People care a great deal about justice. They protest and engage in confrontations with others when their sense of justice is affronted or disturbed. When they do this, they don't generally act in a strategic or calculating way but use arguments that claim a general validity. Disputes are commonly regulated by these 'regimes of justice' implicit in everyday social life. But justice is not the only regime that governs action. There are some actions that are selfless and gratuitous, and that belong to what might be called a regime of 'peace' or 'love'. In the course of their everyday lives, people constantly move back and forth between these two regimes, that of justice and that of love. And everyone also has the capacity for violence, which arises when the regulation of action within either of these regimes breaks down.In Love and Justice as Competences, Boltanski lays out this highly original framework for analysing the action of individuals as they pursue their day-to-day lives. The framework outlined in this important book is the basis for the path-breaking work that he has developed over the last twenty years - work that has examined the moral foundations of society in and through the forms of everyday conflict. For anyone who wants to understand what a critical sociology might mean today, this book is an essential text.

ForewordPart One: What People Can Do1. A Sociology of Disputes2. The Political Basis for General Forms3. Ordinary Denunciations and Critical Sociology4. The Sociology of Critical Society5. A Model of Competence for Judgement6. Principles of Equivalence and Justifiable Proofs7. Tests and Temporality8. Four Modes of Action9. Below the Threshold of the ReportPart Two: Agape: An Introduction to the States of Peace1. Disputes and Peace1.1 The Limits of Justice1.2 Anthropology and Tradition1.3 The Theological Tradition2. Three Forms of Love2.1 An Initial Inventory2.2 Love as Reciprocity: Philia2.3 Eros and the Construction of General Equivalence2.4 Agape and the Withdrawal of Equivalence2.5 The Insouciance of Agape2.6 Duration and Permanence2.7 The Example of Little Flowers2.8 Parable and Metaphor3. Agape and the Social Sciences3.1 Agape: Practical Model, Ideal or Utopia?3.2 Marx and the Theory of Justice3.3 The Paradoxes of Gifts and Counter-gifts4. Toward a Sociology of Agape4.1 The Model of Pure Agape4.2 Access to the States of Agape4.3 From Love to Justice4.4 From Justice to Love4.5 Agape and EmotionPart Three: Public Denunciation1. The Affair as a Social Form2. The Actantial System of Denunciation3. The Requirement of Desingularization4. The Difficult Denunciation of Kith and Kin5. Maneuvering to Increase One's Own Stature6. What One Must Not Do Oneself7. Generalization and Singularity8. Dignity Offended9. Confidence BetrayedAnnex 1. Building the Factorial AnalysisAnnex 2. A Sampling of Typical LettersWorks Cited