Setting the Scene: Distributive Justice, Corrective Justice, and Monism in Political Philosophy and Contract Law

Abstract

This chapter introduces the notions, first developed by Aristotle, of distributive and corrective justice. I connect the distinction between those notions with a view referred to as “monism” in political philosophy and contract law.” Monists reject the distinction between distributive and corrective justice. The chapter discusses the basic tenets of two monist positions. On the one hand, those holding “the distributive approach” hold the view that there is no such thing as “private ordering”; on the other hand, libertarians argue that there is never anything else. This introductory discussion is a preliminary basis for the discussion in the following two chapters, where two monist accounts of the foundations of contract law are discussed.