Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-181) and index.

1. From Aristotle to Adam Smith -- Two kinds of justice -- The right of necessity -- Property rights -- Communal experiments and Utopian writings -- Poor laws -- 2. The eighteenth century -- Citizen quality: Rousseau -- Changing our picture of the poor: Smith -- The equal worth of human beings: Kant -- To the Vendm����e Palais de Justice: Babeuf -- 3. From Babeuf to Rawls -- Reaction -- Positivists -- Marx -- Utilitarians -- Rawls -- After Rawls --

Publisher description: Distributive justice in its modern sense calls on the state to guarantee that everyone is supplied with a certain level of material means. Samuel Fleischacker argues that guaranteeing aid to the poor is a modern idea, developed only in the last two centuries. Earlier notions of justice, including Aristotle's, were concerned with the distribution of political office, not of property. It was only in the eighteenth century, in the work of philosophers such as Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant, that justice began to be applied to the problem of poverty.