A Materialist Theory Of Justice

This book presents a comprehensive theory of justice that has a threefold justification. For the first justification, the book presents a rigorously empirical methodology based on the stark realities of the human condition. It has a strong anthropological grounding in that it is adapted from the methodology of cultural materialism which, in turn, is founded on the materialist epistemology of Karl Marx. The second justification is philosophical. The theory of justice derived from the above methodology is further buttressed by and/or tested against the major trends of Western philosophy as represented by the thought of Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, John Finnis, John Dewey, George Mead, Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Axel Honneth, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, Martha Nussbaum, John Maynard Keynes, Amartya Sen and Karl Marx. The third justification is moral. The promotion of human flourishing on the basis of fairness and equality are the minimum goals to be achieved; after which a more ambitious and comprehensive theory of overall goodness —based on individual and governmental action —can be implemented.