Abstract

Jon Elster surveys and classifies a wide range of literature that informs the study of justice. He positions Michael Walzer's theory of justice in relation to the three main categories into which he believes studies of justice fall: descriptive, explanatory, and normative. In comparing Walzer's and his own account of the relevance of empirical findings for normative analysis, Elster aims to show that the complexity of the relationship between the two is not accurately captured by Walzer.