Distribution of What?: An Introduction

Abstract

This is the fourth volume of Equality and Justice, a six-volume collection of the most important articles of the twentieth century on the topic of justice and equality. This volume and the second part of Volume 5: Social Contract and the Currency of Justice address the question of what kinds of good are relevant for justice (welfare, initial opportunity for welfare, resources, capabilities, etc.) Other volumes address the following issues: (1) the concept of justice, (2) whether justice is primarily a demand on individuals or on societies, and (3) the relative merits of conceptions of justice based on equality, on priority for those who have less, and on ensuring that everyone has a basic minimum, of the relevant goods (Volume 1); whether justice requires equality of some sort (Volume 2); the question of who (animals, members of other societies, future people, etc.) is owed justice (Volume 3); contractarian conceptions of justice (part of Volume 5); and desert and entitlement conceptions of justice (Volume 6).