Beyond Justice

Agnes Heller. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. [340]-343. The author's exploration of the breakdown between ethics and politics refers to the work of Kierkegaard, Goethe, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant, Diderot, and Hutcheson. In place of the old consensus of ethics and politics a political compromise has emerged that the author terms the "sociopolitical concept of justice." Three versions of this are examined: Foucault's theory of punishment, Rawls and Nozick's theories of distributive justice, and Walzer's distinction between the just and the unjust. Distinguishing between the "static" and "dynamic" concepts of justice, the book proposes an "incomplete ethico-political concept of justice." In this theory the author intends to heal the breach between politics and ethics. The author argues that all claims to justice are rooted in certain values other than justice itself, namely, in "freedom" and "life." Finally, the author argues that although justice may be a precondition of the "good" life, the "good" life is something beyond justice. Chapter notes, 90-item bibliography This is an anatomy of the ethical and political preconceptions which underlie theories of justice. The author takes as her cue Hegel's description of modernity in which politics and ethics have fallen out of harmony with one another