Der humangerechte Sozialstaat

Social justice, seen as a widely-accepted socio-ethical criterion for a legitimate welfare state, poses the question of the mutual commitments to which members of society can be bound, and the reasons for this. Elmar Nass examines whether or not this is true and if so, which social standards may counteract discretion. He examines the consistency, coherence and implementability of those concepts of justice which are relevant for the discussion about the welfare state. His study would seem to confirm the contradiction between social justice and economic efficiency. In order to solve this problem, the author applies the idea of justice on the basis of capability, which originated in the ordoliberal concept of the social market economy, for the first time to a concept of a welfare state, a concept whose goal in its regulatory policies is to provide each human being with the opportunity to develop. This concept promises both a neo-Aristotelian and implementable symbiosis between social justice and economic efficiency.