FOR 1206:  Justitia Amplificata: Amplified Justice - Concrete and Global

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2009 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 99877935

This Research Unit is a new forum for political theorists and philosophers interested in normative, applied and interdisciplinary questions of justice, established at the Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main. The main goal of the Research Unit is to bring together the theoretical and methodological perspectives of diverse approaches in political theory and philosophy with respect to normative debates about justice. Its members will collaborate on research projects among themselves and with visiting senior and junior fellows, share their expertise on different topics, and establish networks with the policy-making community and with normatively-informed research in the empirical social sciences.
The aim of the Research Unit is to examine fundamental questions of justice beyond the classical framework of ideal theories for a self-contained society. Research will therefore focus on issues of global, international and transnational justice as well as on the implications of empirical challenges for normative theories of justice (whether domestic or global).
Contemporary theories of justice face two challenges. Firstly, their scope is often still too narrow as they remain focussed on the state as their primary, if not unique, unit of assessment. This seemed justified when states were perceived to be the solution to most of the moral puzzles raised by human interaction and cooperation, as in the classical social contract tradition. However, in an increasingly globalised world order - where sources of power are, more often than not, multileveled and all but firmly grounded in national institutions - the statist focus seems both too narrow and too unrealistic. Secondly, and relatedly, normative theories are often so general and abstract that it seems almost impossible to apply them to concrete political scenarios. Hence, the need for a methodological reconsideration of the best way requires to theorise questions of justice.An adequate theory of justice needs, therefore, to broaden its scope so as to deal with the circumstances of a globalised world, and to strengthen its connection with practical concerns. These two dimensions will be at the centre of the Research Unit. In order to tackle these problems, the members of the Research Unit will both run regular informal meetings to discuss their ongoing research and host international workshops and conferences with external speakers.
The Research Unit will also attempt to establish strong links with the policy-making community (including think tanks, political research foundations, and trade unions). The Research Unit will be hosting regular research workshops and conferences, and two fellowship programmes (for early-career and established researchers respectively), which will be advertised in due course.

• DFG Programme: Advanced Studies Centres in SSH

Projects

• Justitia Amplificata: Erweiterte Gerechtigkeit - konkret und global (Applicants Forst, Rainer ;  Gosepath, Stefan )

• Spokespersons: Professor Dr. Rainer Forst; Professor Dr. Stefan Gosepath