Analysis Of Michael Walzer's Spheres Of Justice

In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer presents a philosophical work that does not support the nature of tyranny within its justice. It therefore explores the relationship between philosophy and tyranny. For Walzer distributive justice, and the theories that subsequently enact it, should find their foundations within a shared cultural meaning and understanding rather than an abstract framework that pays no mind to the society upon which it is enacted.

Walzer’s purpose within Spheres of Justice can be described from the following statement:

“I want to argue… that the principles of justice are themselves pluralistic in form; that different social goods ought to be distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by

It concerns him because this kind of equality refers to traditional distributive principles that are practiced universally and social goods are being singly owned or monopolized by individuals or elites (and this good needs to be shared equally within society). Ultimately “simple equality” focuses on the monopolization of social goods. Walzer believes that because of this focus on monopoly, it is favourable for tyranny. Why exactly is it favourable for tyranny? Further effort, power and state intervention would consistently be required to redistribute goods, thereby creating a situation that is harder to resolve. Because of this, theories and distributive principles require a large amount of state and government management and control. Walzer believes this creates “intensified social control”. Ultimately, Walzer sees this “simple equality” as being defined as strict egalitarianism within and across these spheres. For him, this is not only undesirable, but is also practically impossible. The coercion that would be required to maintain the equality would constitute a system that would be unbearable to live

It is different to traditional distributive principles. Walzer’s form of equality focuses on tyranny or dominance instead of “simple equality’s” focus on monopoly. Walzer believes traditional theories of equality are mistaken because they do not consider the pluralistic nature of social goods that are shared by distributive justice principles. Walzer’s own understanding of “complex equality” and justice finds “unitary models” of distributive justice to be incompatible with “complex equality”. Thus, to replace simple equality, Walzer argues for this “complex equality” – a state in which people are unequal within each sphere (but only according to the appropriate distributive laws for that sphere) but everything is still just overall as long as there is no ‘dominance’ of one sphere over the