Abstract

This article analyses the debate between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth in a dialectical fashion. Their controversy about how to construct a critical theory of justice is not just one about the proper balance between `redistribution' and `recognition', it also involves basic questions of social ontology. Differing both from Fraser's `twodimensional' view of `participatory parity' and from Honneth's `monistic' theory of recognition, the article argues for a third view of `justificatory monism and diagnosticevaluative pluralism', also called the `first-things-first' approach. According to it, theories of recognition provide an essential sensorium for analyses of social suffering and of injustice, while with respect to the justification of justice claims, a discursive conception of justification is required. This, however, does not imply a purely `formal' account of justice; rather, it leads to a substantive understanding of the `grammar of justice', motivationally, socially and institutionally. Such an account of a critical theory of justice aims at a multidimensional critique of social and political `relations of justification'.