CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Vargovic, Emil |
|---|---|
| Title | Social Justice and the Moral Justification of a Market Society |
| Summary | The main focus of this paper is on the issues of social justice, legitimate scope of state power and the delicate relationship between the state and the market. These issues will be addressed on a two-level normative analysis. The first level will address the concept of social justice and address the issues why the dominant approaches to justice should be seen as morally problematic and somewhat inappropriate for the contemporary complex societies. Second level will focus on finding the moral justification of a market society or a free market system as the alternative framework for resolving issues of social justice without the extensive redistributive role of the state. In general, three broad approaches to justifying a free market society are: (1) the desert-based justifications, (2) the entitlement-based justifications and (3) the liberty-based justifications. Nevertheless, I will argue that only the liberty-based approach is defensible because other approaches are based on a somewhat narrow understanding of the market and the legitimate role of the state. Therefore, I believe that a liberty-based approach in combination with the Hayekian idea of a spontaneous market order can offer a sustainable moral justification of a free market society. |
| Supervisor | Miklosi, Zoltan |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/vargovic_emil.pdf |
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