ABSTRACT
Discussions of justice have traditionally focused on two very general kinds of concerns. On the one hand, justice is associated with the concepts of equality, similarity, and proportionality, and in this area questions of justice are essentially comparative: whether an individual has been treated justly depends on how his treatment compares with that received by others. On the other hand, we have the idea that justice consists in giving everyone 'his due', and here the questions of justice are not comparative: whether an individual receives just treatment depends on features of that individual, and is independent of how others are treated. Joel Feinberg distinguishes between 'comparative' and 'non-comparative' justice, which he evidently regards as irreducibly distinct concepts, the applicability of which depend upon disjoint and possibly conflicting sets of principles. Like many other writers on the subject of justice, however, Feinberg devotes little attention to the concept of relevant dissimilarity.
