Table of Contents

Preface Introduction: Liberalism, Communitarianism, and the Question of Justice 1. The Constitution of the Self 1.1. The Critique of the "Unencumbered Self" 1.2. Ethical Person and Legal Person 2. The Ethical Neutrality of Law 2.1. Liberalism and Neutrality 2.2. Individual Rights and Autonomy as a Good 2.3. General Law and Particular Identities 2.4. Basic Individual Rights 3. The Ethos of Democracy 3.1. Modus Vivendi and Overlapping Consensus 3.2. Substantivist and Republican Communitarianism 3.3. Civil Society and Deliberative Democracy 3.4. Citizenship and Social Justice 4. Universalism and Contextualism 4.1. A Contextualist Universalism 4.2. Constructivism and Practical Reason 4.3. Which Person? Whose Reason? 4.4. Ethical Universalism and Modern Identity 5. Contexts of Justice 5.1. Justice and the Good 5.2. Contexts of Justification 5.3. Contexts of Recognition Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author

Rainer Forst is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.

Reviews

"Contexts of Justice is a study that covers and definitely exhausts the whole range of ten years of one of the most important recent philosophical discussions, that between liberals and communitarians." - Jurgen Habermas, author of Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere "Forst addresses with great insight and acuity the debates over justice between liberals and communitarians that animated the late '80s and '90s.... He uses no jargon, he reasons well, his arguments are strong, clear, and accessible, and he avoids political correctness as well as its opposite." - Andrew Arato, author of Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy