A critical review of Michael Walzer's justice theory in light of text-context based interpretation

Justice, as a requisite for human societies, has been continuously under scrutiny in political philosophy realm. Theoretical altercations which have emerged within the frameworks of various philosophical schools can best represent this momentous subject. Michael Walzer penned his book, Spheres of Justice, at the late twentieth century as a response to John Rawls’s justice theories. He provides a relativist and pluralist interpretation of distribution justice through his context-based approach; in which the method of distributing social endowments is structured based on a consensus amongst society members. Walzer formalizes his distributive justice based on two principles of 1) simple equality, and 2) complex equality since the moral norms (thick or thin) are foundations of his justice precepts. The present article tries to critically review Walzer’s distribution justice while benefiting from socialistic thinking tradition as the theoretical framework. Socialism is a traditional thought school which ponders on how to renovate liberalism while keeping a flavor of criticism. Eventually, it seems that the main strength of Walzer’s theory of justice lies in his refutation of universalism which dominates liberal justice theory; while it suffers from the main weakness of relying on thick moral norms which fail to resolve moral conflicts amongst societies. This exacting notion however, opens the issue of relativism in definition of justice concept.