The Sense of Social Justice from Redistribution to Recognition

Social justice, shaped under modern conditions, treats the redistribution of social resources in an ideal institutional and political structure based on normative principles. The role of the state in such a structure is to organize the existing inequalities within the framework of a distributive conception of justice. John Rawls’ theory, based on a liberal egalitarian perspective, is considered to be the most mature statement of this contemporary conception of justice. Modern social conditions, on the other hand, have important implications not only on the redistribution of resources but also on the intersubjective relations that are spread throughout the society. These adverse effects, which Axel Honneth calls social pathologies, indicate that the boundaries of social justice must be extended beyond the redistribution to the recognition struggles. This approach, which allows us to question the extent of justice, treats it as a concept that is constantly redefined, not only as a matter of a theoretical debate, but also as a result of the experiences of injustice. The fact that the ethical demands arising as recognition struggles in contemporary social movements are pushing the traditional framework of social justice shows that the idea of a fair society must be sought beyond the limited distributive perspective. It is possible to constitute a common “social justice struggle” beyond the struggles for recognition, only through the connection between singular experiences of injustice in practice as well as in theory