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Jan 1, 1986 · PDF | On Jan 1, 1986, Joshua Cohen published Spheres of Justice by Michael Walzer | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate.
Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. Michael Walzer | Ethics: Vol 94, No 2. Book Reviews.
Dec 10, 2015 · This essay examines the ideas and influence of Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. It argues that Walzer’s influence on the discipline has taken a different form than many other writers on justice, such as Rawls, where the central ideas have been taken up and argued about in essentially Rawlsian terms. Walzer’s influence has operated on ...
Walzer makes the case for com-plex equality by taking up each of the principal spheres of justice in turn (and not just the obvious eco-nomic ones like money income or welfare payments, but surprising ones like divine grace and kinship and love), drawing out the social meaning those goods have for us, often by illuminating contrast to
- Members and Strangers
- What are the appropriate criteria for distributing membership?
- Analogies: Neighborhoods, Clubs, and Families
- Territory
- "White Australia" and the Claim of Necessity
- Refugees
- Alienage and Naturalization
- The Athenian Metics
- Guest Workers
- Membership and Justice
The idea of distributive justice presupposes a bounded world within which distributions takes place: a group o f people committed to dividing, exchanging, and sharing social goods, first of all among themselves. That world, as I have already argued, is the political community, whose members distribute power to one another and avoid, if they possibl...
The plural pronouns that I have used in asking these questions suggest the conventional answer to them: we who are already members do the choosing, in accordance with our own understanding of what membership means in our community and of what sort of a community we want to have. Membership as a social good is constituted by our understanding; its v...
Admissions policies are shaped partly by arguments about economic and political conditions in the host country, partly by arguments about the character and "destiny" of the host country, and partly by arguments about the character of countries (political communities) in general. The last of these is the most important, in theory at least; for our u...
We might, then, think of countries as national clubs or families. But countries are also territorial states. Although clubs and families own property, they neither require nor (except in feudal systems) possess jurisdiction over territory. Leaving children aside, they do not control the physical location of their members. The state does control phy...
The Hobbesian argument is clearly a defense of European colonization--and also of the subsequent "constraint" of native hunters and gatherers. But it has a wider application. Sidgwick, writing in 1891, probably had in mind the states the colonists had created: the United States, where agitation for the exclusion of immigrants had been at least a sp...
There is, however, one group of needy outsiders whose claims cannot be met by yielding territory or exporting wealth; they can be met only by taking people in. This is the group of refugees whose need is for membership itself, a non-exportable good. The liberty that makes certain countries possible homes for men and women whose politics or religion...
The members of a political community have a collective right to shape the resident population--a right subject always to the double control that I have described: the meaning of membership to the current members and the principle of mutual aid. Given these two, particular countries at particular times are likely to include among their residents men...
It is not possible to trace a similar history at the level of the political community. Live-in servants have not disappeared from the modern world. As "guest workers" they play an important role in its most advanced economies. But before considering the status of guest workers, I want to turn to an older example and consider the status of resident ...
I will not attempt a full description of the experience of contemporary guest workers. Laws and practices differ from one European country to another and are constantly changing; the situation is complex and unstable. All that is necessary here is a schematic sketch (based chiefly on the legal situation in the early 1970s) designed to highlight tho...
The distribution of membership is not pervasively subject to the constraints of justice. Across a considerable range of the decisions that are made, states are simply free to take in strangers (or not)-much as they are free, leaving aside the claims of the needy, to share their wealth with foreign friends, to honor the achievements of foreign artis...
Joshua Cohen, Review of "Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality" by Michael Walzer; Journal of Philosophy, 1986.
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How does Walzer's concept of complex equality affect distributive justice?
How does Walzer defend equality?
What is Walzer's principle of sphere-separation?
Did Walzer reject a universal theory of Justice?
Michael Walzer may be understood as making two major contributions to global justice debates. On the one hand, he contributes to just war theory and the theory of humanitarian intervention, the idea that force in international politics should be justified by appeal to human rights.
