Introduction
Since the release of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971, discussions on the role of groups, redistribution, and symbolic recognition have gained unprecedented attention in North America and Europe. How can we ensure equal recognition among groups and foster equitable access to goods in a way that provides fair distribution not only among groups (plurality) but also within groups (the singular) so that all are politically and socially included on a common shared basis (the universal)? While the approach to this question differs between America and Europe—think of French republican universalism and the historical evolution of the concept of nation, along with its recent impact on secularism—it has also been diversified by third world perspectives. “Provincializing Europe,” to borrow Dipesh Chakrabarty’s book title, also means provincializing a certain universal affirmed as globally valid while denying the plurality and singularities that resist it, or, indeed, other discourses on the universal, other universals. To reconceptualize the minimums of justice and establish a more inclusive universal, it is also crucial to integrate not only postcolonial critiques but also perspectives that have been historically overlooked, such as those of women, sexual minorities, and the subaltern, within this overarching universal framework. Despite the Western-centric focus of Michel Rosenfeld’s book, A Pluralist Theory of Constitutional Justice, as highlighted by Daniel Bonilla Maldonado, it offers a sophisticated conceptualization of the universal. This conceptualization provides an original and fruitful approach to articulating the relationships between the three key elements—the singular, the plural, and the universal—ultimately allowing for the development of a comprehensive pluralist theory within the context of liberal democracies.
The approach through which Rosenfeld develops his theory deserves to be highlighted for its ability to transcend certain intellectual divides. The formulation of his theory of comprehensive pluralism and the essentials of justice combines a critical dimension with a normative one. This articulation is a strength in Rosenfeld’s thinking, challenging the established notion in philosophy and legal studies that these two perspectives must remain separate. Typically, critical work aims to unveil forms of power and domination—such as class, race, and gender—to denounce them, while normative perspectives construct projects for social, political, and legal transformation. The normative perspective is theoretical: it elaborates a theory of justice, which, most of the time, is an ideal theory. But this division of intellectual work is questionable. On the one hand, critical theories necessarily require a normative standpoint: the critique of inequalities of economic redistribution, lack of cultural recognition, or failures in political representation, to borrow from Nancy Fraser’s framework of “scales of justice,” necessarily needs a substantial and normative concept of equality, and, more broadly, parameters of justice without which it cannot denounce social practices and structures as unjust. The articulation of a normative standpoint with a critical one can also be found in Max Horkheimer’s project of developing a type of critique aimed at social transformations. In other words, critical theories must uncover the parameters that make critique possible and the kinds of transformations they aspire to: critical theories are thus conditioned by a normative theory, both in their principles and purpose. On the other hand, normative theories of justice lose their relevance if they sever all connections to praxis, the reality of social relations, and the forms and structures of power that produce and reproduce injustices. In this sense, theories of justice must integrate a critical dimension, understood as a constant means of adjusting normative statements and establishing a specific relationship to social experience. Theories of justice need, therefore, to incorporate a transitional dimension that reflects how to achieve justice ideals in nonideal contexts. This implies that political philosophy and social philosophy have to be understood as inseparable.
Rosenfeld’s book integrates these two perspectives. It engages with our contemporary, nonideal, and even tragic context marked by tribal politics, globalization, fragmentation, global terrorism, and inequalities. It also puts forth a normative proposal, that of a comprehensive pluralism articulated with essentials of justice that allow for the conceptualization of a pluralist, inclusive constitution. Identifying the minimums of justice makes it possible to formulate a plural universal that integrates the concept of equality in a specific way: equality transforms conflict or disagreements inherent in postmodern societies into a factor of inclusion and freedom, provided that overcoming conflict is perceived as temporary. In other words, the strength of Rosenfeld’s thesis lies in generating a concept of a plural universal, or a pluralization of the universal, while acknowledging conflict as unsurmountable since it is inherent to democratic dynamics.
In Part I, I will highlight the uniqueness of Rosenfeld’s method, which leads him to make conflict the central legal-political element of his conception of justice, unfolding from a mid-level pluralism. Then, in Part II, I will focus on the concept of the universal that Rosenfeld develops by complexifying it, considering its internal contradiction from the viewpoint of its relationship to the singular and the plural, and, in Part III, considering its external contradiction in the form of competition between universals. Finally, in Part IV, I will formulate the hypothesis of a metauniversal by considering equality as the principle that makes the comprehensive pluralism inherent in constitutionalism, as advocated by Rosenfeld, possible.