Emotion and culture in theories of justice

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Abstract
The anthropologists' approach to justice starts from the form of society in which its practice is embedded. The argument is that in any society a theory of social justice and a theory of the individual psyche are integrally part of a practice of living in community. Both the claims of justice and the claims of the psyche emerge in practical contexts of clarifying accountability. Litanies of virtues and vices support blaming and exonerating in everyday contexts as well as in specialized judicial institutions. This being so, philosophers are naive who seek to clarify problems in the theory of social justice by introducing vices and virtues ad hoc, without a systematic theory of psyche and society. The argument is developed by comparing the concept of the person in Emile Durkheim's sociological theory with that developed by John Rawls for his theory of social justice. It concludes that justice is the form of society, consequently it is a mistake to abstract it from social and psychological theory.

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