The Elements of Justice

by David Schmidtz

What is justice? Questions of justice are questions about what people are due. However, what that means in practice depends on the context in which the question is raised. Depending on context, the formal question of what people are due is answered by principles of desert, reciprocity, equality, or need. Justice, therefore, is a constellation of elements that exhibit a degree of integration and unity. Nonetheless, the integrity of justice is limited, in a way that is akin to the integrity of a neighborhood rather than that of a building. A theory of justice offers individuals a map of that neighborhood, within which they can explore just what elements amount to justice.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Law, Nonfiction

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2006

About the author

David Schmidtz is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is Presidential Chair of Moral Science at West Virginia University's Chambers College of Business and Economics. He is also editor-in-chief of the journal Social Philosophy & Policy. Previously, he was Kendrick Professor of Philosophy and Eller Chair of Service-Dominant Logic at the University of Arizona. While at Arizona, he founded and served as inaugural head of the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science.

Reviews

[Paul Sand · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]

Elements of Justice appeared on this list of the "Top Ten Pro-Liberty Books of the Decade", issued late last year. The author, David Schmidtz, is a professor at the University of Arizona, with positions in both the Philosophy and Economics department there. The book was available at the library of the University Near Here, so I decided to check it out. And (in my totally unqualified opinion) it's quite good.

Schmidtz has an easygoing, modest, and accessible style. He's charitable to his ideological adversaries, even as he (to my mind) destroys their arguments. There are flashes of humor, and some of the chapters have exercises for further discussion. (Valuable for classes, and those of us who have earnest debates with other personalities living inside our heads.) It might help if you've read Rawls' A Theory of Justice[image error] and Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia[image error] first, but they aren't really prerequisites. You can follow Schmidtz's discussion fine without them.

Schmidtz's first insight is implied by the title: justice is not a single thing, but more like a "constellation of somewhat related elements." The elements that Schmidtz explores are desert, reciprocity, equality, and need. Those elements are not just distinct; they can also contradict each other. So what "justice" demands in any particular case will depend very much on real-world context; not just the details of a particular happenstance, but the way the world operates, the way real people interact. Schmidtz devotes four long sections to each of the elements above; he then finishes up with a look at the theories of Rawls and Nozick (also considering the critiques of others over the past decades).

Political philosophy is not everyone's cup of tea, but I (kind of) like it. It reminded me of those long-past Usenet arguments on talk.politics.theory. If you would like to see of Schmidtz's expository style works for you, this article at Cato Unbound is adapted from a section of this book.

[Sadra Hashemi · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتابی که در این موضوع بی نظیر یافتم و با ادای احترام به رالز و نوزیک، تحلیلی ویتگنشتاینی از مقوله ی عدالت به دست داده، یعنی تعریف عدالت به صورت کاربردی و در میان چهار عنصر زیر
desert
reciprocity
equality
need

[James Dickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read if you're thinking about the nature of justice.

[Craig Bolton]

The Elements of Justice by David Schmidtz (2006)