Spheres Of Justice

A classic of twentieth-century political thought on the nature of justice.

“This is a humane and hopeful vision, and Mr. Walzer conveys it with a wry and gentle grace.” ―New York Times Book Review 

In this landmark work, Michael Walzer makes the provocative claim that the real enemy of a just society is not inequality itself but domination—the quiet way that wealth turns into power and power into deference until an advantage in one corner of life rules over the others. Walzer offers instead a vision of what he calls complex equality, which requires that we recognize that justice is not one thing but many. Each social good, whether money or education or even love, belongs to its own sphere and follows its own rule. Society, he argues, can be just only when no one can parlay their advantages in one sphere to dominate their fellow citizens. Eschewing abstract first principles and working from the shared understandings of real communities, Spheres of Justice remains one of the most compelling challenges to abstract universalism ever written.

• “This is a humane and hopeful vision, and Mr. Walzer conveys it with a wry and gentle grace.”
  New York Times Book Review
• “Michael Walzer is something of a national treasure…. the theory that he develops marks a major contribution to the debate over how to fashion a just society.” 
  Boston Globe
• “This brilliant book…. will transform the debate about distributive justice beyond all recognition.”
  Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University
• “A book which bridges philosophy and social policy in the most engaging and fruitful way... the foundation of a new, emergent liberalism.”
  Daniel Bell, Harvard University
• “Walzer presents a sophisticated new theory of equality and supports it by surveying an extraordinarily rich array of social and political ideologies and arrangements…. Fascinating and important.”
  Judith Jarvis Thomson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology