Spheres of Equality and Distributive Justice

Among political and legal theories, there is widespread agreement on equality as a normative principle. The present paper’s main argument is constructed as a set, rather than as a system, of isolated positions within the framework of a view of the concepts of justice and equality. The epistemological rejection of foundationalism is accompanied by the methodological priority of politics over philosophy. The central positions derive from the adherence to a pluralistic galaxy of incommensurable values, which function as concurrent variables. The argumentation this paper brings forward is based predominantly on Walzer’s approach and views the principles of justice as pluralistic in form. As such, their distribution depends on different reasons, follows different procedures, and involves multiple agents. The most important political question is, thus, whether we should design and control the distribution of these social goods or allow the distribution to be free and, as such, random. In the first case, the next question is which form of equality suits which good; this decision can lead to results more different from each other than the same adherence or non-adherence to the principle of equality. The paper concludes with an attempt to connect specific, socially important goods to types of distributive justice.