## Metadata - Author: [[Samuel Fleischacker]] - Full Title: A Short History of Distributive Justice - Category: #books ## Highlights - "Distributive justice" in its modern sense calls on the state to guarantee that property is distributed throughout society so that everyone is supplied with a certain level of material means. Debates about distributive justice tend to center on the amount of means to be guaranteed and on the degree to which state intervention is necessary for those means to be distributed. ([Location 88](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002PHMLTE&location=88)) - At least at first glance, then, the ancient and the modern meanings of the phrase are very different. Above all, the ancient principle has to do with distribution according to merit while the modern principle demands a distribution independent of merit. Everyone is supposed to deserve certain goods regardless of merit on the modern view; merit making is not supposed to begin until some basic goods (housing, health care, education) have been distributed to everyone. ([Location 97](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002PHMLTE&location=97)) - Well, what is justice, generally speaking? As a formal matter, justice has usually been understood to be a particularly rational, enforceable, and practicable virtue. Unlike, say, wisdom or charity, justice has been understood across cultures and historical periods to be a secular and a rational virtue, whose demands can be explained and justified without appeal to religious beliefs; to be a virtue that governments can and should enforce, and that indeed ought to be the prime norm guiding political activity; and to be a virtue that, if only because politicians need to organize their plans around it, ought to take as its object practicable, readily achievable goals. Thus promoting belief in Christ or enlightenment via the Buddha has never been held to be a project for justice because the goodness of these projects, if they are good, cannot be explained in purely secular and rational terms. Thus warmth in friendship, while a good thing according to almost everyone,is not… ([Location 102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002PHMLTE&location=102)) - Moving from formal to substantial features, justice in general is usually understood to be a virtue that protects individuals against violence or dishonesty at the hands of other individuals, and against demands by the wider society… ([Location 109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002PHMLTE&location=109)) - In summary, then, given the general meaning of "justice," we need at least the following premises to arrive at the modern concept of distributive justice:1. Each individual, and not just societies or the human species as a whole, has a good that deserves respect, and individuals are due certain rights and protections in their pursuit of that good;2. Some share of material goods is part of every individual's due, part of the rights and protections that everyone deserves;3. The fact that every individual deserves this can be justified rationally, in purely secular terms;4. The distribution of this share of goods is practicable: attempting consciously to achieve it is neither a fool's project nor, like the attempt to enforce… ([Location 127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002PHMLTE&location=127)) - When Rawls tells us that retributive justice must be concerned with a person's character but distributive justice should not be so concerned (TJ 311-315), he almost reverses the view Aristotle had proposed of these two types of justice. ([Location 203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002PHMLTE&location=203))