Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World

by Michael Goodhart

Overview

This book challenges the conventional approach to problems of injustice in global normative theory. It offers a radical alternative designed to transform our thinking about what kind of problem injustice is and to show how political theorists might do better in understanding and addressing it. Michael Goodhart argues that the dominant paradigm, ideal moral theory (IMT), takes a fundamentally wrong-headed approach to injustice. At the same time, leading alternatives to IMT struggle to make sense of the role values play in politics and abandon political theory's critical and prescriptive aspirations. Goodhart treats justice claims as ideological and develops an innovative bifocal theoretical framework for making sense of them. This framework reconciles realistic political analysis with substantive normative commitments, enabling theorists to come to grips with injustice as a political rather than a philosophical problem. The book describes the work that political theory and political theorists can do to combat injustice and illustrates its key arguments through a novel reconceptualization of responsibility for injustice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190692452
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Michael Goodhart is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he holds secondary appointments in Philosophy and in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. Goodhart's research focuses on problems of global injustice, on the theory and practice of democracy and human rights in the context of globalization, and on related puzzles concerning international and transnational democratic governance and accountability. He is also interested in epistemology and in methodology in political theory.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Un-thinking Ideal Moral Theory Chapter 1: The Trouble with Justice Chapter 2: Barking up the Wrong Trees Part II: Re-conceptualizing the Problem Chapter 3: Getting Real? Chapter 4: The Bifocal Approach Chapter 5: A Democratic Account of Injustice Part III: Political Theory for the Real World Chapter 6: Political Theory and the Politics of Injustice Chapter 7: Taking Responsibility for Injustice Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Any reflection about practice calls for its translation in another practice, not rarely challenging the practice reflected upon. This book will, therefore, appeal to more than just global normative theorists, but inspire all those who have a dynamic interest in the ethos of today's world." — Wilfried Vanhoutte, Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy

"...Goodhart is clearly right on target in Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World when he argues in favor of a radical egalitarian practical agenda" — James P. Sterba, University of Notre Dame, The Review of Politics

"This is an exceptional book. It is smart, fearless, and takes on an important question. Goodhart directly and stridently takes on the dominate ways of framing the problems of global injustice. My hope for the field is that those who work on these questions in a more analytic vein will take up Goodhart's insights and framing."-Brooke Ackerly, author of Just Responsibility

"Injustice is an original and sophisticated contribution to one of the most widely-discussed topics in contemporary politics. Offering a sustained challenge to conventional normative approaches to the subject, Michael Goodhart has written a welcome, provocative, and compelling manifesto for a critical social science of injustice. This is an impressive achievement."-Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge

"Any political theorist who has ever struggled with the futility of her own work must read this book! Michael Goodhart has written a refreshing, clear-headed, and unapologetic book for a generation of political theorists grown weary of analytic hair-splitting and political irrelevance in face of the concrete injustices across the globe. Here, Goodhart rejects the reflective pursuit of spotless principles among practitioners of 'ideal moral theory', as well as attempts by 'realists' and 'non-idealists' to get more real-and offers an alternative paradigm that is 'bifocal' in its approach and 'emancipatory' in its aims-fusing ideological critique with substantive normative engagement, to support political opposition to real practices of domination, exploitation and oppression."-Fonna Forman, Director, Center on Global Justice, University of California, San Diego

From the Publisher