Can Social Justice Be Achieved? from Aristotle to Friedrich Hayek: Bertrand De Jouvenel's Analysis of the Desirability and Possibility of a Just Social Order (Critical Essay‪)‬

Can social justice be achieved? Bertrand de Jouvenel wondered in his 1954 paper "De la Justice" ["On Justice"]. He answered: "It is impossible to achieve the reign of Justice, if the latter is conceived of as an established, permanently maintained coincidence of social organization and abstract vision. The reign of Justice is achievable if the spirit of justice presides over all decisions that imply sharing." His analysis is worth being investigated: It includes a prefiguration of spontaneous order theory and precedes Hayek's response to the achievability of social justice. It pays careful attention to the definition of justice by classical philosophers and accounts for the distributive scope of commutative justice. "De la Justice" highlights the filiation from classical philosophers to Hayek.