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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Critical Review
Hayek, Social Justice, and the Market: Reply to Johnston
By Edward Feser
Abstract
David Johnston's Rejoinder to my defense of Hayek's critique of social justice, though it has the merit of attempting to deal with Hayek's claim that the very idea of social justice is incoherent (in a way other critics of Hayek have not), fails to undermine that defense. Johnston's suggested counterexample to Hayek's claim that talk of an injustice presupposes an agency responsible for the injustice is not even prima facie plausible; he overlooks crucial disanalogies between the pursuit of social justice and the pursuit of other social goals; and he fails to understand the distinction between Hayek's (negative) case against social justice and his (positive) case for the market.