Otfried Höffe is one of the foremost political philosophers in
Europe today. In this major work, already a classic in continental
Europe, he re-examines philosophical discourse on justice – from
Classical Greece to the present day.
Höffe confronts what he sees as the two major challenges to
any theory of justice: the legal, positivist claim that there are
no standards of justice external to legal systems; and the
anarchist claim that justice demands the rejection and abolition of
all legal and state systems.
Höffe sets out to continue the ‘philosophical project of
modernity’, the legitimation of human rights, and their guarantee
by the state, while at the same time rehabilitating the classical
theory of political justice represented by Plato and Aristotle. He
questions the success of the positivists in avoiding extra-legal
normative claims, and casts doubt on the plausibility of their
criticism of the Natural Law tradition. Most anarchists, he argues,
rely on an uncritical assumption that social institutions other
than states and legal orders do not coerce.
In Höffe’s view, some coercion is unavoidable, and the
grounds for its justification must be examined. Principles of
justice will be those principles which define fundamental rights,
and which must be enforced if rights are to be respected.

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