Explicate the conception of justice in the critiques of communitarian theorists. (2014, 20 Marks)
The communitarians of the 1980s wrote against John Rawls‘s A Theory of Justice (1971), but their critiques are not merely negative. Each carries a positive conception: justice is not a set of universal principles chosen by abstract individuals; it grows out of the shared goods, practices and meanings of a particular community.
The shared starting point
- Persons are identifiable only as members of communities that exist before them. Their beliefs, including their sense of what counts as a fair distribution, are learned there, so distributive criteria are context-bound.
- The veil of ignorance therefore strips out exactly what gives choice its meaning. Principles picked by people who know nothing of their society cannot claim authority over a real society.
- What people choose follows from their idea of the good, and that idea is held in common by the community rather than produced by solitary reason. Hence the good is prior to the right.
Michael Sandel: justice as a remedial virtue
- In Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982), Michael Sandel denies that justice is “the first virtue of social institutions.” It is remedial, needed where solidarity has broken down; in an affectionate family, standing on one’s rights marks a moral loss.
- Selves are encumbered by family, nation and faith. Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (2009) draws the positive lesson: deciding what is just means public reasoning about the purposes of goods and the virtues they honour.
Alasdair MacIntyre: justice as a virtue within a tradition
- In After Virtue (1981), Alasdair MacIntyre treats justice as an Aristotelian virtue learned inside practices, with desert at its core.
- His two disputants, one arguing like Robert Nozick and one like Rawls, can never settle their quarrel, and the two theories both exclude the desert that ordinary disputants still invoke: liberal society has lost the shared good that desert presupposes.
- Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988) adds that there are only rival traditions of justice, with no neutral ground outside them.
Charles Taylor: justice includes recognition
- Charles Taylor‘s social thesis (“Atomism”, 1979) holds that autonomy develops only within a sustaining society, so rights-claimants owe a duty to belong.
- “The Politics of Recognition” (1992) widens justice beyond distribution: misrecognition “can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression.”
Michael Walzer: complex equality
- Michael Walzer‘s Spheres of Justice (1983) is the fullest positive statement. No distribution is just or unjust in itself; it is judged by the social meanings of the good concerned, so no single principle binds every society.
- Money, office, education, health, kinship and recognition form separate spheres, each with its own criterion: need for medicine, qualification for office.
- Complex equality forbids dominance: advantage in one sphere must not buy advantage in another.
- Since humans are culture-makers, “we do justice to actual men and women by respecting their particular creations.”
The limit
The shared weakness is the oppression problem. Walzer tested his view on the caste-ordered village and conceded that, if its meanings were genuinely shared, it could meet his standard. For B. R. Ambedkar, the community itself was the source of injustice; the Constitution’s answer was individual Fundamental Rights.
Indian illustration
- Complex equality: in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (15 February 2024) the Supreme Court struck down electoral bonds, because undisclosed money was invading the political sphere.
- Recognition against uniform rules: the Karnataka hijab split verdict (13 October 2022).
Conclusion
The communitarian conception of justice is thick, situated and plural: it rests on shared goods, not a hypothetical contract. It is best read as a corrective that makes justice answer to community, recognition and separate spheres, while still needing a universal standpoint to condemn communities that are themselves unjust.