Social justice: the path to unity

Recent debates on social justice have focused mainly on cultural issues. Increasing economic inequalities, especially in the developed world, have demonstrated that socioeconomic issues have not lost their importance. I argue that for social justice to be achieved, both the cultural and socioeconomic spheres need to be considered. These two approaches to social justice interpret the default principle of equality differently: while adherents of the cultural approach understand equality as the recognition of differences, proponents of the socioeconomic approach emphasize universal equal treatment. The paper consequently claims that applying both approaches to social justice can help respond to the shortcomings of exclusively focusing on cultural issues. Emphasizing both paradigms not only acknowledges the interconnection of socioeconomic and cultural issues and provides an adequate response to increasing socioeconomic inequalities, but it also helps address social division: because the socioeconomic paradigm is based on the universalist assumption of equal treatment, it provides a sense of unity. Accordingly, I argue that a sense of unity is crucial for both approaches to justice: without unity neither socioeconomic justice nor cultural justice can be attained. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.