SPHERES OF JUSTICE
A Defense of Pluralism and Equality
Michael Walzer
Basic Books, reprint (1990)
(first published in 1983)

"Distributive justice is a large idea. It draws the entire world of goods within the reach of philosophical reflection. Nothing can be omitted: no feature of our common life can escape scrutiny. Human society is a distributive community. That's not all it is, but it is importantly that: we come together to share, divide, and exchange. We also come together to make the things that are shared, divided, and exchanged; but that very making—work itself—is distributed among us in a division of labor. My place in the economy, my standing in the political order, my reputation among my fellows, my material holdings: all these come to me from other men and women. It can be said that I have what I have rightly or wrongly, justly or unjustly; but given the range of distributions and the number of participants, such judgments are never easy.

The idea of distributive justice has as much to do with being and doing as with having, as much to do with production as with consumption, as much to do with identity and status as with land, capital, or personal possessions. Different political arrangements enforce, and different ideologies justify, different distributions of membership, power, honor, ritual eminence, divine grace, kinship and love, knowledge, wealth, physical security, work and leisure, rewards and punishments, and a host of goods more narrowly and materially conceived...And this multiplicity of goods is matched by a multiplicityof distributive procedures, agents, and criteria....no full-fledged human society has ever avoided the multiplicity. We must study it all, the goods and the distributions, in many different times and places....

...In the matter of distributive justice, history displays a great variety of arrangements and iedologies. But the first impulse of the philosopher is...to search for some underlying unity, a short list of basic goods, quickly abstracted to a single good...I shall argue that to search for unity is to misunderstand the subject matter of distributive justice. Nevertheless, in some sense the philosophical impulse is unavoidable. Even if we choose pluralism, as I shall do, that choice still requires a coherent defense....Conceivably, there is a single principle and a single legitimate kind of pluralism. But this would still be a pluralism that encompassed a wide range of distributions. By contrast, the deepest assumption of most of the philosophoers who have written about justice, from Plato onward, is that there is one, and only one, distributive system that philosophy can rightly encompass....

...Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way. At any rate, I shall begin by doubting, and more than doubting, this standard philosophical assumption. The questions posed by the theory of distributive justice admit of a range of answers. and there is room within the range for cultural diversity and political choice....I want to argue...that the principles of justice are themselves pluralistic in form: that different social goods ought to be distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents; and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods themselves—the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularism...." Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (1990 reprint), Chapter 1, "Complex Equality-Pluralism," pp. 3—6

BOOK DESCRIPTION
PUBLISHER
"The distinguished political philosopher and author of the widely acclaimed Just and Unjust Wars analyzes how society distributes not just wealth and power but other social 'goods' like honor, education, work, free time—even love.

BOOK REVIEWS
Daniel Bell, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences, Harvard University
"A book which bridges philosophy and social policy in the most engaging and fruitful way....the foundation of a new, emergent liberalism."

Michael J. Sandel–NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"This is a humane and hopeful vision, and Mr. Walzer conveys it with a wry and gentle grace."

Judith Jarvis Thomson, Professor of Philosophy, MIT
"Walzer presents a sophisticated new theory of equality and supports it by surveying an extraordinarily rich array of social and political ideologies and arrangements.... Fascinating and important."

BOSTON GLOBE
"Michael Walzer is something of a national treasure....the theory that [he] develops marks a major contribution to the debate over how to fashion a just society."

Charles Taylor, Professor of Political Science, McGill University
"This brilliant book....will transform the debate about distributive justice beyond all recognition."