Love and Justice as Competences

by Luc Boltanski

People care a great deal about justice. They protest and engage in confrontations with others when their sense of justice is affronted or disturbed. When they do this, they don't generally act in a strategic or calculating way but use arguments that claim a general validity. Disputes are commonly regulated by these 'regimes of justice' implicit in everyday social life. But justice is not the only regime that governs action. There are some actions that are selfless and gratuitous, and that belong to what might be called a regime of 'peace' or 'love'. In the course of their everyday lives, people constantly move back and forth between these two regimes, that of justice and that of love. And everyone also has the capacity for violence, which arises when the regulation of action within either of these regimes breaks down.

In "Love and Justice as Competences," Boltanski lays out this highly original framework for analysing the action of individuals as they pursue their day-to-day lives. The framework outlined in this important book is the basis for the path-breaking work that he has developed over the last twenty years - work that has examined the moral foundations of society in and through the forms of everyday conflict. For anyone who wants to understand what a critical sociology might mean today, this book is an essential text.

Genres: Justice, Sociology

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Luc Boltanski is a French sociologist, Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris, and founder of the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale, known as the leading figure in the new "pragmatic" school of French sociology.

Reviews

[Karelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je l'ai lu sur plusieurs années, en faisant des allers-retours entre chacun des trois essais, mais j'y reviens constamment, parce que personne comme Luc Boltanski (et ce, même si je ne me sens pas très proche théoriquement de sa sociologie) ne permet de replacer les formes de souffrances individuelles dans des lectures sociologiques qui permettent de mieux comprendre pourquoi, des fois, on agit de manière que les autres considèrent comme "crazy".