2. The Discourse on Social Justice

To advance the search for a broadly shared positive conception of social justice, this chapter traces the evolution of thought about social justice and surveys the diverse ways it is conceptualized within various traditions of thought. We begin by examining premodern Western traditions of thought about the underlying concept of justice; subsequent developments in thought that gave rise to the modern concept of social justice; and the distributive conceptions of social justice that have since tended to dominate Western discourse. We then examine subaltern conceptions that complicate and enrich the discourse on social justice. We conclude by examining conceptions of global justice that further complicate and enrich the discourse.