Social justice in the large and small

Abstract

Social justice is an issue at both the large or even whole-society level and the very small group or dyadic level. If it is an issue in distribution of resources or welfare, rather than an issue of procedure, it requires very strong interpersonally comparable value judgments. This generally distinguishes it from other small and large group moral and political problems, which can often be resolved satisfactorily without such a strong value theory, in particular without interpersonal comparisons of welfare, because their resolution can yield mutual advantage to all concerned. At the dyadic and small-group level social justice is the philosopher's problem of beneficence; at the large level it is the problem of distributive justice. Much of the social-psychological literature on social justice deals with the small-scale problem; political theory is generally concerned with the large-scale problem. Yet, strategically and in their value theory requirements, the two problems are in many ways analogous. In both variants of social justice the core problem is a pure conflict interaction in which one party or group must bear a cost in order that another party or group may benefit.