Distributive Justice

Abstract

In general, I shall focus on justice as what we morally owe each other. I shall therefore briefly elaborate on this concept of justice. As long as rights are understood very broadly as—perhaps pro tanto and highly conditional—constraints protecting the right-holder's interests and/or will, justice as what we owe each other is compatible with a broad range of theories. Rights, in this very weak sense, need not be absolute or even trumps over other moral considerations. They are merely those considerations that determine when a person is pro tanto wronged. So understood, rights are merely the correlates of the pro tanto duties that we owe to individuals—as opposed to the impersonal duties that we may have.