Context of Justice: Rethinking the Notion of Balance and Reciprocity

The hermeneutics of justice spans across development, economics, government and socio-political rights. Its conceptualization and utilization for divergent purposes however creates an enigma that fundamentally hampers its application. This paper creates a discourse around the context and content of justice by utilizing Rainer Forst's Context of Justice as a framework in interrogating the debates between the Liberal and Communitarian propositions of the self and community respectively. It envisages a midpoint between these dissenting views and concludes that since the communitarian thesis encounters problems with its approach at submerging the rights of the individual within the communal structure, justice can only be effectively responded to and applied within an intersubjective context that not only resonates with but also synchronizes the offerings of liberalism with community without being incongruous.