Michael Walzer

To begin this essay about the theory of the spheres of justice developed by Michael Walzer, I would like to quote the author with a phrase from the Preface of his book “Spheres of Justice”:

“But we know that money equally distributed at twelve noon of a Sunday will be unequally redistributed before the week is out.” (Walzer, 1983: xi)

Michael Walzer is a philosopher who wrote his most famous book (from which I just quoted) about distributive justice and equality, he points himself against the egalitarianist philosophic direction that for example John Rawls is representing.

Walzer critizes egalitarianism by beginning at a crucial point: Human beings are not equal, they have far less in common than there are differences between them.

For him, one question arises out of the following statement: “We are very different and we are also manifestly alike. Now, what (complex) arrangements follow from the difference and the likeliness?” (Walzer, 1983: xii)

The big difference in egalitarian and his thinking, Walzer describes as follows: For him, egalitarianism aims at eliminating dominance by forcing human beings to be equal But Walzer thinks that domination does not derive from dominant human beings but that it is mediated by a set of social goods.

His claim is then: “We have to understand and control social goods; we do not have to stretch or shrink human beings.” (Walzer, 1983: xiii)