Defending the Medical Sphere: Using Walzer in the 2020s

Abstract

Margo Trappenburg argues that Spheres of Justice proved highly valuable as a means of preserving distributive shared understandings in the era of ubiquitous marketization from the 1980s to the early 2000s. However, while distributive criteria such as medical care according to need were saved, professional norms such as the rule that doctors should not advertise their services got lost. This shows that there is more to spheres of justice than distribution. Trappenburg then discusses more recent political and policy developments: the trend toward tailor-made, integral policy making that requires civil servants to help citizens unhindered by sphere-specific boundaries, and the trend toward “wokism” or identity politics, which tends to require an acknowledgement on the part of activists that all sorts of injustices are interconnected and should be fought coherently (“no climate justice without justice for Gaza”). Trappenburg argues that both developments should be scrutinized more critically than they usually are for reasons set out in Spheres: looking at citizens from one sphere-specific angle at a time prevents the abuse of power by distributive agencies. In addition, forming partial alliances for sphere-specific types of injustice prevents further polarization.