The Ideal of a Just Society: The Transformation of “Distributive” Justice into “Distributional” Justice

Martin Rhonheimer ()
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Martin Rhonheimer: Austrian Institute of Economics and Social Philosophy

A chapter in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume II, 2023, pp 255-269 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Many persons form their concepts of justice and injustice based on the ideal of a “just society” organized according to a determinate pattern which ensures that no one is left behind, that everyone’s basic needs are met, and that the basic demands for health, education, and social welfare are also met. Though such a state of affairs is desirable, it cannot be demanded in the name of justice, and even less of distributive justice. In the late nineteenth century—under the influence of the so called German State Socialists (Kathedersozialisten)—there has been a shift from the classic understanding of distributive justice to what can be called “distributional” justice in the name of “social justice”, to be achieved by state intervention and redistribution. The following contribution analyses the origin of this misinterpretation of “distributive justice” and how it has affected Catholic Social Teaching in the twentieth century, namely its comprehension of the common good and in consequence of the free market and the capitalist economic process based on free enterprise.

Keywords: Social justice; Distributive justice; Catholic social teaching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-17418-6_22

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-17418-6_22

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