A New Perspective Of Pluralist Justice

David Miller is a contemporary political philosopher in England. And then, he is one of the most famous figures of market socialism and pluralism justice theory. He printed his doctoral dissertation, Social Justice, in 1976 and the other book, the Principle of Social Justice, in 1999. On the establishment of the integration of the political philosophy and social science, he researched the social justice from a brand-new angle. David Miller absorbs and profits from his predecessors' results by historicistic method when he constructs his theory building. Firstly, he inherits Rawls's presupposition "the overlap consensus" and treated "the social consensus compassed in a social community " as an essential presupposition in his own conception. While he criticizes incisively the abstract color in Rawls theory he thinks it have no universal value except the significance of enlightenment. Secondly, he succeeds to Macintyre's theory of social situation and the social desert principle, and the latter is applied in his own conception of social justice principle and conduces to his unique social situation theory. But on the other hand, he doubts that Macintyre's virtue ethic theory can instruct practice and that the virtue justice can blend with the desert ideal. So, Miller made a new interpretation to the relationship of justice, virtue and desert. Finally, he absorbed Walzer's theory about pluralism justice and social goods. He admired the seeking of compound equal, the classification of social goods and the reasoning of pluralism justice. But he disagrees that Walzer illuminants justice from social goods. Because in Miller's opinion, this way will easily brings on absolute relativism and can't embody a multiple, complicated and abundant human society.Therefore, David Miller wants to find the fundamental principles of justice that can instruct the distribution in social context, and the seeking was based on the modes of human relationship. Under the presupposition of the marginate nation, he divides the modes of human relationship intothree kinds: solidaristic community, instrumental association and citizenship. And each kind of human relationship mode is corresponding to different principles of justice. For instance, need is the primary principle in solidaristic community, desert is the best principle in instrumental association and equal is the first principle in citizenship. Though these three principles belong to different political communities, they aren't separated decidedly but are tightly related in diverse social context. So people have to considerate different situation when using the principles of social justice. On the realization of justice, David Miller systematically expounds the procedure justice, the result justice and the system justice, and especially the relationship of the procedure justice and the result justice. The justice on the procedure doesn't inevitablely bring to the result justice, and the system justice is only the guarantee of the realization of justice. Therefore, David Miller does not appreciate simple procedure justice and system justice. On the contrary, he believes that the less the state and the government are, the more they will be popular. David Miller connects the social justice to market socialism. On one hand, the principles of justice are favor to the market socialism's healthy and benign development. On the other hand, "the cooperant market socialism" ensures the realization of social justice.David Miller and Michael Walzer are both the main representative figures of the pluralism justice theory, but their conceptions are not the same. They have different views in the visual angle, justice principles and applicable respects of theory. Miller tries to smooth away flaws in different justice theories since the 20th century 70's and walk out of the dilemmas faced by Walzer's pluralism justice theory.Therefore, David Miller attempts to mix the liberalism, socialism, communism and pluralism. He also wants to connect the social justice theory with market socialism. It causes the discussion of social justice theory in 21st from sole domain to multiple sights, and from single philosophy speculation to the synthesis of multiple disciplines such associology, politics, economics, culturology and religious study, ect. Miller's theory certainly has great significance to the construct of Chinese-characterized socialism. But it is inevitably criticized bycontemporary scholars when his representative work------the principle ofsocial justice was published. So David Miller writes a number of papers in order to revise his theory in recent years.