Conceptual Analysis and Distributive Justice

This chapter ponders several understandings of conceptual analysis in the context of debates over distributive justice. The chapter's first three main sections consider the concept/conception distinction in its multilayered complexity in a couple of prominent recent accounts of justice. The chapter explores how those theories of justice unfold over several levels of increasing specificity. Thereafter, the chapter takes up the vexed question whether expositions of the concept of justice can ever be austerely analytical or formal rather than morally value-laden. After distinguishing between value-independence and value-neutrality, the chapter argues that, although some possible accounts of justice are at least partly value-neutral, no accounts of justice are ever value-independent.