JUSTICE AS DEMOCRACY - THE POLITICAL-PHILOSOPHY OF WALZER,MICHAEL

Michael Walzer's attempt to merge the communitarian idea of the morally privileged role of particular communities with his interest in a critical theory of society has been exposed to numerous misunderstandings and criticisms which primarily refer to his supposed anti-universalism and the subsequent renaissance of national particularism in political theory. Now, in contrast to these criticisms, the analysis of Walzer's political theory reveals that the conceptual meaning of his communitarianism is dependant on a normative model of the practice of democratic self-determination which tries to combine a high sensitivity to the fact of cultural difference with the acknowledgement of universal norms grounded in the mutual recognition of the citizens of a democratic republic. Seen in this light, then the idea of public dialogue turns out to be the focal point and the operative center of his model of a pluralist republicanism which is, within the concept of local justices, elaborated as a comprehensive theory of a radicalized version of reflexive democracy in complex societies.