

• Choisir un sujet de dissertation de philosophie
• Trouver la problématique de ce sujet
• Trouver ta réponse personnelle
• Argumenter ta réponse personnelle devant un auditoire : par exemple, un ou plusieurs membres de ta famille, et essaye de les convaincre que tu as raison.

Cet exercice te permet de mettre tes idées au clair , de sortir du côté un peu abstrait de la dissertation et de travailler en t’amusant .

De plus, il est fort probable que tes parents ou tes amis te répondent et argumentent à leur tour. Ce qui te permettra de voir des aspects du problème qui t’avaient échappés.

Une fois cet exercice fait, tu peux toujours t’amuser à remplir le plan à trou avec toutes les idées qui auront germé !

Si cet article vous a aidé, dites-le-nous 🙂

Note moyenne 4.1 / 5. Vote count: 22

Comment bien se relire pour ne pas faire d’erreurs d’orthographe ?

Apprendre à bien se relire est primordial pour de nombreuses raisons. Tous les jours, entre nos messages, nos e-mails, nos devoirs à faire, nos examens, nous écrivons énormément et il est parfois difficile de se relire sans méthode fiable. Aurore Ponsonnet, formatrice en orthographe et Maureen Pinneur, responsable pédagogique chez digiSchool, te donnent leurs meilleurs conseils de relecture pour ne plus faire de faute ! Rappels de grammaire, conjugaison, orthographe des mots et techniques de relecture, tout est là, suivez le guide !

Bac de philosophie : les citations à retenir

Chaque jour l'épreuve de philosophie se rapproche, et tu commences à paniquer ou à te demander ce que tu vas bien pouvoir dire dans ta copie ? digiSchool t'a compilé 30 citations qui pourront, on l'espère, te débloquer pour la dissertation !

Bac technologique 2021 : programme et épreuve de philosophie

La philosophie est la matière commune de tous les bacheliers. Cependant, son programme et l'épreuve qui lui est rattachée connaissent quelques variations selon les filières. Zoom sur la philosophie pour la filière technologique : programme, modalités d'évaluation, conseils de révisions... suis le guide !

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C’est très utile

Merci pour la comprehension mais je peus avoir les citation merci

Je les veux

bon plan pour moi

Un très grand merci mon professeur pour votre soutien sans même nous connaître.

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quelle la question posé pour la dissertation

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Merci beaucoup et j’apprécie énormément votre aide

Méthode de la Dissertation Philosophique

I. le sujet.

La dissertation est l’exercice proposé pour le sujet 1 et le sujet 2 du Baccalauréat de philosophie. Le sujet de dissertation se présente toujours sous la forme d’une question à laquelle vous devez répondre. Tout au long de votre réflexion, il faut vérifier régulièrement que vous êtes bien en train de répondre à la question. Il existe quelques énoncés récurrents :

1) Qu’est-ce que… ?  : On vous demande de répondre par une définition précise (ex : Qu’est-ce que la vertu ? Qu’est-ce que la justice ?), la question de l’essence de la chose, de sa nature que vous allez chercher à définir et à rendre dans toute sa complexité.

2) Peut-on… ?  : Vous chercherez à interroger la possibilité pratique : dispose-t-on des moyens techniques pour… ? ; et/ou la possibilité morale : a-t-on le droit de… ? Il faut alors faire jouer la distinction entre le légal (ce qui relève du fait, du droit positif) et le légitime (fondé en raison : le rationnel, le Juste, le Bien etc…).

3) Faut-il… ? Doit-on… ?  : On interroge la nécessité physique, matérielle, le besoin : sommes-nous contraints de… ? Avons-nous besoin de… ? ; et/ou l’obligation morale (= le devoir) : avons-nous le devoir de… ?

4) Pourquoi… ? À quoi sert… ?  : Il s’agit de montrer les causes, les raisons de la chose, ses buts, ses finalités et/ou son utilité.

Vous chercherez toujours à comprendre la question et à défendre sa pertinence : ne contestez jamais la formulation ou l’intitulé du sujet mais dites-vous toujours « c’est une excellente question à laquelle il faut absolument répondre ». Que la question du sujet soit totale (appelant la réponse oui ou non) ou partielle, cela ne change rien à la méthodologie de la dissertation. Les deux questions de dissertation proposées au Baccalauréat portent forcément sur des thèmes différent de la philosophie. Choisissez donc judicieusement !

II. Analyse du sujet / Tempête sous un crâne (= brainstorming )

Essayez dans un premier temps de répondre sincèrement à la question en vous demandant qu’est-ce que les mots du sujet signifient. Etudiez les arguments et les contre-arguments possibles en vous forçant à défendre des points de vue qui ne sont pas forcément les vôtres. Au brouillon, appliquez la formule, il y a x et x et tous les x ne se valent pas afin d’installer de la différence, de la nuance et même de l’ambivalence. Efforcez-vous de casser les généralités abstraites trop souvent creuses et fallacieuses. Travaillez sur les différences plutôt que sur les similitudes. Servez-vous d’expressions qui apprennent quelque chose, d’exemples bien trouvés, pris dans la culture (littérature, mythes, religion, histoire, science, politique, etc..), en les développant en fonction du sujet posé et du problème soulevé par le sujet (ou qu’on a soi-même formulé à partir du sujet). Enfin, demandez-vous quels philosophes seraient susceptibles de répondre à ce sujet de dissertation et comment le feraient-ils ? Que diraient-ils ? 

III. Introduction

A. Amorce et rappel du sujet

Vous devez introduire le sujet, partir d’un exemple précis pris dans la culture ou l’opinion qui vous amène tout naturellement à vous poser la question du sujet. Il s’agit de justifier le sujet, d’en montrer la pertinence et le bien-fondé ( facultatif ). Une amorce n’est jamais vague. Pas de : « De tout temps les hommes ont cherché à être heureux… » ou « Durant des siècles, les philosophes se sont interrogés sur le bonheur… ». Ensuite seulement vous rappelez la question à laquelle vous répondrez tout au long de votre dissertation . Vous ne devrez jamais reformuler le sujet. Si vous ne trouvez pas de bonne amorce, vous commencerez par rappeler le sujet.

B. Définitions des termes du sujet

Après avoir rappelé le sujet, il convient de définir les termes importants. Nul besoin de dictionnaire, c’est votre définition par rapport au sujet qui importe. Ainsi, il faudra faire résonner les définitions entre elles (puisqu’elles sont liées par le sujet) et les intriquer de manière élégante (sans les juxtaposer). Ces définitions servent de base, mais elles ne doivent pas rester figées, il conviendra de les retravailler au fur et à mesure de la dissertation. Ainsi, il convient d’éviter les relativismes mous du type : « Certains pensent que…, d’autres pensent que… ».

C. Problématisation

Une fois avoir défini les termes, vous serez plus en mesure d’esquisser le problème que pose le sujet : Pourquoi, de prime abord, peut-on répondre oui à la question, mais également pourquoi peut-on répondre non ? Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs réponses possibles envisageables ? Il faut penser à s’étonner (même de manière opératoire, en faisant semblant). Si l’on (le jury, le correcteur) pose ce sujet (et pas un autre), c’est bien parce qu’il renvoie à un problème évident ou caché, qu’il s’agit de découvrir, de formuler, d’exposer, d’expliciter au lecteur dans toute sa complexité (complexe ne signifie pas compliqué). Toujours d’abord cherchez à montrer le bien-fondé du sujet, tel qu’il est posé (quelle est sa nécessité ? Sa légitimité ? Pourquoi a-t-il été posé ainsi, et pas autrement ? En quoi cela se justifie-t-il ?) Par la phase de problématisation, vous étudiez les différentes réponses possibles au sujet et vous montrez pourquoi elles sont toutes plus ou moins pertinentes et défendables.

D. Problématique

À la fin de la phase de problématisation, vous serez à même de formuler la sacro-sainte problématique qui va diriger votre devoir.

Pour produire facilement une problématique, procédez ainsi :

• Réponse naïve, immédiate, on suit l’opinion commune.
• (au brouillon ou en problématisation) Réponse nuancée, contradictoire, qui va contre l’opinion immédiate et commune.
• (Dans l’introduction, à la fin de la problématisation) Problématique  : Alors, est-ce que vraiment 1 ou bien au contraire, plutôt 2 ? / Alors ou bien 1, ou bien au contraire 2.

Ceci est pour vous aider et vous guider, mais cela ne veut pas dire que toute problématique doit absolument ressembler à cela. Une problématique réussie doit parvenir à présenter un paradoxe.

Exemple :

• Sujet : Faut-il satisfaire tous ses désirs pour être heureux ?

– Réponse spontanée  : oui, c’est la seule manière de nous procurer du plaisir, condition sine qua non du bonheur. Plus grand est le nombre de désirs satisfaits plus grand sera notre bonheur.

– Réponse nuancée  : non,il y a des désirs qu’il vaut mieux maîtriser que satisfaire, car leur réalisation risque de nous rendre à jamais malheureux.

– Problématique  : Ou bien satisfaire tous ses désirs est le seul moyen d’accéder au bonheur, ou bien au contraire , ne pas maîtriser ses désirs nous conduit irrémédiablement au malheur.

E. Annonce du plan

Vous devez esquisser pour votre lecteur les grandes étapes de votre réponse. Évitez cependant les « dans un premier temps…dans un second temps… ». Vous devez annoncer les thèses que vous allez défendre en I, II et III et pour le faire de manière élégante voici une proposition :

Sujet   : Faut-il satisfaire tous ses désirs ? I. Satisfaire ses désirs est ce qui nous rend heureux. II. Pourtant, la frustration nous rend malheureux : le désir est donc obstacle au bonheur. III. Il faut alors apprendre à maîtriser ses désirs et non y renoncer.

Annonce du plan : En apparence , satisfaire tous ses désirs semble être la condition du bonheur, en nous procurant le plus de plaisir possible (I). Mais en réalité , il est possible que trop s’occuper de ses désirs est un obstacle au bonheur et nous conduit à la frustration ou à l’ennui (II). C’est pourquoi, nous sommes en droit de penser qu ’il vaut mieux rechercher à maîtriser ses désirs plutôt qu’à les satisfaire (III).

Remarque sur l’introduction : 1) Toutes ces étapes ne sont pas là pour vous ennuyer ou vous empêcher de penser mais pour vous cadrer et vous mettre sur la bonne piste. Vous éviterez ainsi plus facilement les hors-sujets. 2) Ne citez jamais de noms de philosophes dans l’introduction (ou alors éventuellement en amorce, c’est la seule exception). Ne posez jamais de questions en introduction pour mettre les enjeux en lumière, mais au contraire répondez-y directement même si la réponse est naïve et incomplète, cela servira de base de travail.

IV. Développement

A. Élaboration d’un plan

 Le développement est composé en général de trois grandes parties. C’est un héritage de a tradition dialectique hégélienne (mais on peut l’envisager en deux ou quatre parties). Les grandes parties doivent s’enchaîner logiquement, ne pas être juxtaposées : vous devez répondre petit à petit aux difficultés du sujet. Aucune grande partie et aucun argument ne doit répéter ce qui a déjà été dit. Les grandes parties (au moins les deux premières) doivent s’opposer drastiquement.

I : Thèse . Adoptez le point de vue de l’opinion (la réponse évidente au sujet), dites ce que tout le monde pense ou croit, cherchez à défendre ce point de vue.

II : Antithèse . Critiquez cette opinion (en cela, vous serez disciple de Platon), montrez que la thèse du I n’est pas satisfaisante : montrez ses limites, sa naïveté, défendez un point de vue opposé.

III : Synthèse . Cherchez alors une autre réponse, plus précise, plus en accord avec le réel, qui soit plus conforme à la vérité, au devoir-être, à l’idéal. Vous tirez les leçons de l’aporie (= ce qui est sans issue, sans solution, ce qui ne permet pas de répondre) de I que vous avez révélé en II, et vous tentez d’en sortir, de trouver un moyen de répondre, d’accorder les contradictions en les dépassant : vous devez résoudre le problème ou le dépasser, trancher la question.

B. Composition des grandes parties

Chaque grande partie comporte :

1) Une phrase d’amorce qui présente la thèse alors défendue, et comment elle le sera. ( facultatif )

2) Trois (entre deux et quatre) sous-parties qui énoncent les arguments permettant de justifier, démontrer, discuter la thèse défendue.

3) Vous terminez la partie par une petite synthèse/transition qui fait le bilan de ce que vous avez montré et pourquoi quelque chose cloche : quelles sont les limites et les difficultés que vous avez rencontrées qui ne rendent pas la réponse suffisamment satisfaisante et pourquoi il est nécessaire d’étudier une autre réponse dans une autre grande partie. Il s’agit ici de trouver une objection à ce que vous venez de dire, ce qui implique de poursuivre le devoir.  

C. Sous-parties

Nous l’avons dit, chaque partie du développement (I, II, III) est constituée de trois sous-parties(minimum deux et maximum quatre). Chaque paragraphe doit démontrer, présenter, avancer un argument en faveur de la thèse de la partie. Un paragraphe peut contenir :

1) La formulation de l’argument. C’est l’idée que vous essayez de défendre ( obligatoire )

2) Un exemple qui illustre votre propos et ajoute du concret à l’argument. L’exemple doit être précis et parfaitement en rapport avec l’argument. Utilisez votre culture personnelles, les connaissances acquises dans les autres matières ou à défaut, les évènements de votre vie personnelle, mais évitez les banalités. ( facultatif )

3) Un système, une doctrine, une citation (expliquée), une référence à une philosophie ou à un philosophe pour ajouter de l’abstrait (demandez-vous comment tel ou tel philosophe aurait pu répondre à ce sujet de dissertation). Ne plaquez jamais le cours sans le mettre au service du sujet de dissertation qui vous occupe. Pas plus d’un philosophe ou un système de pensée par sous-partie. ( facultatif )

Remarque sur le développement  : Vos sous-parties doivent forcément débuter par la formulation de votre argument : interdiction de commencer le paragraphe en écrivant : « Kant a dit que … »,ou « Epicure a dit que… ». Les philosophes sont des béquilles qui vont vous aider dans le cheminement de votre pensée, mais en aucun cas vous ne devez vous réfugiez derrière eux. À la fin de chaque sous-partie, pensez toujours à montrer comment vous venez de répondre au sujet.

V. Conclusion

1) Rappelez le sujet et votre problématique ( facultatif )

2) Rappelez votre cheminement de pensée et le parcours que vous avez suivi au long de votre dissertation en répétant succinctement vos arguments les meilleurs ( obligatoire )

3) Répondez franchement et directement et définitivement à la question du sujet (cela ne veut pas dire que vous devez être absolument catégorique, ici encore vous pouvez/devez faire preuve de nuance). ( obligatoire )  

Remarques sur la conclusion : 1) Ne parlez pas des philosophes dans la conclusion. 2) Jamais d’ouverture.

VI. Remarques finales

1) Soyez clair, cherchez toujours à faire comprendre, pas besoin d’esbrouffe ou de jargon à moins que vous ne vouliez utiliser et expliquer des concepts philosophiques.

2) Ne vous censurez pas. Si quelque chose est susceptible de choquer, ne vous privez pas, même allez-y franchement, mais toujours en défendant votre point de vue.

3) Jamais de « Je » dans votre devoir. Préférez le « on » ou mieux encore le « nous ».

4) La maîtrise de la langue peut se révéler très utile dans la construction de votre devoir et la formulation de vos arguments.

5) Évitez à tout prix les relativismes et les banalités notamment pour les définitions, les arguments et les exemples : « La définition du bonheur dépend de chacun », « Faire du shopping rend heureux », etc…

6) Soyez stratège. La dissertation n’est pas la quête de la réponse vraie, mais un exercice rhétorique. Le but n’est pas de trouver la vérité, mais d’avoir raison. Argumentez pour convaincre ou persuader votre correcteur que vous dites des choses pertinentes. Ainsi, ne faites pas un catalogue d’arguments mais essayez de proposer une progression cohérente.

7) Une bonne dissertation doit faire entre 8 et 12 pages : la qualité ne peut pas aller sans la quantité et une copie de 4 pages ne pourra jamais remplir tous les critères et satisfaire tous les attendus.

8) Aérez vos paragraphes en sautant des lignes et en faisant des alinéas quand cela est nécessaire.

9) Soignez votre écriture, votre orthographe et votre copie de manière générale. Relisez-vous pour corriger les fautes d’orthographe, soulignez les titres d’œuvres et les mots en langue étrangère.

10) Amusez-vous ! Ecrire une dissertation doit être un exercice joyeux d’expression de soi.

Sapere aude ! [1]

Par Thomas Primerano, professeur de philosophie, diplômé de la Sorbonne, membre de l’Association de la Cause Freudienne de Strasbourg, membre de Société d’Études Robespierristes, auteur de ‘’Rééduquer le peuple après la terreur’’ publié chez BOD.

[1] Emmanuel Kant : « Ose penser par toi-même ! », dans Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ? – 1784

Pour voir un cas concret, consultez notre exemple de dissertation rédigée .

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68 Comments

J’aimerai avoir des sujets de dissertation traités pour mieux comprendre la méthodologie de la dissertation philosophique.

Bonjour j’aimerais avoir un de type examen corrigé!

Merci pour votre aide…

jaimerai avoir plus d’exemple svp

c’est tres interessant

Dans le dévelopement du sujet , est-ce qu’il doit tjrs porter (3)parties ? Et pourquoi pas (2)parties ?

Bonjour j’aimerais avoir un de type examen corrigé!

Bonjour je suis castro j’ai vraiment des lacunes pour la comprehension de la dissertation philosophique.Je n’ai jamais su realiser ce que c’est qu’une problematique j’ai vraiment besoin d’aide!!

bonjour, est ce que le synthese peut vraiment repondre au problematique?

Introduire,développer et conclure?

Comment introduire, développer, conclure un sujet philosophique?

Bonsoir ! J ai vraiment besoins d aide de vous pour que je puisse réalisée une dissertation acceptable.parce que je lis et relis je pouvais pas la faire

Je vais particer a un concour mais jusqu’à présent j ai du lacune en dissertation.le concour sera lieu le 18 septembre prochain

Je vous remercie!!!!très bon travail

j’aimerai avoir des exemples

j’aimerai avoir plus de detail svp

Je besoin plus de sujet philosophique afin de mieux comprendre la méthode

D apres ce que je comprends On a pas vraiment répondu aux problèmes qui on a crée

Comment faire pour résoudre une dissertation philosophie

salut je veux des sujets types BAC

Slt nous voullions des sujets et corriges so possible merci

bonjour j’aurais bien voulu que vous m’aider de manière à comprendre la methodologie et en savoir plus sur la philodophie je suis en classe de terminale

salut pourais je avoir des sujet de bac des annees 1900

Chaque thèse proposes une solution au problème. Dans ces thèses tu proposes au minimum deux arguments différents qui appuient ta thèse.

I / thèse 1) argument + exemple OU référence 2 argument + exemple OU référence

et cela trois fois, sans oublier l’intro et la conclusion.

c’est bien

bien, merci!

Bonjour moi c’est Coulibaly Tanfotien Gatien je veux un sujet de BAC exercice et corrigé pour ma formation de première merci d’avance

du moi votre bonne example pr la dissertation philosophic, nous eclairn ptement

merci pour votre aide que dieu vous bénisse amen

Merci pour votre aide! J’aimerais aussi y trouver des résumés des notions au programme de Terminale!

Merci,j’aimerai avoir un example de sujet afin de traiter d’autres.

un exemple de sujet traité en philosophie de type1

Ça aide beaucoup

voir la méthodologie des sujets corrigé pour mieux comprendre

Pourrais_ je avoir des sujets de dissertation type Bac pour mieux renforcer mes acquis

je voudrais vraiment qu’on me montre la manière à suivre pour très bien faire mon introduction, car je vois que sans l’introduction les autres parties ne seront pas bonnes…

Bonjours !J’aimerai avoir un sujet traité pour mieux comprendre.

J’aimerais avoir des sujets de dissertantion traités pour mieux comprendre la méthodologie de la dissertation philosophique

la passion est elle une occasion de chute ou d’élévation?

j’aimerai aussi avoir un sujet et son corriger type

C’est vraiment intéressant!

merci pour votre aide, ça me sera util

la compréhension serait optimale avec un exemple bien précis!

Etre et devenir

J’aimerais avoir des exemples plus précis et traités pour bien comprendre par_ce_que la je suis vraiment perdu

merci beaucoup a vous. mais je ne suis pas satisfait parce que vous n’avez pas fait un essai de dissertation philosophique. cela pourrais m’aider a mieux comprendre. merci pour votre générosité quand meme.

bonsoir j’aimerais bien comprendre la dissertation en philo?

La partie n’est pas exhaustive,il nous faut un exemple pour une meilleure compréhension

merci pour votre aide

si le sujet est du plan dialectique comment fait-on en faire? si c’est que vous avez dit tu es vraiment acceptable dans ce cas votre manière de traiter le sujet avec la méthodologie philosophique indifférent que nôtre. pour cela je me demande la méthodologie de la philosophie n’est pas international car il s’agit de beaucoup de méthode pour traiter un sujet philosophique ou bien avez-vous d’autres idées qui va me faire tort ainsi j’ai donné ma proposition et j’aimerais avoir la réponse que je vous ai posé merci

Bonsoir, s’il vous plait, je n’ai jamais fait philo ,niveau première 2015. J’aimerais obtenir un exemple de sujet , puis un corrigé quelconque afin de me faire observer la méthode. merci.

J’aimerais comprendre beaucoup plus la méthodologie de la dissertation en philo . avoir des sujets

J’aimerais essayer de faire une dissertation philosophique dans un commentaire

J’aimerais savoir comment faire la dissertation de ce sujet : peut on se couper du passé

J’aimerais avoir des exemples plus précis et traités pour bien comprendre par_ce_que la je suis vraiment perdu

C’est trés intéressant mais j’aimerais avoir un exemple de dissertation pour mieux comprendre si c’est possible

C’est vraiment intéressant !!! Mais Je voudrais les explications détaillées du sujet de type 1 et 2

J’aimerais un sujet de dissertation traité pour mieux comprendre

La force peut elle fonder le droit

J’ai besoin d’un prof pour que quand je traite des sujets qu’il puisse me corriger

s’il vous plait,j’ai besoin d’un exemple sur un sujet de dissertation corrigé en philosophie pour mieux maitriser sa méthode . merci d’avance.

Les sujets de bac

Si l’appréhension du monde n’était qu’intiutive la connaissance se réduirait à l’aspect extérieur des choses or,celle -ci est parfois trompeur

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Library Guides

Dissertations 4: methodology: introduction & philosophy.

• Introduction & Philosophy
• Methodology

Introduction

The methodology introduction is a paragraph that describes both the design of the study and the organization of the chapter. This prepares the reader for what is to follow and provides a framework within which to incorporate the materials. 

This paragraph says to the reader, “This is the methodology chapter, this is how it is organized, and this is the type of design I used.” 

In this introduction, you can also state:  

The objectives of your research and/or 

The research question or hypothesis to be tested 

Research Philosophy

Carrying out your own research for your dissertation means that you are engaging in the creation of knowledge. Research philosophy is an aspect of this. It is belief about the way studies should be conducted, how data should be collected and how it is then analysed and used.  At its deepest level, it includes considerations of what is (ontology), like, is there an objective truth or is it everything subjective, and how to know (epistemology), like, can we know the truth, and how can we get to know it.

Writing about your research philosophy, therefore, involves reflecting on your assumptions and beliefs about data collection to develop, analyse, challenge and evaluate them.  

If you need to have a research philosophy section in your dissertation, the handout attached below provides some guidance.  

• Research Philosophies Offers descriptions of different research philosophies
• << Previous: Structure
• Next: Methods >>
• Last Updated: Sep 14, 2022 12:58 PM
• URL: https://libguides.westminster.ac.uk/methodology-for-dissertations

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La dissertation de philosophie

Existe au format livre et ebook.

• Présentation

Les + en ligne

• Caractéristiques

Présentation du livre

L’épreuve de dissertation de philosophie figure aux examens à l’université et aux concours aux grandes écoles. Elle exige une attention soutenue, fait appel à une culture générale, et demande de suivre une démarche rigoureuse. Mais avant tout, l’exercice de dissertation philosophique est l’occasion de se former à la vie intellectuelle. On ne disserte pas seulement en répétant ce qu’on a appris  : on y apprend à conduire sa pensée de manière autonome. • Dans la première partie, vous trouverez une méthode et des conseils pour aborder les sujets, construire des plans et composer vos dissertations. • La seconde partie propose de comprendre les enjeux de la philosophie à partir de dissertations intégralement rédigées , accompagnées d’ analyses conceptuelles et de remarques de méthode.

L’ouvrage vous donne aussi accès à des compléments en ligne : • un lexique des concepts utilisés dans les dissertations ; • ainsi que des textes de référence à connaître.

Sommaire de l'ouvrage

1. Méthodes et ressources de la dissertation Une définition générale de la dissertation et de ses exigences.  Définition de la philosophie - L’exercice de dissertation - La philosophie, une interrogation sur l’homme : l’anthropologie philosophique. Le travail et les ressources de la dissertation.  L’argumentation - Les ressources conceptuelles -  Les ressources logiques - Les ressources rhétoriques. La mise en pratique : s’organiser pour rédiger.  Lors d’un examen - Pour un travail en temps non limité - Les critères de correction - Pour aller plus loin.

2. Dissertations commentées Pour introduire à la réflexion philosophique.  Trouver des paradoxes - Formuler les thèses avec soin. Les relations humaines.  Les dissertations rédigées. Définir et connaître la vérité.  La perception peut-elle s’éduquer ? - La science nous fait-elle connaître le réel ? Être et agir -  Faut-il avoir peur de la liberté ? Contempler, communiquer, comprendre.  Une interprétation peut-elle être vraie  ? -  L’art est-il un langage ? La nature et la culture.   La culture permet-elle de surmonter la barbarie ?

Conclusion - Sujet : La vérité est-elle libératrice ?

2 Compléments

Auteur(s) de l'ouvrage.

Caractéristiques du livre

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• Dissertation

Introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie

Publié le 19 février 2019 par Justine Debret . Mis à jour le 7 décembre 2020.

L’introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie est différente d’une introduction de dissertation juridique .

Elle doit introduire votre sujet philosophique et intéresser votre lecteur. Elle doit aussi permettre à un lecteur profane de comprendre votre sujet et votre angle d’attaque pour le traiter.

Une bonne introduction de dissertation de philosophie contient :

• la phrase d’accroche (amorce) ;
• l’énoncé du sujet ;
• la définition termes et reformulation du sujet ;
• la problématique ;
• l’annonce du plan.

N’oubliez pas non plus que l’introduction et la conclusion de votre dissertation de philosophie doivent se faire écho.

Au fait ! Scribbr peut corriger votre dissertation de philosophie pour vous (ou simplement l’introduction si vous voulez !).

Table des matières

Quand rédiger l’introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie , la structure d’une introduction de dissertation de philosophie, exemple d’introduction de dissertation de philosophie, présentation gratuite.

L’introduction ne se rédige pas directement après la lecture ou le choix du sujet de philosophie.

Nous vous conseillons de commencer par définir les termes du sujet une fois le sujet de la dissertation révélé.

Ensuite, faites un brainstorming , trouvez votre problématique et définissez votre plan.

Une fois votre plan défini et détaillé , vous pouvez rédiger votre introduction entièrement (au brouillon, si vous avez le temps). L’introduction de votre dissertation de philosophie doit être rédigée avant le développement.

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L’introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie est très importante et doit suivre une méthode particulière.

Elle est composée de cinq éléments qui doivent absolument apparaître.

1. La phrase d’accroche (amorce).

Bien que facultative, l’accroche permet de capter l’attention du lecteur et d’introduire le sujet dans l’introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie.

Vous pouvez utiliser un élément qui sort du domaine de la philosophie, comme un fait historique, un événement récent ou une citation. Le but de l’accroche est de ne pas démarrer trop sèchement en donnant simplement une définition des termes du sujet.

Conseil : Faites une fiche avec des citations que vous pourriez mettre en accroche (en fonction des thèmes étudiés en cours).

2. L’énoncé du sujet.

Il est important d ’énoncer  clairement le sujet juste après votre accroche dans l’introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie.

3. La définition termes et reformulation du sujet .

Avec la définition termes et la reformulation  du sujet, i l faut expliciter le sens des mots du sujet en leur donnant une définition précise. La définition que vous choisissez peut donner un angle d’attaque au traitement du sujet, car des termes peuvent avoir plusieurs définitions. Chaque définition doit être détaillée et justifiée.

Normalement, les termes du sujet auront été vus en cours et vous devriez connaître leurs définitions.

Astuce : Nous vous conseillons de partir des racines grecques et latines pour définir les termes du sujet.

4. La problématique.

La définition des termes devrait faire émerger un problème ou paradoxe. C’est la problématique du sujet.

Dans votre introduction de dissertation de philosophie, vous devez expliquer clairement quel est ce problème.

Votre dissertation de philosophie est là pour solutionner ce problème.

5. L’annonce du plan.

Une fois le problème introduit, vous présentez les étapes de sa résolution avec le plan dans l’annonce du plan.

Dans l’introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie, vous donnez ainsi une idée au lecteur de la progression que vous allez suivre.

Sujet  : Être libre, est-ce faire ce que l’on veut ?

« Tous les Hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux ». C’est ce que promet la Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen française établie en 1789, ainsi que la Constitution française de la Vème République de 1958. Ainsi, la « liberté » semble être une vertu naturelle et innée que l’être humain est en droit de posséder dès sa naissance. Être « libre » signifierait « faire tout ce que l’on veut ». Toutefois, comme dans tout texte juridique, ce droit accordé à l’Homme n’est valable que si certains devoirs imposés sont respectés. La « liberté » est donc entourée de normes et de lois qui la définissent au sein d’une société démocratique. On définit communément un être « libre » comme ayant le pouvoir de faire ce qu’il veut, d’agir ou non, et de n’être captif d’aucun devoir moral ou juridique. On peut donc lier la « liberté » à la seule « volonté » du sujet. Cette « volonté » pouvant être décrite comme le fait de « désirer » ou celui de « décider rationnellement » une chose. Toutefois, le « désir » peut sembler posséder un caractère coercitif qui rendrait toute liberté humaine impossible à atteindre. Il est donc nécessaire de se demander si l’Homme est un être libre, capable de faire des choix rationnels, ou s’il est esclave de lui-même et de ses désirs ? Pour répondre à cette question, il est tout d’abord nécessaire de s’interroger sur l’Homme en tant qu’individu considéré comme libre et doté de raison. Puis, il convient d’étudier l’Homme comme un être prisonnier qui subit la contrainte et l’obligation que lui impose sa personne, ainsi que l’environnement qui l’entoure.

Voici une présentation que vous pouvez utiliser pour vous améliorer ou partager nos conseils méthodologiques sur l’introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie. N’hésitez pas à la partager ou à l’utiliser lors de vos cours :).

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Debret, J. (2020, 07 décembre). Introduction d’une dissertation de philosophie. Scribbr. Consulté le 27 juin 2024, de https://www.scribbr.fr/dissertation-fr/introduction-dissertation-philosophie/

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Méthodologie de la dissertation de philosophie (mise à jour, 2024)

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El haouary ouadie

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« […] D’épreuve en épreuve, la philosophie affronterait des rivaux de plus en plus insolents, de plus en plus calamiteux, que Platon lui-même n’aurait pas imaginés dans ses moments les plus comiques. Enfin le fond de la honte fut atteint quand l’informatique, le marketing, le design, la publicité, toutes les disciplines de la communication s’emparèrent du mot concept lui-même, et dirent : c’est notre affaire, c’est nous les créatifs, nous sommes les concepteurs ! » L’épreuve dernière qu’évoquent Deleuze et Guattari a trouvé au XXe siècle un développement assez inattendu, en l’espèce de la transformation de ce qui n’était somme toute qu’une bataille d’arrière-garde — la dénonciation active du « fond de la honte » — en la guerre intestine qu’institue potentiellement le « conseil philosophique privé ». Il s’agit en effet ni plus ni moins de la réactualisation de la lutte que se livrèrent — selon Platon, il y a 2500 ans — Socrate et les sophistes . À nouveau, on marchande l’idéal philosophique.

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La dissertation

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Plan de la fiche

• A quoi sert-elle ?

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• Introduction
• Exemple d'introduction proposée pour le sujet "Doit-on toujours dire la vérité ?"
• Le développement
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Digital Commons @ USF > College of Arts and Sciences > Philosophy > Theses and Dissertations

Philosophy Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2024 2024.

On the Possibility of Secular Morality , Zachary R. Alonso

An Ecofeminist Ontological Turn: Preparing the Field for a New Ecofeminist Project , M. Laurel-Leigh Meierdiercks

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Karl Marx on Human Flourishing and Proletarian Ethics , Sam Badger

The Ontological Grounds of Reason: Psychologism, Logicism, and Hermeneutic Phenomenology , Stanford L. Howdyshell

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Interdisciplinary Communication by Plausible Analogies: the Case of Buddhism and Artificial Intelligence , Michael Cooper

Heidegger and the Origin of Authenticity , John J. Preston

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Hegel and Schelling: The Emptiness of Emptiness and the Love of the Divine , Sean B. Gleason

Nietzsche on Criminality , Laura N. McAllister

Learning to be Human: Ren 仁, Modernity, and the Philosophers of China's Hundred Days' Reform , Lucien Mathot Monson

Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence: Methods, Archives, History, and Genesis , William A. B. Parkhurst

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Orders of Normativity: Nietzsche, Science and Agency , Shane C. Callahan

Humanistic Climate Philosophy: Erich Fromm Revisited , Nicholas Dovellos

This, or Something like It: Socrates and the Problem of Authority , Simon Dutton

Climate Change and Liberation in Latin America , Ernesto O. Hernández

Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa as Expressions of Shame in a Post-Feminist , Emily Kearns

Nostalgia and (In)authentic Community: A Bataillean Answer to the Heidegger Controversy , Patrick Miller

Cultivating Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective on the Relationship Between Moral Motivation and Skill , Ashley Potts

Identity, Breakdown, and the Production of Knowledge: Intersectionality, Phenomenology, and the Project of Post-Marxist Standpoint Theory , Zachary James Purdue

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

The Efficacy of Comedy , Mark Anthony Castricone

William of Ockham's Divine Command Theory , Matthew Dee

Heidegger's Will to Power and the Problem of Nietzsche's Nihilism , Megan Flocken

Abelard's Affective Intentionalism , Lillian M. King

Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophy and Reception: from the Origins through the Encyclopédie , Dwight Kenneth Lewis Jr.

"The Thought that we Hate": Regulating Race-Related Speech on College Campuses , Michael McGowan

A Historical Approach to Understanding Explanatory Proofs Based on Mathematical Practices , Erika Oshiro

From Meaningful Work to Good Work: Reexamining the Moral Foundation of the Calling Orientation , Garrett W. Potts

Reasoning of the Highest Leibniz and the Moral Quality of Reason , Ryan Quandt

Fear, Death, and Being-a-problem: Understanding and Critiquing Racial Discourse with Heidegger’s Being and Time , Jesús H. Ramírez

The Role of Skepticism in Early Modern Philosophy: A Critique of Popkin's "Sceptical Crisis" and a Study of Descartes and Hume , Raman Sachdev

How the Heart Became Muscle: From René Descartes to Nicholas Steno , Alex Benjamin Shillito

Autonomy, Suffering, and the Practice of Medicine: A Relational Approach , Michael A. Stanfield

The Case for the Green Kant: A Defense and Application of a Kantian Approach to Environmental Ethics , Zachary T. Vereb

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Augustine's Confessiones : The Battle between Two Conversions , Robert Hunter Craig

The Strategic Naturalism of Sandra Harding's Feminist Standpoint Epistemology: A Path Toward Epistemic Progress , Dahlia Guzman

Hume on the Doctrine of Infinite Divisibility: A Matter of Clarity and Absurdity , Wilson H. Underkuffler

Climate Change: Aristotelian Virtue Theory, the Aidōs Response and Proper Primility , John W. Voelpel

The Fate of Kantian Freedom: the Kant-Reinhold Controversy , John Walsh

Time, Tense, and Ontology: Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Tense, the Phenomenology of Temporality, and the Ontology of Time , Justin Brandt Wisniewski

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

A Phenomenological Approach to Clinical Empathy: Rethinking Empathy Within its Intersubjective and Affective Contexts , Carter Hardy

From Object to Other: Models of Sociality after Idealism in Gadamer, Levinas, Rosenzweig, and Bonhoeffer , Christopher J. King

Humanitarian Military Intervention: A Failed Paradigm , Faruk Rahmanovic

Active Suffering: An Examination of Spinoza's Approach to Tristita , Kathleen Ketring Schenk

Cartesian Method and Experiment , Aaron Spink

An Examination of John Burton’s Method of Conflict Resolution and Its Applicability to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict , John Kenneth Steinmeyer

Speaking of the Self: Theorizing the Dialogical Dimensions of Ethical Agency , Bradley S. Warfield

Changing Changelessness: On the Genesis and Development of the Doctrine of Divine Immutability in the Ancient and Hellenic Period , Milton Wilcox

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

The Statue that Houses the Temple: A Phenomenological Investigation of Western Embodiment Towards the Making of Heidegger's Missing Connection with the Greeks , Michael Arvanitopoulos

An Exploratory Analysis of Media Reporting of Police Involved Shootings in Florida , John L. Brown

Divine Temporality: Bonhoeffer's Theological Appropriation of Heidegger's Existential Analytic of Dasein , Nicholas Byle

Stoicism in Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza: Examining Neostoicism’s Influence in the Seventeenth Century , Daniel Collette

Phenomenology and the Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry: Contingency, Naturalism, and Classification , Anthony Vincent Fernandez

A Critique of Charitable Consciousness , Chioke Ianson

writing/trauma , Natasha Noel Liebig

Leibniz's More Fundamental Ontology: from Overshadowed Individuals to Metaphysical Atoms , Marin Lucio Mare

Violence and Disagreement: From the Commonsense View to Political Kinds of Violence and Violent Nonviolence , Gregory Richard Mccreery

Kant's Just War Theory , Steven Charles Starke

A Feminist Contestation of Ableist Assumptions: Implications for Biomedical Ethics, Disability Theory, and Phenomenology , Christine Marie Wieseler

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Heidegger and the Problem of Modern Moral Philosophy , Megan Emily Altman

The Encultured Mind: From Cognitive Science to Social Epistemology , David Alexander Eck

Weakness of Will: An Inquiry on Value , Michael Funke

Cogs in a Cosmic Machine: A Defense of Free Will Skepticism and its Ethical Implications , Sacha Greer

Thinking Nature, "Pierre Maupertuis and the Charge of Error Against Fermat and Leibniz" , Richard Samuel Lamborn

John Duns Scotus’s Metaphysics of Goodness: Adventures in 13th-Century Metaethics , Jeffrey W. Steele

A Gadamerian Analysis of Roman Catholic Hermeneutics: A Diachronic Analysis of Interpretations of Romans 1:17-2:17 , Steven Floyd Surrency

A Natural Case for Realism: Processes, Structures, and Laws , Andrew Michael Winters

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Leibniz's Theodicies , Joseph Michael Anderson

Aeschynē in Aristotle's Conception of Human Nature , Melissa Marie Coakley

Ressentiment, Violence, and Colonialism , Jose A. Haro

It's About Time: Dynamics of Inflationary Cosmology as the Source of the Asymmetry of Time , Emre Keskin

Time Wounds All Heels: Human Nature and the Rationality of Just Behavior , Timothy Glenn Slattery

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Nietzsche and Heidegger on the Cartesian Atomism of Thought , Steven Burgess

Embodying Social Practice: Dynamically Co-Constituting Social Agency , Brian W. Dunst

Subject of Conscience: On the Relation between Freedom and Discrimination in the Thought of Heidegger, Foucault, and Butler , Aret Karademir

Climate, Neo-Spinozism, and the Ecological Worldview , Nancy M. Kettle

Eschatology in a Secular Age: An Examination of the Use of Eschatology in the Philosophies of Heidegger, Berdyaev and Blumenberg , John R. Lup, Jr.

Navigation and Immersion of the American Identity in a Foreign Culture to Emergence as a Culturally Relative Ambassador , Lee H. Rosen

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

A Philosophical Analysis of Intellectual Property: In Defense of Instrumentalism , Michael A. Kanning

A Commentary On Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics #19 , Richard Lamborn Samuel Lamborn

Sellars in Context: An Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Early Works , Peter Jackson Olen

The New Materialism: Althusser, Badiou, and Zizek , Geoffrey Dennis Pfeifer

Structure and Agency: An Analysis of the Impact of Structure on Group Agents , Elizabeth Kaye Victor

Moral Friction, Moral Phenomenology, and the Improviser , Benjamin Scott Young

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

The Virtuoso Human: A Virtue Ethics Model Based on Care , Frederick Joseph Bennett

The Existential Compromise in the History of the Philosophy of Death , Adam Buben

Philosophical Precursors to the Radical Enlightenment: Vignettes on the Struggle Between Philosophy and Theology From the Greeks to Leibniz With Special Emphasis on Spinoza , Anthony John Desantis

The Problem of Evil in Augustine's Confessions , Edward Matusek

The Persistence of Casuistry: a Neo-premodernist Approach to Moral Reasoning , Richard Arthur Mercadante

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Dewey's Pragmatism and the Great Community , Philip Schuyler Bishop

Unamuno's Concept of the Tragic , Ernesto O. Hernandez

Rethinking Ethical Naturalism: The Implications of Developmental Systems Theory , Jared J.. Kinggard

From Husserl and the Neo-Kantians to Art: Heidegger's Realist Historicist Answer to the Problem of the Origin of Meaning , William H. Koch

Queering Cognition: Extended Minds and Sociotechnologically Hybridized Gender , Michele Merritt

Hydric Life: A Nietzschean Reading of Postcolonial Communication , Elena F. Ruiz-Aho

Descartes' Bête Machine, the Leibnizian Correction and Religious Influence , John Voelpel

Aretē and Physics: The Lesson of Plato's Timaeus , John R. Wolfe

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Praxis and Theōria : Heidegger’s “Violent” Interpretation , Megan E. Altman

On the Concept of Evil: An Analysis of Genocide and State Sovereignty , Jason J. Campbell

The Role of Trust in Judgment , Christophe Sage Hudspeth

Truth And Judgment , Jeremy J. Kelly

The concept of action and responsibility in Heidegger's early thought , Christian Hans Pedersen

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The idea of justice occupies centre stage both in ethics, and in legal and political philosophy. We apply it to individual actions, to laws, and to public policies, and we think in each case that if they are unjust this is a strong, maybe even conclusive, reason to reject them. Classically, justice was counted as one of the four cardinal virtues (and sometimes as the most important of the four); in modern times John Rawls famously described it as ‘the first virtue of social institutions’ (Rawls 1971, p.3; Rawls, 1999, p.3). We might debate which of these realms of practical philosophy has first claim on justice: is it first and foremost a property of the law, for example, and only derivatively a property of individuals and other institutions? But it is probably more enlightening to accept that the idea has over time sunk deep roots in each of these domains, and to try to make sense of such a wide-ranging concept by identifying elements that are present whenever justice is invoked, but also examining the different forms it takes in various practical contexts. This article aims to provide a general map of the ways in which justice has been understood by philosophers, past and present.

We begin by identifying four core features that distinguish justice from other moral and political ideas. We then examine some major conceptual contrasts: between conservative and ideal justice, between corrective and distributive justice, between procedural and substantive justice, and between comparative and non-comparative justice. Next we turn to questions of scope: to who or what do principles of justice apply? We ask whether non-human animals can be subjects of justice, whether justice applies only between people who already stand in a particular kind of relationship to one another, and whether individual people continue to have duties of justice once justice-based institutions have been created. We then examine three overarching theories that might serve to unify the different forms of justice: utilitarianism, contractarianism, and egalitarianism. But it seems, in conclusion, that no such theory is likely be successful.

More detailed discussions of particular forms of justice can be found in other entries: see especially distributive justice , global justice , intergenerational justice , international distributive justice , justice and bad luck , justice as a virtue , and retributive justice .

1.1 Justice and Individual Claims

1.2 justice, charity and enforceable obligation, 1.3 justice and impartiality, 1.4 justice and agency, 2.1 conservative versus ideal justice, 2.2 corrective versus distributive justice, 2.3 procedural versus substantive justice, 2.4 comparative versus non-comparative justice, 3.1 human vs non-human animals, 3.2 relational vs non-relational justice, 3.3 individuals vs institutions, 3.4 recognition vs. redistribution, 4.1 accommodating intuitions about justice, 4.2 utilitarian theories of justice: three problems, 5.1 gauthier, 5.3 scanlon, 6.1 justice as equality, 6.2 responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism, 6.3 relational egalitarianism, 7. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. justice: mapping the concept.

‘Justice’ has sometimes been used in a way that makes it virtually indistinguishable from rightness in general. Aristotle, for example, distinguished between ‘universal’ justice that corresponded to ‘virtue as a whole’ and ‘particular’ justice which had a narrower scope (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , Book V, chs. 1–2). The wide sense may have been more evident in classical Greek than in modern English. But Aristotle also noted that when justice was identified with ‘complete virtue’, this was always ‘in relation to another person’. In other words, if justice is to be identified with morality as such, it must be morality in the sense of ‘what we owe to each other’ (see Scanlon 1998). But it is anyway questionable whether justice should be understood so widely. At the level of individual ethics, justice is often contrasted with charity on the one hand, and mercy on the other, and these too are other-regarding virtues. At the level of public policy, reasons of justice are distinct from, and often compete with, reasons of other kinds, for example economic efficiency or environmental value.

As this article will endeavour to show, justice takes on different meanings in different practical contexts, and to understand it fully we have to grapple with this diversity. But it is nevertheless worth asking whether we find a core concept that runs through all these various uses, or whether it is better regarded as a family resemblance idea according to which different combinations of features are expected to appear on each occasion of use. The most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the Institutes of Justinian , a codification of Roman Law from the sixth century AD, where justice is defined as ‘the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due’. This is of course quite abstract until further specified, but it does throw light upon four important aspects of justice.

First, it shows that justice has to do with how individual people are treated (‘to each his due’). Issues of justice arise in circumstances in which people can advance claims – to freedom, opportunities, resources, and so forth – that are potentially conflicting, and we appeal to justice to resolve such conflicts by determining what each person is properly entitled to have. In contrast, where people’s interests converge, and the decision to be taken is about the best way to pursue some common purpose – think of a government official having to decide how much food to stockpile as insurance against some future emergency – justice gives way to other values. In other cases, there may be no reason to appeal to justice because resources are so plentiful that we do not need to worry about allotting shares to individuals. Hume pointed out that in a hypothetical state of abundance where ‘every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want’, ‘the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of’ (Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals , pp. 183–4). Hume also believed – and philosophical controversy on this point persists until today – that justice has no place in close personal relationships, such as the family, where (it is alleged) each identifies with the others’ interests so strongly that there is no need and no reason for anyone to make claims of personal entitlement. (See Sandel 1982 for a defence of this view; for a critique, see Okin 1989. See also the entry on feminist perspectives on reproduction and the family) .

That justice is a matter of how each separate person is treated appears to create problems for theories such as utilitarianism that judge actions and policies on the basis of their overall consequences aggregated across people – assuming that these theories wish to incorporate rather than discard the idea of justice. In Section 4 below we examine how utilitarians have attempted to respond to this challenge.

Although justice is centrally a matter of how individuals are treated, it is also possible to speak of justice for groups – for example when the state is allocating resources between different categories of citizens. Here each group is being treated as though it were a separate individual for purposes of the allocation.

Second, Justinian’s definition underlines that just treatment is something due to each person, in other words that justice is a matter of claims that can be rightfully made against the agent dispensing justice, whether a person or an institution. Here there is a contrast with other virtues: we demand justice, but we beg for charity or forgiveness. This also means that justice is a matter of obligation for the agent dispensing it, and that the agent wrongs the recipient if the latter is denied what is due to her. It is a characteristic mark of justice that the obligations it creates should be enforceable: we can be made to deliver what is due to others as a matter of justice, either by the recipients themselves or by third parties. However it overstates the position to make the enforceability of its requirements a defining feature of justice (see Buchanan 1987). On the one hand, there are some claims of justice that seem not to be enforceable (by anyone). When we dispense gifts to our children or our friends, we ought to treat each recipient fairly, but neither the beneficiaries themselves nor anyone else can rightfully force the giver to do so. On the other hand, in cases of extreme emergency, it may sometimes be justifiable to force people to do more than justice requires them to do – there may exist enforceable duties of humanity. But these are rare exceptions. The obligatory nature of justice generally goes hand-in-hand with enforceability.

The third aspect of justice to which Justinian’s definition draws our attention is the connection between justice and the impartial and consistent application of rules – that is what the ‘constant and perpetual will’ part of the definition conveys. Justice is the opposite of arbitrariness. It requires that where two cases are relevantly alike, they should be treated in the same way (We discuss below the special case of justice and lotteries). Following a rule that specifies what is due to a person who has features X , Y , Z whenever such a person is encountered ensures this. And although the rule need not be unchangeable – perpetual in the literal sense – it must be relatively stable. This explains why justice is exemplified in the rule of law, where laws are understood as general rules impartially applied over time. Outside of the law itself, individuals and institutions that want to behave justly must mimic the law in certain ways (for instance, gathering reliable information about individual claimants, allowing for appeals against decisions).

Finally, the definition reminds us that justice requires an agent whose will alters the circumstances of its objects. The agent might be an individual person, or it might be a group of people, or an institution such as the state. So we cannot, except metaphorically, describe as unjust states of affairs that no agent has contributed to bringing about – unless we think that there is a Divine Being who has ordered the universe in such a way that every outcome is a manifestation of His will. Admittedly we are tempted to make judgements of what is sometimes called ‘cosmic injustice’ – say when a talented person’s life is cut cruelly short by cancer, or our favourite football team is eliminated from the competition by a freak goal – but this is a temptation we should resist.

This agency condition, however, is less restrictive than it might at first appear. It by no means excludes the possibility that agents can create injustice by omission – for example by failing to create the institutions or to enact the policies that would deliver vital resources to those who need them. Thus it is now common to speak of ‘systemic injustice’ in the case of bad outcomes that no-one intends to occur but that could be prevented by a shift in social norms or institutional practices. The agents in these cases are all those who by acting together to change these things could invert the injustice, but have so far failed to do so.

2. Justice: Four Distinctions

We have so far looked at four elements that are present in every use of the concept of justice. Now it is time to consider some equally important contrasts.

Philosophers writing on justice have observed that it has two different faces, one conservative of existing norms and practices, the other demanding reform of these norms and practices (see Sidgwick 1874/1907, Raphael 2001). Thus on the one hand it is a matter of justice to respect people’s rights under existing law or moral rules, or more generally to fulfil the legitimate expectations they have acquired as a result of past practice, social conventions, and so forth; on the other hand, justice often gives us reason to change laws, practices and conventions quite radically, thereby creating new entitlements and expectations. This exposes an ambiguity in what it means to ‘render each his due’. What is ‘due’ might be what a person can reasonably expect to have given existing law, policy, or social practice, or it might be what the person should get under a regime of ideal justice: this could mean what the person deserves, or needs, or is entitled to on grounds of equality, depending on which ideal principle is being invoked.

Conceptions of justice vary according to the weight they attach to each of these faces. At one extreme, some conceptions interpret justice as wholly concerned with what individuals can claim under existing laws and social conventions: thus for Hume, justice was to be understood as adherence to a set of rules that assign physical objects to individuals (such as being the first possessor of such an object) (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature , Book III, Part II). These rules can be explained by reference to the natural associations that form in people’s minds between persons and external objects, and although the system of justice as a whole can be shown to be socially useful, there are no relevant independent standards by which its principles can be assessed (Hume briskly dismissed equality and merit as principles for allocating property to persons). In similar vein, Hayek argued that justice was a property of individual behaviour, understood as compliance with the ‘rules of just conduct’ that had evolved to enable a market economy to function effectively. For Hayek, to speak of ‘social justice’ as an ideal standard of distribution was as meaningless as to speak of a ‘moral stone’ (Hayek 1976, p. 78)

At the other extreme stand conceptions of justice which posit some ideal principle of distribution such as equality, together with a ‘currency’ specifying the respect in which justice requires people to be made equally well off, and then refuse to acknowledge the justice of any claims that do not arise directly from the application of this principle. Thus claims deriving from existing law or practice are dismissed unless they happen to coincide with what the principle requires. More often, however, ideal justice is seen as proposing principles by which existing institutions and practices can be assessed, with a view to reforming them, or in the extreme case abolishing them entirely, while the claims that people already have under those practices are given some weight. Rawls, for example, whose two principles of justice count as ideal principles for this purpose, is at pains to stress that they are not intended to be applied in a way that disregards people’s existing legitimate expectations. About the ‘difference principle’, which requires social and economic inequalities to be regulated so that they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society, he says:

It applies to the announced system of public law and statutes and not to particular transactions or distributions, nor to the decisions of individuals and associations, but rather to the institutional background against which these transactions and decisions take place. There are no unannounced and unpredictable interferences with citizens’ expectations and acquisitions. Entitlements are earned and honored as the public system of rules declares. (Rawls 1993, p. 283)

Here we see Rawls attempting to reconcile the demands of conservative and ideal justice. Yet he does not directly address the question of what should happen when changing circumstances mean that the difference principle requires new laws or policies to be enacted: do those whose prior entitlements or expectations are no longer met have a claim to be compensated for their loss? We could call this the question of transitional justice (though this phrase is often used now in a more specific sense to refer to the process of reconciliation that may occur following civil war or other armed conflicts: see the entry on transitional justice ).

A second important contrast, whose pedigree reaches back at least as far as Aristotle, is between justice as a principle for assigning distributable goods of various kinds to individual people, and justice as a remedial principle that applies when one person wrongly interferes with another’s legitimate holdings. Thus suppose Bill steals Alice’s computer, or sells Alice faulty goods which he claims to be in perfect order: then Alice suffers a loss, which justice demands that Bill should remedy by returning the computer or fulfilling his contract honestly. Corrective justice, then, essentially concerns a bilateral relationship between a wrongdoer and his victim, and demands that the fault be cancelled by restoring the victim to the position she would have been in had the wrongful behaviour not occurred; it may also require that the wrongdoer not benefit from his faulty behaviour. Distributive justice, on the other hand, is multilateral: it assumes a distributing agent, and a number of persons who have claims on what is being distributed. Justice here requires that the resources available to the distributor be shared according to some relevant criterion, such as equality, desert, or need. In Aristotle’s example, if there are fewer flutes available than people who want to play them, they should be given to the best performers (Aristotle, The Politics , p. 128). In modern debates, principles of distributive justice are applied to social institutions such as property and tax systems, which are understood as producing distributive outcomes across large societies, or even the world as a whole.

The conceptual distinction between distributive and corrective justice seems clear, but their normative relationship is more difficult to pin down (see Perry 2000, Ripstein 2004, Coleman 1992, chs. 16–17). Some have claimed that corrective justice is merely instrumental to distributive justice: its aim is to move from a situation of distributive injustice brought about by the faulty behaviour to one that is more nearly (if not perfectly) distributively just. But this view runs into a number of objections. One is that so long as Alice has a legitimate title to her computer, her claim of corrective justice against Bill does not depend on her having had, prior to the theft, the share of resources that distributive justice ideally demands. She might be richer than she deserves to be, yet corrective justice still require that the computer be returned to her. In other words, corrective justice may serve to promote conservative rather than ideal justice, to use the distinction introduced in 2.1. Another objection is that corrective justice requires the wrongdoer himself to restore or compensate the person he has wronged, even if the cause of distributive justice could be better served by transferring resources from a third party – giving Alice one of even-more-undeservedly-rich Charles’s computers, for example. This underlines the bilateral nature of corrective justice, and also the fact that it comes into play in response to faulty behaviour on someone’s part. Its primary demand is that people should not lose out because others have behaved wrongfully or carelessly, but it also encompasses the idea that ‘no man should profit by his own wrong’. If Alice loses her computer in a boating accident, she might, under an insurance scheme, have a claim of distributive justice to a new machine, but she has no claim of corrective justice.

If corrective justice cannot be subsumed normatively under distributive justice, we need to explain its value. What is achieved when we make Bill return the computer to Alice? Aristotle ( Nicomachean Ethics , Book V, ch. 4) suggested that corrective justice aims to restore the two parties to a position of equality; by returning the computer we cancel both Bill’s unjustified gain and Alice’s unjustified loss. But this assumes that the computer can be returned intact. Corrective justice requires that Alice be made no worse off than she was before the theft, even if that means Bill suffering an absolute loss (e.g. by paying for a new computer if he has damaged Alice’s). Aristotle himself recognized that the idea of evening out gain and loss made no literal sense in a case where one person assaults another and has to compensate him for his injury – there is no ‘gain’ to be redistributed. It seems, then, that the value of corrective justice must lie in the principle that each person must take responsibility for his own conduct, and if he fails to respect the legitimate interests of others by causing injury, he must make good the harm. In that way, each person can plan her life secure in the knowledge that she will be protected against certain kinds of external setbacks. Philosophers and lawyers writing on corrective justice disagree about what standard of responsibility should apply – for example whether compensation is required only when one person wilfully or negligently causes another to suffer loss, or whether it can also be demanded when the perpetrator displays no such fault but is nevertheless causally responsible for the injury.

A third distinction that must be drawn is between the justice of the procedures that might be used to determine how benefits and burdens of various kinds are allocated to people, and the justice of the final allocation itself. It might initially seem as though the justice of a procedure can be reduced to the justice of the results produced by applying it, but this is not so. For one thing, there are cases in which the idea of an independently just outcome makes no sense. A coin toss is a fair way of deciding who starts a game, but neither the Blues nor the Reds have a claim of justice to bat first or kick off. But even where a procedure has been shaped by a concern that it should produce substantively just outcomes, it may still have special properties that make it intrinsically just. In that case, using a different procedure to produce the same result might be objectionable. In an influential discussion, John Rawls contrasted perfect procedural justice , where a procedure is such that if it is followed a just outcome is guaranteed (requiring the person who cuts a cake to take the last slice himself is the illustration Rawls provides), imperfect procedural justice , where the procedure is such that following it is likely, but not certain, to produce the just result, and pure procedural justice , such as the coin-tossing example, where there is no independent way to assess the outcome – if we call it just, it is only on the grounds that it has come about by following the relevant procedure (Rawls 1971, 1999, § 14).

Theories of justice can then be distinguished according to the relative weight they attach to procedures and substantive outcomes. Some theories are purely procedural in form. Robert Nozick distinguished between historical theories of justice, end-state theories, and patterned theories in order to defend the first against the second and third (Nozick 1974). An end-state theory defines justice in terms of some overall property of a distribution (of resources, welfare, etc.) – for example whether it is egalitarian, or whether the lowest position in the distribution is as high as it can be, as Rawls’ difference principle requires. A patterned theory looks at whether what each receives as part of a distribution matches some individual feature such as their desert or their need. By contrast, an historical theory asks about the process by which the final outcome has arisen. In Nozick’s particular case, a distribution of resources is said to be just if everyone within its scope is entitled to what they now own, having acquired it by legitimate means – such as voluntary contract or gift – from someone who was also entitled to have it, leading back eventually to a just act of acquisition – such as labouring on a plot of land – that gave the first owner his valid title. The shape of the final distribution is irrelevant: according to Nozick, justice is entirely a matter of the sequence of prior events that created it (for critical assessments of Nozick’s position, see Paul 1982, Wolff 1991, Cohen 1995, chs. 1–2).

For most philosophers, however, the justice of a procedure is to a large extent a function of the justice of the outcomes that it tends to produce when applied. For instance, the procedures that together make up a fair trial are justified on the grounds that for the most part they produce outcomes in which the guilty are punished and the innocent are acquitted. Yet even in these cases, we should be wary of assuming that the procedure itself has no independent value. We can ask of a procedure whether it treats the people to whom it is applied justly, for example by giving them adequate opportunities to advance their claims, not requiring them to provide personal information that they find humiliating to reveal, and so forth. Studies by social psychologists have shown that in many cases people care more about being treated fairly by the institutions they have to deal with than about how they fare when the procedure’s final result is known (Lind and Tyler 1988).

Justice takes a comparative form when to determine what is due to one person we need to look at what others can also claim: to determine how large a slice of pie is rightfully John’s, we have to know how many others have a claim to the pie, and also what the principle for sharing it should be – equality, or something else. Justice takes a non-comparative form when we can determine what is due to a person merely by knowing relevant facts about that particular person: if John has already been promised the whole of the pie, then that is what he can rightfully claim for himself. Some theories of justice seem to imply that justice is always a comparative notion – for example when it is said that justice consists in the absence of arbitrary inequality – whereas others imply that it is always non-comparative. But conceptually, at least, both forms seem admissible; indeed we can find cases in which it appears we have to choose between doing justice comparatively and doing it non-comparatively (see Feinberg 1974; for a critical response, see Montague 1980). For example, we might have several candidates all of whom are roughly equally deserving of an academic honour, but the number of honours we are permitted to award is smaller than the number of candidates. If we honour some but not others, we perpetrate a comparative injustice, but if to avoid doing so we honour no-one at all, then each is treated less well than they deserve, and so unjustly from a non-comparative perspective.

Theories of justice can then be categorised according to whether they are comparative, non-comparative, or neither. Principles of equality – principles requiring the equal distribution of some kind of benefit – are plainly comparative in form, since what is due to each person is simply an equal share of the benefit in question rather than any fixed amount. In the case of principles of desert, the position is less straightforward. These principles take the form ‘ A deserves X by virtue of P ’, where X is a mode of treatment, and P is a personal characteristic possessed by A (Feinberg 1970). In the case of both X and P , we can ask whether they are to be identified comparatively or non-comparatively. Thus what A deserves might either be an entitlement, or an absolute amount of some benefit – ‘a living wage’, say – or it might be a share of some collective benefit, or a multiple or fraction of what others are receiving – ‘twice what B is getting’, say. Turning to P , or what is often called the desert basis, this may be a feature of A that we can identify without reference to anyone else, or it may be a comparative feature, such as being the best student in a graduating class. So desert-based claims of justice might take one of four different forms depending on whether the basis of desert and/or the deserved mode of treatment is comparative or non-comparative (see Olsaretti 2003 for essays that address this question; for a more advanced treatment, see Kagan 2012, Part III).

Among principles of justice that are straightforwardly non-comparative are ‘sufficiency’ principles which hold that what justice requires is that each person should have ‘enough’, on some dimension or other – for instance, have all of their needs fulfilled, or have a specified set of capabilities that they are able to exercise (for a general defence of sufficiency, though not one that links it specifically to justice, see Frankfurt 2015; for a critique, see Casal 2007). Such principles, however, need to be supplemented by other principles, not only to tell us what to do with the surplus (assuming there is one) once everyone has sufficient resources, but also to guide us in situations where there are too few resources to bring everyone up to the sufficiency threshold. Should we, for example, maximise the number of people who achieve sufficiency, or minimise the aggregate shortfall suffered by those in the relevant group? Unless we are prepared to say that these are not matters of justice, a theory of justice that contains only the sufficiency principle and nothing else looks incomplete.

Some theories of justice cannot readily be classified either as comparative or as non-comparative. Consider one part of Rawls’ theory of social justice, the difference principle, which as noted above requires that social and economic inequalities be arranged to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (Rawls 1971, 1999, §12–13). Under this principle, ideally just shares are calculated by determining what each person would receive under the set of social institutions whose economic effect is to raise the worst off person to the highest possible level. This is neither a fixed amount, nor one that depends in any direct sense on what other individuals are receiving, or should receive. Applying the difference principle does require making comparisons, but these are comparisons between the effects of different social institutions – say different tax laws, or different ways of defining property rights – not between individual people and the amounts of benefit they are receiving. We might call theories of this kind ‘holistic’ or ‘systemic’.

3. The Scope of Justice

When we raise questions about the scope of justice, we are asking about when principles of justice take effect and among whom . We have already, when discussing Hume, encountered the idea that there might be circumstances in which justice becomes irrelevant – circumstances in which resources are so abundant that it is pointless to allocate individual shares, or, as Hume also believed, in which resources are so scarce that everyone is permitted to grab what he can in the name of self-preservation. But even in circumstances that are less extreme than these, questions about scope arise. Who can make claims of justice, and who might have the corresponding obligation to meet them? Does this depend on the kind of thing that is being claimed? If comparative principles are being applied, who should be counted as part of the comparison group? Do some principles of justice have universal scope – they apply whenever agent A acts towards recipient B , regardless of the relationship between them – while others are contextual in character, applying only within social or political relationships of a certain kind? The present section examines some of these questions in greater detail.

What does a creature have to do, or be like, to be included within the scope of (at least some) principles of justice? Most past philosophers have assumed that the line should be drawn so as to exclude all non-human animals, but more recently some have been prepared to defend ‘justice for animals’ (Nussbaum 2006, ch. 6; Garner 2013). Against this, Rawls asserts that although we have ‘duties of compassion and humanity’ towards animals and should refrain from treating them cruelly, nonetheless they are ‘outside the scope of the theory of justice’ (Rawls 1971, p. 512; Rawls 1999, p. 448). How could this claim be justified?

We can focus our attention either on individual features that humans possess and animals lack, and that might be thought relevant to their inclusion within the scope of justice, or on asymmetries in the relationship between humans and other animals. To begin with the latter, Hume claimed that the domination humans exercised over animals – such that an animal could only possess something by virtue of our permission – meant that we were ‘bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them’ (Hume, Enquiry , p. 190). For Rawls and those influenced by him, principles of distributive justice apply among agents who are related to one another as participants in a ‘cooperative venture for mutual advantage’, and this might seem to exclude animals from the scope of such principles. Critics of this view have pointed to cases of human-animal co-operation (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011, Valentini 2014); however these arguments focus mainly or entirely on the special case of dogs , and it seems implausible to generalise from them in an attempt to show that human-animal relationships generally have a co-operative character.

But the claim that justice only applies to participants in co-operative practices is anyway vulnerable to the objection that it risks excluding seriously disabled people, people living in isolated communities, and future generations from the scope of justice, so it does not seem compelling as a claim about justice in general (see further below). Might there be other reasons why animals cannot make claims of justice on us? Another Rawls-inspired suggestion is that animals lack the necessary moral powers, in particular the capacity to act on principles of justice themselves. They cannot distinguish what is justly owed to them from what is not; and they cannot determine what they owe to others – whether to humans or to other non-human animals – as a matter of justice. This suggestion interprets justice as involving a kind of reciprocity: an agent to whom justice is due must also in principle be an agent who could dispense justice to others, by virtue of having the relevant capacity, even if for physical reasons – such as suffering from severe disability – they cannot do so in practice.

If this suggestion is rejected, and we allow that some animals, at least, should be included within the scope of justice, we can then ask about the form that justice should take in their cases. Using the distinction drawn in 2.4 above, it appears that justice for animals must be non-comparative. For example, we might attribute rights to the animals over whom we exercise power – rights against cruel treatment, and rights to food and shelter, for instance. This would involve using a sufficiency principle to determine what animals are owed as a matter of justice. It is much less plausible to think that comparative principles might apply, such that giving special treats to one cat but not another could count as an injustice.

The Rawlsian view introduced in the previous section, which holds that principles of social justice apply among people who are engaged together in a co-operative practice, is a leading example of a relational theory of justice. Other theories offer different accounts of the relevant justice-generating feature: for example, Nagel has argued that principles of distributive justice apply among people who by virtue of being citizens of the same state are required both to comply with, and accept responsibility for, the coercive laws that govern their lives (Nagel 2005). In both cases, the claim being made is that when people stand in a certain relationship to one another, they become subject to principles of justice whose scope is limited to those within the relationship. In particular, comparative principles apply within the relationship, but not beyond it. If A stands in a relationship (of the right kind) to B , then it becomes a matter of justice how A is treated relative to B , but it does not matter in the same way how A is treated relative to C who stands outside of the relationship. Justice may still require that C be given treatment of a certain kind, but that will be justice in its non-comparative guise.

Whether justice is relational in either of the ways that Rawls and Nagel suggest has large implications for its scope. In particular it bears on the question whether there is such a thing as global distributive justice, or, in contrast, whether distributive principles only apply to people who are related together as members of the same society or citizens of the same state. For example, might the global inequalities that exist between rich and poor in today’s world be unjust simply as inequalities, or are they unjust only insofar as they prevent poor people from living lives that we judge to be acceptable? (see entries on international distributive justice and global justice ) So much hangs on the question whether, and if so in virtue of what, distributive justice has a relational character. What reason can be given for thinking that it does?

Suppose we have two people A and B , of whom one is significantly better off than another – has greater opportunities or a higher income, say. Why should this be a concern of justice? It seems it will not be a concern unless it can be shown that the inequality between A and B can be attributed to the behaviour of some agent, individual or collective, whose actions or omissions have resulted in A being better off than B – in which case we can ask whether the inequality between them is justifiable, say on grounds of their respective deserts. This reiterates the claim in 1.4 above that without an agent to whom the outcome can be attributed there can only be justice or injustice in a metaphorical, ‘cosmic’, sense. Relational theorists claim that when people associate with one another in the relevant way, they become agents of justice. On a small scale they can organize informally to ensure that each receives what is due to him relative to the rest. On a larger scale, distributive justice requires the creation of legal and other institutions to achieve that outcome. Moreover failure to co-ordinate their actions in this way is likely to be a source of injustice by omission.

Debates about the scope of justice then become debates about whether different forms of human association are of the right kind to create agency in the relevant sense. Take the question of whether principles of social justice should apply to market transactions. If we see the market as a neutral arena in which many individual people freely pursue their own purposes, then the answer will be No. The only form of justice that arises will be justice in the conduct of each agent, who must avoid inflicting harm on others, must fulfil her contracts, and so forth. Whereas if we see the market as governed by a humanly-constructed system of rules that the participants collectively have the power to change – by legislation, for example – then we cannot avoid asking whether the outcomes it currently produces meet relevant standards of distributive justice, whatever we take these to be. A similar issue arises in the debate about over principles of global justice referred to above: is the current world order such that it makes sense to regard humanity as a whole as a collective agent responsible for the distributive outcomes it allows to occur?

Once institutions are established for the purpose (among other things) of delivering justice on a large scale, we can ask what duties of justice individual people have in consequence. Is their duty simply to support the institutions, and comply with whatever rules of conduct apply to them personally? Or do they have further duties to promote justice by acting directly on the relevant principles in their daily lives? No one doubts that some duties of justice fall directly on individuals, for example duties not to deceive or defraud when engaging in commercial transactions (and duties of corrective justice where behaviour is faulty), or duties to carry out one’s fair share of an informally organized project from which one expects to benefit, such as cleaning up the neighbourhood park. Others fall on them because they are performing a role within a social institution, for example the duty of an employer not to discriminate on grounds of race or gender when hiring workers, or the duty of a local government officer to assign public housing to those in greatest need. But what is much more in dispute is whether individual people have more extensive duties to promote social justice (for contrasting views, see Cohen 2008, ch. 3, Murphy 1998, Rawls 1993, Lecture VII, Young 2011, ch. 2).

Consider two cases: the first concerns parents who confer advantages on their children in ways that undermine fair equality of opportunity. If the latter principle of justice requires, to cite Rawls, that ‘those who have the same level of talent and ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of their social class of origin’ (Rawls 2001, p. 44) then there are myriad ways in which some parents can bestow advantages on their children that other parents cannot – financial benefits, educational opportunities, social contacts, and so forth – that are likely to bring greater success in later life. Are parents therefore constrained as a matter of justice to avoid conferring at least some of these advantages, or are they free to benefit their children as they choose, leaving the pursuit of equal opportunities entirely in the hands of the state (for a careful analysis, see Brighouse and Swift 2014)?

The second example concerns wage differentials. Might individuals whose talents can bring them high rewards in the labour market have a duty not to make use of their bargaining power, but instead be willing to work for a fair wage – which if fairness is understood in egalitarian terms might mean the same wage as everyone else (perhaps with extra compensation for those whose labour is unusually burdensome)? Rawls, as we saw above, argued that economic justice meant arranging social and economic inequalities to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, and in formulating the principle in this way he assumed that some inequalities might serve as incentives to greater production that would also raise the position of the worst-off group in society. But if individuals were willing to forego incentives, and so economic inequalities served no useful purpose, then the arrangement that worked to the greatest benefit of the (otherwise) least advantaged would be one of strict equality. Cohen (2008) argues that Rawls’ position is internally inconsistent. As citizens designing our institutions we are supposed to be guided by the difference principle, but as private actors in the marketplace, we are permitted to ignore that principle and bargain for higher wages, even though doing so will work to the disadvantage of the worst-off group. Justice, according to Cohen, requires us to embrace an ethos of service that disdains material incentives.

Why might we hesitate before agreeing that in cases such as these, justice requires people to refrain from doing things that they are permitted to do by the public rules of their society (passing on benefits to their children; seeking higher wages)? One reason is that the refraining is only going to have a significant effect if it is practised on a large scale, and individuals have no assurance that others will follow their example; meanwhile they (or their children) will lose out relative to the less scrupulous. A connected reason has to do with publicity: it may be hard to detect whether people are following the required ethos or not (see Williams 1998). Is the person who sends her child to a private school because she claims he has special needs that the local state school cannot meet being sincere, or is she just trying to buy him comparative advantage? How can we tell whether the person who claims more money, but merely, he says, as compensation for the unusual stress that his work involves, is reporting honestly? (for Cohen’s response, see Cohen 2008, ch. 8) It appears, then, that there are principles of justice that apply to what Rawls calls ‘the basic structure of society [as] a public system of rules’ that do not apply in the same way to the personal behaviour of the individuals who live within that structure. Attending to the scope , as well as the content , of justice is important.

Recent philosophical writing on justice has drawn attention to forms of injustice that do not involve the material treatment that people receive, either from other persons or from institutions, but the harms they suffer through failures of recognition. They are impacted by social norms and social practices that diminish their sense of agency and induce them to see themselves as of lesser value than others. Here then justice is understood as being adequately and appropriately recognized, and injustice as involving failures of recognition, or in some cases ‘misrecognition’, when a person is placed in a category or assigned an identity that is not their own. In one influential formulation of this idea, ‘it is unjust that some individuals and groups are denied the status of full partners in social interaction simply as a consequence of institutionalized patterns of cultural value in whose construction they have not equally participated and which disparage their distinctive characteristics or the distinctive characteristics assigned to them’ (Fraser in Fraser and Honneth 2003, p. 29).

What, then, does it mean to be recognized? In general it means to be viewed and treated by others in the way that is appropriate to the features that you possess, but most philosophers regard recognition as multidimensional. In particular, they distinguish between being recognized as an equal, where a person is accorded the kind of standing that gives them an equal status with other members of the relevant group, and being recognized for having characteristics, achievements or an identity that may be uniquely their own. Recognition in this second sense may involve the unequal granting of social esteem. Justice as recognition, therefore, is internally complex. At the social level, Axel Honneth distinguishes ‘three forms of social recognition, based in the sphere-specific principles of love, equal legal treatment, and social esteem’ (Fraser and Honneth 2003 p. 180)

The question that arises is how best to understand the relationship between justice of this kind and distributive justice, involving the allocation of material resources and so forth. For Honneth, justice as recognition is understood expansively so that it can also capture issues of economic justice, the thought being that the harm inflicted when, say, labour is not adequately rewarded can be understood as a failure to offer adequate recognition of the worker’s social contribution. For Nancy Fraser, by contrast, recognition and redistribution are seen as two mutually irreducible but jointly necessary conditions for social justice. Failures of recognition can be experienced by some among the economically privileged – such as ‘the African-American Wall Street banker who cannot get a taxi to pick him up’ (Fraser and Honneth 2003, p. 34). Justice as recognition requires cultural shifts in the way that different forms of identity and different types of achievement are valued that are independent of the institutional changes required to achieve distributive justice.

A particular form of recognitional injustice is epistemic injustice as diagnosed by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007). This occurs when someone is wronged in their capacity as a source of knowledge, and it takes two main forms: testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice. As Fricker explains ‘testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word; hermeneutical injustice occurs at a prior stage when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone as at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences’ (Fricker 2007, p. 1). She argues that testimonial injustice matters for two reasons. First, the person who suffers from it is less able to protect or advance their interests – for example they are less likely to be believed when having to defend themselves in court. Second, since others are unwilling to regard them as competent sources of knowledge, they may lose trust in their own capacity to know, leading in some cases to ‘prolonged self-doubt and loss of intellectual confidence’.

Hermeneutical injustice arises in the context of unequal relationships in which the subordinated party lacks the concept or concepts needed to make sense of their experience (and thereby to challenge their subordination). Fricker uses the example of a woman who suffered sexual harassment at the time before feminists had developed that concept, and so had no adequate word to describe what she was experiencing. Hermeneutical injustice matters most when it is systematic, brought about by power inequalities that leave certain groups ‘hermeneutically marginalised’. However she treats epistemic justice as a virtue that individual hearers can develop, in contrast to recognition theorists like Fraser and Honneth for whom achieving recognitional justice requires collective action to change social and cultural norms on the part of misrecognized groups.

4. Utilitarianism and Justice

Can justice be understood in utilitarian terms? This may in the first place depend on how we interpret utilitarianism. We treat it here as a normative theory whose aim is to supply a criterion – the greatest happiness principle – that can be used, directly or indirectly, both by individuals and by institutions (such as states) in deciding what to do, rather than simply as a tool for evaluating states of affairs. Utilitarianism cannot plausibly provide a theory of justice unless it is interpreted in this action-guiding way, in light of what was said above about justice and agency. We also assume that the most likely candidate will be a rule-utilitarian view that treats principles of justice as belonging to the set of rules which when followed by the relevant agents will tend to produce the greatest total utility (for different ways of formulating this view, see the entry on rule consequentialism) .

Most utilitarians have regarded it as part of their task in defending utilitarianism to show that it can both accommodate and explain much of what we intuitively believe about justice. This is certainly true of two of the greatest among them, John Stuart Mill and Sidgwick, both of whom went to considerable lengths to show that familiar principles of justice could be given a utilitarian rationale (Mill Utilitarianism , ch. 5; Sidgwick 1874/1907, Book III, ch.5). Bentham, in contrast, was more cavalier: ‘justice, in the only sense in which it has a meaning, is an imaginary personage, feigned for the convenience of discourse, whose dictates are the dictates of utility, applied to certain particular cases’ ( The Principles of Morals and Legislation , pp. 125–6). If we follow the lead of Mill and Sidgwick in wishing to take seriously how justice is commonly understood, the utilitarian has two challenges to face. First he or she must show that the demands of justice as commonly understood correspond roughly to the rules that when followed by persons, or implemented by institutions, are most conducive to the greatest happiness. They need not mirror the latter exactly, because utilitarians will argue, as both Mill and Sidgwick did, that our intuitions about justice are often ambiguous or internally inconsistent, but there must be enough overlap to warrant the claim that what the utilitarian theory can accommodate and explain is indeed justice . (As Sidgwick (1874/1907, p. 264) put it, ‘we may, so to speak, clip the ragged edge of common usage, but we must not make excision of any considerable portion’.) Second, some explanation must be given for the distinctiveness of justice. Why do we have a concept that is used to mark off a particular set of requirements and claims if the normative basis for these requirements and claims is nothing other than general utility? What accounts for our intuitive sense of justice? The task confronting the utilitarian, then, is to systematize our understanding of justice without obliterating it.

By way of illustration, both Mill and Sidgwick recognize that desert , of both reward and punishment, is a key component of common understandings of justice, but they argue that if we remain at the level of common sense when we try to analyse it, we run into irresolvable contradictions. For instance, we are inclined to think that a person’s deserts should depend on what they have actually achieved – say the economic value of what they have produced – but also, because achievement will depend on factors for which the person in question can claim no credit, such as inborn talent, that their deserts should depend only on factors for which they are directly responsible, such as the amount of effort they expend. Each of these conceptions, when put into practice, would lead to a quite different schedule of rewards, and the only means to escape the impasse, these utilitarians claim, is to ask which schedule will generate most utility by directing people’s choices and efforts in the most socially productive way. Similar reasoning applies to the principles of punishment: the rules we should follow are the rules that are most conducive to the ends for which punishment is instituted, such as deterring crime.

To explain the distinctiveness of justice, Mill suggests that it designates moral requirements that, because of their very great importance to human well-being, people have a right to have discharged, and are therefore matters of perfect obligation. A person who commits an injustice is always liable to punishment of some kind, he argues. So he explains our sense of justice in terms of the resentment we feel towards someone who breaches these requirements. Sidgwick, who laid greater stress than Mill on the connection between justice and law, also underlined the relationship between justice and gratitude, on one side, and resentment, on the other, in order to capture the way in which our concern for justice seems to differ from our concern for utility in general.

Yet despite these efforts to reconcile justice and utility, three serious obstacles still remain. The first concerns what we might call the currency of justice: justice has to do with the way that tangible benefits and burdens are assigned, and not with the happiness or unhappiness that the assignees experience. It is a matter of justice, for example, that people should be paid the right amount for the jobs that they do, but, special circumstances aside, it is no concern of justice that John derives more satisfaction from his fairly-earned income than Jane does from hers (but see Cohen 1989 for a different view). There is so to speak, a division of labour, under which rights, opportunities, and material benefits of various kinds are allocated by principles of justice, while the conversion of these into units of utility (or disutility) is the responsibility of each individual recipient (see Dworkin 2000, ch. 1). Utilitarians will therefore find it hard to explain what from their point of view seems to be the fetishistic concern of justice over how the means to happiness are distributed, rather than happiness itself.

The second obstacle is that utilitarianism judges outcomes by totalling up utility levels, and has no independent concern for how that utility is distributed between persons. So even if we set aside the currency issue, utilitarian theory seems unable to capture justice’s demand that each should receive what is due to her regardless of the total amount of benefit this generates. Defenders of utilitarianism will argue that when the conduct-guiding rules are being formulated, attention will be paid to distributive questions. In particular, when resources are being distributed among people we know little about individually, there are good reasons to favour equality, since in most cases resources have diminishing marginal utility – the more of them you have, the less satisfaction you derive from additional instalments. Yet this is only a contingent matter. If some people are very adept at turning resources into well-being – they are so-called ‘utility monsters’ – then a utilitarian should support a rule that privileges them. This seems repugnant to justice. As Rawls famously put the general point, ‘each member of society is thought to have an inviolability founded on justice which….even the welfare of every one else cannot override’ (Rawls 1971, p. 28; Rawls 1999, pp. 24–25).

The third and final difficulty stems from utilitarianism’s thoroughgoing consequentialism. Rules are assessed strictly in the light of the consequences of adopting then, not in terms of their intrinsic properties. Of course, when agents follow rules, they are meant to do what the rule requires rather than to calculate consequences directly. But for a utilitarian, it is never going to be a good reason for adopting a rule that it will give people what they deserve or what they are entitled to, when desert or entitlement are created by events in the past, such as a person’s having performed a worthwhile action or entered an agreement. Backward-looking reasons have to be transmuted into forward-looking reasons in order to count. If a rule such as pacta sunt servanda (‘agreements must be kept’) is going to be adopted on utilitarian grounds, this is not because there is any inherent wrongness in defaulting on a compact one has made, but because a rule that compacts must be kept is a useful one, since it allows people to co-ordinate their behaviour knowing that their expectations about the future are likely to be met. But justice, although not always backward-looking in the sense explained, often is. What is due to a person is in many cases what they deserve for what they have done, or what they are entitled to by virtue of past transactions. So even if it were possible to construct a forward-looking rationale for having rules that closely tracked desert or entitlement as these are normally understood, the utilitarian still cannot capture the sense of justice – why it matters that people should get what is due to then – that informs our common-sense judgements.

Utilitarians might reply that their reconstruction preserves what is rationally defensible in common sense beliefs while what it discards are elements that cannot survive sustained critical reflection. But this would bring them closer to Bentham’s view that justice, as commonly understood, is nothing but a ‘phantom’.

5. Contractarianism and Justice

The shortcomings of utilitarianism have prompted several recent philosophers to revive the old idea of the social contract as a better way of bringing coherence to our thinking about justice. The idea here is not that people actually have entered a contract to establish justice, or that they should proceed to do so, but that we can understand justice better by asking the question: what principles to govern their institutions, practices and personal behaviour would people choose to adopt if they all had to agree on them in advance? The contract, in other words, is hypothetical; but the search for agreement is meant to ensure that the principles chosen would, when implemented, not lead to outcomes that people could not accept. Thus whereas a utilitarian might, under some circumstances, be prepared to support slavery – if the misery of the slaves were outweighed by the heightened pleasures of the slave-owners – contractarians claims that no-one could accept a principle permitting slavery, lest they themselves were destined to be slaves when the principle was applied.

The problem that contractarians face is to show how such an agreement is possible. If we were to ask people, in the real world, what principles they would prefer to live under, they are likely to start from a position of quite radical disagreement, given their interests and their beliefs. Some might even be willing to endorse slavery, if they were fairly certain that they would not end up as slaves themselves, or if they were sado-masochists who viewed the humiliations inflicted on slaves in a positive light. So in order to show how agreement could be achieved, contractarians have to model the contracting parties in a particular way, either by limiting what they are allowed to know about themselves or about the future, or by attributing to them certain motivations while excluding others. Since the modelling can be done differently, we have a family of contractarian theories of justice, three of whose most important members are the theories of Gauthier, Rawls and Scanlon.

Gauthier (1986) presents the social contract as a bargain between rational individuals who can gain through co-operating with one another, but who are competing over the division of the resulting surplus. He assumes that each is interested only in trying to maximise his own welfare, and he also assumes that there is a non-co-operative baseline from which the bargaining begins – so nobody would accept a solution that left her less well off than in the baseline condition. Each person can identify the outcome under which they fare best – their maximum gain – but they have no reason to expect others to accept that. Gauthier argues that rational bargainers will converge on the principle of Minimax Relative Concession , which requires each to concede the same relative proportion of their maximum possible gain relative to the non-co-operative baseline. Thus suppose there is a feasible arrangement whereby each participant can achieve two-thirds of their maximum gain, but no arrangement under which they all do better than that, then this is the arrangement that the principle recommends. Each person has made the same concession relative to the outcome that is best for them personally – not accepting the same absolute loss of welfare, let it be noted, but the same proportionate loss.

There are some internal difficulties with Gauthier’s theory that need to be recorded briefly (for a full discussion, see Barry 1989, esp. Part III). One is whether Minimax Relative Concession is in fact the correct solution to the bargaining problem that Gauthier introduces, as opposed to the standard Nash solution which (in a simple two-person case) selects the outcome in which the product of the two parties’ utilities is maximised (for discussion of different solutions to the bargaining problem, see the entry on contemporary approaches to the social contract , § 3.2). A second is whether Gauthier is able to justify positing a ‘Lockean’ baseline, under which each is assumed to respect the natural rights of the others, as the starting point for bargaining over the surplus – as opposed to a more conflictual ‘Hobbesian’ baseline in which individuals are permitted to use their natural powers to threaten one another in the process of establishing what each could expect to get in the absence of co-operation. But the larger question is whether a contract modelled in this way is an appropriate device for delivering principles of justice. On the one hand, it captures the idea that the practice of justice should work to everyone’s advantage, while requiring all those involved to moderate the demands they make on one another. On the other hand, it prescribes a final distribution of benefit that appears morally arbitrary, in the sense that A ’s bargaining advantage over B – which stems from the fact that his maximum possible gain is greater than hers – allows him to claim a higher level of benefit as a matter of justice . This seems implausible: there may be prudential reasons to recommend a distribution that reflects the outcome that self-interested and rational bargainers would arrive at, but claims of justice need a different basis.

John Rawls’ theory of justice is the most widely-cited example of a contractarian theory, but before outlining it, two words of caution are necessary. First, the shape of the theory has evolved from its first incarnation in Rawls (1958) through his major work A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971) and on to Rawls (1993) and Rawls (2001). Second, although Rawls has consistently claimed that the principles of justice he defends are the principles that would be selected by people in a suitably designed ‘original position’ in which they are asked to choose the social and political institutions they will live under – this is what qualifies his theory as contractarian – it is less clear how important a role the contract itself plays in his thinking. His principles, which are discussed elsewhere (see the entry on John Rawls) , can be defended on their own merits as a theory of social justice for a modern liberal society, even if their contractual grounding proves to be unsound. Rawls presents the contracting parties as seeking to advance their own interests as they decide which principles to favour, but under two informational constraints. First, they are not allowed to know their own ‘conception of the good’ – what ends they personally find it most valuable to pursue – so the principles must be couched in terms of ‘primary goods’, understood as goods that it is better to have more rather than less of whatever conception of the good you favour. Second, they are placed behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ that deprives them of any knowledge of personal characteristics, such as their gender, their place in society, or the talents and skills they possess. This means that they have no basis on which to bargain for advantage, and have to consider themselves as generic persons who might be male or female, talented or untalented, and so forth. In consequence, Rawls argues, all will choose to live under impartial principles that work to no-one’s advantage in particular.

The problem for Rawls, however, is to show that the principles that would be selected in such an original position are in fact recognizable as principles of justice . One might expect the parties to calculate how to weigh the primary goods (which Rawls catalogues as ‘rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, income and wealth’) against each other, and then to choose as their social principle ‘maximise the weighted sum of primary goods, averaged across all persons’. This, however, would bring the theory very close to utilitarianism, since the natural method of weighing primary goods is to ask how much utility having a given quantity of each is likely, on average, to bring (for the claim that utilitarianism would be chosen in a Rawlsian original position, see Harsanyi 1975). Since Rawls wishes to reject utilitarianism, he has to adjust the psychology of the parties in the original position so that they reason differently. Thus he suggests that, at least in developed societies, people have special reason to prioritise liberty over the other goods and to ensure that it is equally distributed: he argues that this is essential to safeguard their self-respect. In later writing his argument is less empirical: now the parties to the contract are endowed with ‘moral powers’ that must be exercised, and it is then fairly easy to show that this requires them to have a set of basic liberties.

When he turns to the distribution of income and wealth, Rawls has to show why his choosers would pick the difference principle, which considers only the position of the worst-off social group, over other principles such as maximising average income across the whole society. In Theory of Justice he does this by attributing special psychological features to the choosers that make it appropriate for them to follow the ‘maximin’ rule for decisions under uncertainty (choose the option whose worst possible outcome is least bad for you). For example, they are said to be much more concerned to achieve the minimum level of income that the difference principle would guarantee them than to enjoy increases above that level. In his later work, he abandons this reliance on maximin reasoning and gives greater prominence to another argument hinted at in Theory . This portrays the contracting parties as starting out from the presumption that income and wealth should be distributed equally, but then recognizing that all can benefit by permitting certain inequalities to arise. When these inequalities are governed by the difference principle, they can be justified to everyone, including the worst off, thus creating the conditions for a more stable society. But we need then to ask why equal distribution should be treated as the benchmark, departures from which require special justification. When Rawls says that it is ‘not reasonable’ for any of the parties initially to expect more than an equal share (Rawls 1971, p. 150; Rawls 1999, p. 130), is this simply a corollary of their position as rational choosers behind a veil of ignorance, or has Rawls in addition endowed them with a substantive sense of justice that includes this presumption of equality?

Although Rawls throughout presents his theory of justice as contractarian, we can now see that the terms of the contract are in part determined by prior normative principles that Rawls engineers the parties to follow. So in contrast to Gauthier, it is no longer simply a case of self-interested contractors negotiating their way to an agreement. Rawls candidly admits that the contractual situation has to be adjusted so that it yields results that match our pre-existing convictions about justice. But then we may ask how much work the contractual apparatus is really doing (see Barry 1989, ch. 9 for a critical appraisal).

Scanlon (1998) does not attempt to deliver a theory of justice in the same sense as Rawls, but his contractarian account of that part of morality that specifies ‘what we owe to each other’ covers much of the same terrain (for an explicit attempt to analyse justice in Scanlonian terms, see Barry 1995). Like Rawls, Scanlon is concerned to develop an alternative to utilitarianism, and he does so by developing a test that any candidate moral principle must pass: it must be such that no-one could reasonably reject it as the basis for informed, unforced general agreement (see the entry on contractualism ). Scanlon’s contractors are not positioned behind a veil of ignorance. They are able to see what effect adopting any proposed principle would have on them personally. If that effect is unacceptable to them, they are permitted to reject it. Each person has, so to speak, a veto on any general principle for regulating conduct. Those that survive this test are defensible as principles of justice – Scanlon concedes that there might be alternative sets of such principles appropriate to different social conditions.

It might seem, however, that giving each person a veto would lead straightforwardly to deadlock, since anyone might reject a principle under which he fared badly relative to some alternative. Here the idea of reasonable rejection becomes important. It would not, Scanlon thinks, be reasonable to reject a principle under which one does badly if the alternatives all involve someone else faring worse still. One needs to take account of other people’s reasons for rejecting these alternatives. It might then appear that Scanlon’s contractualism yields the difference principle, which requires the worst-off group in society to be as well of as they can be. But this is not the conclusion that Scanlon draws (though he acknowledges that there might be special reasons to follow Rawls in requiring basic social institutions to follow the difference principle). The claims of other groups must be considered too. If a policy greatly benefits many others, while slightly worsening the position of a few, though without leaving them very badly off, it may well not be rejectable. Scanlon’s position leaves some room for aggregation – it makes a difference how many people will be benefitted if a principle is followed – though not the simple form of aggregation that utilitarians defend.

Scanlon also says that a person can have a reason for rejecting a principle if it treats them unfairly, say by benefitting some but not others for arbitrary reasons. This presupposes a norm of fairness that the contractarian theory does not itself attempt to explain or justify. So it looks as though the purpose of the theory is to provide a distinctive account of moral reasoning (and moral motivation) but not to defend any substantive principles of distributive justice. In this respect, Scanlon’s contractualism is less ambitious than either Gauthier’s or Rawls’.

6. Egalitarianism and Justice

In the recent past, many philosophers have sought to establish a close connection between justice and equality: they ask the question ‘what kind of equality does justice require?’, and to that several competing answers have been given (see, for example Cohen 1989, Dworkin 2000, Sen 1980). But we should not be too hasty to assume that what justice demands is always equality, whether of treatment or of outcome. Perhaps it does so only in a formal sense. As we saw in sect 1.3, justice requires the impartial and consistent application of rules, from which it follows that when two people are alike in all relevant respects, they must be treated equally. But, as Aristotle among others saw, justice also involves the idea of proportional treatment, which implies recipients getting unequal amounts of whatever good is at issue (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , Book V, ch. 3). If A is twice as deserving or twice as needy as B , justice may require that she receives more than B does. So here formal equality of treatment – the same rule applied to both – leads to an unequal outcome. Again, when justice takes the conservative form of respect for existing entitlements or legitimate expectations (see para 2.1) there is no reason to anticipate that what is due to different people will be substantively the same.

So we need to ask about the circumstances in which justice requires a substantively equal distribution of advantages. One rather obvious case occurs when the members of the group within which the distribution is going to occur have no relevant distinguishing features, so there are no grounds on which some can claim greater shares of benefit than others. Suppose a group experiences a windfall gain for which no-one can claim any credit: a pot of gold somehow appears in their midst. Then unless any member can make a justice-related claim for a larger-than-equal share – say that she has special needs that she lacks sufficient resources to meet – an equal distribution of the gold is what justice demands, since any other distribution would be arbitrary. Equality here is the default principle that applies in the absence of any special claims that can be presented as reasons of justice.

Equality also acts as a default in circumstances where, although people may indeed have unequal claims to whatever good is being distributed, we have no reliable way of identifying and measuring those claims. By sharing the good equally, we can at least ensure that every claim has been partially satisfied. Thus suppose we have limited supplies of a drug that can treat malaria, and a number of patients displaying symptoms of the disease, but lacking specialised medical knowledge we cannot tell whether one person’s condition is more serious than another’s; then by sharing out the drug equally, we can guarantee that each person at least receives the highest fraction of what they really need. Any other distribution must leave at least one person with less (this of course assumes that there is no threshold amount of the drug beneath which it is ineffective; if that assumption is wrong, justice under the stated conditions might require a lottery in which the chosen ones receive threshold-size doses).

If justice requires equality only by default, it might seem to apply only in a narrow range of cases. How could egalitarian justice be made more robust? One approach involves declaring a wider range of factors irrelevant to just distribution. Thus one formulation of the principle holds that no-one should be worse-off than anyone else as a result of their ‘morally arbitrary’ characteristics, where a characteristic is morally arbitrary when its possessor cannot claim credit for having it. This captures a widespread intuition that people should not be advantaged or disadvantaged by virtue of their race or gender, but extends it (more controversially) to all personal features with a genetic basis, such as natural talents and inborn dispositions. In doing so, it discounts most claims of desert, since when people are said to deserve benefits of various kinds, it is usually for performing actions or displaying qualities that depend upon innate characteristics such as strength or intelligence. In the following section, we will see how egalitarian theories of justice have tried to incorporate some desert-like elements by way of response. But otherwise justice as equality and justice as desert appear to be in conflict, and the challenge is to show what can justify equal treatment in the face of inequalities of desert.

A second approach answers this challenge by explaining why it is positively valuable to afford people equal treatment even if they do display features that might appear to justify differential treatment. A prominent advocate of this approach is Dworkin, who argues that fundamental to justice is a principle of equal concern and respect for persons, and what this means in more concrete term is that equal resources should be devoted to the life of each member of society (Dworkin 2000). (The reference to membership here is not redundant, because Dworkin understands egalitarian justice as a principle that must be applied within sovereign states specifically – so in the terms of 3.2, this is a relational view of justice.) The thought is that showing persons equal respect may sometimes require us to afford them equal treatment, even in the face of relevant grounds for discrimination. Thus we insist on political equality – one person, one vote – even though we know that there are quite large differences in people’s competence to make political decisions.

As noted above, justice as simple equality of treatment seems open to the objection that it fails to acknowledge the agency of the recipients, who may have acted in ways that appear to qualify them to receive more (or less) of whatever benefit is being distributed. To answer this objection, several recent philosophers have presented alternative versions of ‘responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism’ – a family of theories of justice that treat equal distribution as a starting point but allow for departures from that baseline when these result from the responsible choices made by individuals (see Knight and Stemplowska 2011 for examples). These theories differ along several dimensions: the ‘currency of justice’ used to define the baseline of equality, the conditions that must be fulfilled for a choice to qualify as responsible, and which among the consequences that follow from a choice should count when the justice of an outcome is being assessed (it may in particular appear unjust to allow people to suffer the full consequences of bad choices that they could not reasonably have anticipated). The label that is often used to describe a sub-class of these theories is ‘luck egalitarianism’. According to luck egalitarians, justice requires that no-one should be disadvantaged relative to others on account of ‘brute’ bad luck, whereas inequalities that arise through the exercise of personal responsibility are permissible (for a full discussion of luck egalitarianism, see the entry on justice and bad luck ). ‘Brute’ luck is interpreted widely to include not only external circumstances such as one person’s initially having access to more resources than another, but also internal factors such as possessing natural abilities or disabilities, or having involuntarily acquired expensive tastes. All such inequalities are to be ironed out by redistribution or compensation, while people’s choices about how to use the assets they are granted should be respected, even if this leads to significant inequality in the long run.

Luck egalitarianism has proved surprisingly influential in recent debates on justice, despite the evident difficulties involved in, for example, quantifying ‘brute luck disadvantage’ in such a way that a compensatory scheme could be established. There are, however, a number of problems it has to face. By giving scope to personal responsibility, it seeks to capture what is perhaps the most attractive part of the conventional idea of desert – that people should be rewarded for making good choices and penalised for making bad ones – while filtering out the effects of having (undeserved) natural talents. But in reality the choices that people make are influenced by the talents and other qualities that they happen to have already. So if we allow someone to reap advantages by, for example, devoting long hours to learning to play the piano at a high level, we must recognize that this is a choice that she would almost certainly not have made unless early experiment showed that she was musically gifted. We cannot say what she would have chosen to do in a counterfactual world in which she was tone deaf. There seems then to be no coherent half-way house between accepting full-blooded desert and denying that people can justly claim relative advantage through the exercise of responsibility and choice (see further Miller 1999, ch. 7) .

A second problem is that one person’s exercise of responsibility may prove advantageous or disadvantageous to others, even though they have done nothing to bring this change about, so from their point of view it must count as ‘brute’ luck. This will be true, for example, in any case in which people are competing to excel in some field, where successful choices made by A will worsen the comparative position of B , C , and D . Or again, if A acts in a way that benefits B , but does nothing comparable to improve the position of C and D , then an inequality is created that counts as ‘brute bad luck’ from the perspective of the latter. One of the most influential exponents of luck egalitarianism seems to have recognized the problem in a late essay: ‘unlike plain egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism is paradoxical, because the use of shares by people is bound to lead to a distribution flecked by luck’ (Cohen 2011, p. 142).

We have seen that equality can sometimes be understood as required by justice; but it can also be valued independently. Indeed there can be circumstances in which the two values collide, because what justice demands is inequality of outcome. The kind of inequality that is independently valuable is social equality, best understood as a property of the relationships that prevail within a society: people regard and treat each other as social equals, and the society’s institutions are designed to foster and reflect such attitudes. A society of equals contrasts with one in which people belong to different ranks in a social hierarchy, and behave towards one another as their relative ranking prescribes. Different reasons can be given for objecting to social inequality, and conversely for valuing social equality (see Scanlon 2003).

Those who find equality valuable for reasons other than reasons of distributive justice are often described as ‘relational egalitarians’ (see Anderson 1999, Wolff 1998, Fourie, Schuppert and Wallimann-Helmer 2015). It is tempting to regard relational egalitarianism as a rival theory of justice to the luck egalitarian theory outlined in §6.2, but it may be more illuminating to see it instead as providing an alternative account of why we should care about limiting material inequality. Thus, faced with a world like the one we currently inhabit in which income differences are very large, justice theorists are likely to criticize these inequalities on grounds that they are not deserved, or arise from brute luck, etc., whereas relational egalitarians will say that they create a divided society in which people are alienated from each other, and cannot interact in a mutually respectful way. Relational equality does not address issues of distribution directly, and so cannot function as a theory of justice itself, but it can provide grounds for preferring one theory of justice to its rivals – namely that implementing that particular theory is more likely to create or sustain a society of equals.

We saw at the beginning of this article that justice can take a number of different forms, depending on the practical context in which it is being applied. Although we found common elements running through this diversity of use – most readily captured in Justinian’s ‘suum cuique ’ formula – these were formal rather than substantive. In these circumstances, it is natural to look for an overarching framework into which the various contextually specific conceptions of justice can all be fitted. Three such frameworks were examined: utilitarianism, contractarianism and egalitarianism. None, however, passed what we might call the ‘Sidgwick/Rawls test’, namely that of incorporating and explaining the majority at least of our considered convictions about justice – beliefs that we feel confident in holding about what justice requires us to do in a wide and varied range of circumstances (for Rawls’ version of the test see the entry on reflective equilibrium ). So unless we are willing to jettison many of these convictions in order to uphold one or other general framework, we will need to accept that no comprehensive theory of justice is available to us; we will have to make do with partial theories – theories about what justice requires in particular domains of human life. Rawls himself, despite the bold title of his first book ( A Theory of Justice ), came to recognize that what he had outlined was at best a theory of social justice applied to the basic institutional structure of a modern liberal state. Other forms of justice – familial, allocative, associational, international – with their associated principles would be applicable in their respective domains (for an even more explicitly pluralist account of justice, see Walzer 1983; for a fuller defence of a contextual approach to justice, see Miller 2013, esp. ch. 2).

One way to loosen up our thinking about justice is by paying greater attention to the history of the concept. We can learn a great deal by reading what Aristotle, or Aquinas, or Hume, has to say about the concept, but as we do so, we also see that elements we would expect to find are missing (there is nothing about rights in Aristotle, for example), while others that we would not anticipate are present. This may in some part be due to the idiosyncrasies of each thinker, but more importantly it reflects differences in the form of social life in which each was embedded – its economic, legal and political structure, especially. Various attempts have been made to write histories of justice that are more than just catalogues of what individual thinkers have said: they aim to trace and explain systematic shifts in the way that justice has been interpreted (for contrasting examples, see MacIntyre 1988, Fleischacker 2004, Johnston 2011). These should not be read as enlightenment stories in which our understanding of justice steadily improves as the centuries roll by. MacIntyre’s view, for example, is that modern liberal societies cannot sustain the practices within which notions of justice find their proper home. We can get a better grasp of what justice means to us by seeing the various conceptions that compete for our attention as tied to aspects of our social world that did not exist in the past, and are equally liable to disappear in the future.

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• –––, 1971, A Theory of Justice , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 1993, Political Liberalism , New York: Columbia University Press.
• –––, 1999, A Theory of Justice , revised edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2001, Justice as Fairness: a restatement , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Ripstein, Arthur, 2004, “The Division of Responsibility and the Law of Tort,” Fordham Law Review , 72: 1811–44.
• Sandel, Michael, 1982, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Scanlon, T. M., 1998, What We Owe to Each Other , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2003, “The Diversity of Objections to Inequality,” in The Difficulty of Tolerance: essays in political philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sen, Amartya, 1980, “Equality of What?” in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Volume 1 , ed. S. McMurrin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sidgwick, Henry, 1874/1907, The Methods of Ethics , London: Macmillan.
• Valentini, Laura, 2014, “Canine Justice: An Associative Account,” Political Studies , 62: 37–52.
• Walzer, Michael, 1983, Spheres of Justice: a defence of pluralism and equality , New York: Basic Books.
• Williams, Andrew, 1998, “Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 27: 225–47.
• Wolff, Jonathan, 1991, Robert Nozick : property, justice and the minimal state , Cambridge: Polity.
• –––, 1998, “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 27: 97–122.
• Young, Iris Marion, 2011, Responsibility for Justice , New York: Oxford University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Justice , course lectures by Michael Sandel
• Justice Everywhere , a group blog about justice in public affairs

Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | consequentialism | consequentialism: rule | contractualism | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on reproduction and the family | justice: as a virtue | justice: distributive | justice: global | justice: intergenerational | justice: international distributive | justice: retributive | justice: transitional | luck: justice and bad luck | Rawls, John | reflective equilibrium | social contract: contemporary approaches to

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Dissertation examines perceptions of 'Swedishness' and the boundaries of in-group membership

by Malmö University

Who can claim to be Swedish? And when this claim is made, is it accepted by others? New research shows that despite the Swedish aversion to the concept of race, there is a clear image of Swedishness: white, blonde, and blue-eyed is still the standard definition.

In a new dissertation , doctoral student Caroline Adolfsson has examined perceptions of Swedishness using two constructed groups of people. One group of ethnic Swedes, that is, people with family ties, ancestry within Sweden, and who are usually white. And a second group that does not have such connections with the country.

When she compares the answers, the word race evokes very negative feelings , especially in the white, ethnic Swede group.

In EU countries, as in Sweden, "ethnicity" is often preferred to "race," although race is sometimes used within academia. In other Western countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, racial-ethnic identity is sometimes used as a hybrid term which can refer to a spectrum of identities relating to both terms, but the word "race" is also often used on its own, explains Adolfsson.

"Many countries in Europe react to the word because of the Holocaust, as group identities were used to justify genocide. But in Sweden, the aversion evokes a very negative emotional response, and that feeling is more common among those who are part of the ethnic group. They are almost hostile to the word," says Adolfsson, a Ph.D. student at the Department of Global Political Studies.

"It is noteworthy that while the group of predominantly white respondents describes the division into races as something very negative, they define Swedishness with a white person. Despite the reluctance, they thus define themselves 'racially,'" says Adolfsson.

She emphasizes the empirical evidence that people make this connection between Swedishness and whiteness.

"The fact that it can be difficult to talk about these things may be due, among other things, to a dislike of the perception of the biological link in the concept of race. The fact that Sweden had the National Institute for Racial Biology (which had a stated purpose of studying eugenics and human genetics ) may be one reason why the word has such a negative connotation here," Adolfsson says.

Although race can be seen as a social construct, according to Adolfsson, it can still have consequences for people, as it is linked to political, historical, and social meanings.

Therefore, people still identify themselves and others as part of racial groups, and this can have different meanings for different people in different places. Even if some people want to be color blind, we are not," she says.

Sweden is becoming one of the most diverse countries in the Western world. At the same time, there is a perception that Swedes look a certain way.

Provided by Malmö University

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