Justice: From Principles to Practice – and Back Again. a Historical-Epistemological Analysis
Justice: From Principles to Practice – and Back Again. a Historical-Epistemological Analysis
Tuesday, 8 July 2025: 00:45
Location: SJES026 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
Oral Presentation
My contribution first analyzes various faces of justice in politics and philosophy to distinguish it sociologically as a demand that is only possible in modern society. However, what exactly is justice? How should it be conceived sociologically? Sociologically, justice must be understood as a socio-structural demand and analyzed regarding social participation.
In the second step, the historical epistemology of three phases of change in the form of demands for "social justice" is typified. In pre-modern society, following Emile Durkheim, the moral and justice-relevant feeling of obligation towards others arises mechanically, as it were. In capitalist society based on the division of labor, on the other hand, the "solidarity" between people, which is not automatically generated, becomes the overriding problem, the possible absence of which considerably shakes the stability of society unless it is possible to institutionalize social responsibility. This type, which a later French thinker, Michel Foucault, still sees in the welfare state of the German social market economy, has been replaced by neoliberal capitalism. The latter delegates social responsibility to individual shoulders. The demand for social justice dissolves into the struggle for the particular rights of countless differences, which makes the joint endeavor for justice - sociologically understood - a task for Sisyphus.
In the second step, the historical epistemology of three phases of change in the form of demands for "social justice" is typified. In pre-modern society, following Emile Durkheim, the moral and justice-relevant feeling of obligation towards others arises mechanically, as it were. In capitalist society based on the division of labor, on the other hand, the "solidarity" between people, which is not automatically generated, becomes the overriding problem, the possible absence of which considerably shakes the stability of society unless it is possible to institutionalize social responsibility. This type, which a later French thinker, Michel Foucault, still sees in the welfare state of the German social market economy, has been replaced by neoliberal capitalism. The latter delegates social responsibility to individual shoulders. The demand for social justice dissolves into the struggle for the particular rights of countless differences, which makes the joint endeavor for justice - sociologically understood - a task for Sisyphus.