Danielle Allen: Justice By Means of Democracy

Works from Harvard in political theory have a special sociological interest because they come from a center of power and indicate the probable rationale for where the elite are next taking the government. The last 50 years have been dominated by Rawlsian redistributionism. Danielle Allen’s new book proposes a radicalization, correcting the flaws of Rawls. But it retains the basic animus of Rawlsianism, which is that justice is fundamentally about equality. The book is deeply indebted to the Harvard milieu and to a large group of interlocutors¹. But she is an original voice, who has written compelling books on punishment in ancient Athenian democracy² and a memoir of her murdered cousin³ reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped ⁴. Her background as a University of Cambridge classics Ph.D. shines through these books and through this one as well. …