Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad

Walzer argues that moral terms have both minimal and maximal meanings, and that we give 'thin' and 'thick' accounts of them appropriate to different contexts. He rejects the assumption that there are two separate moralities—one universal and one particular—that people carry around. Instead, minimalist meanings are embedded within maximal morality, expressed in the same idiom and sharing the same historical and cultural orientation; they are liberated from that embeddedness only in moments of personal or social crisis, as when the Prague marchers reduced their claims to 'Truth' and 'Justice' [citation:13]. He also rejects the view that social criticism must proceed from universal moral truth [citation:4].

The book introduces the thick/thin distinction as a framework for moral argument. Thick arguments are culturally connected, referentially entangled, detailed, and specific; thin arguments are abstract, ad hoc, detached, and general [citation:18]. Walzer presents this as a revision and extension of the arguments in Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that arose after 1989 [citation:5]. The thick/thin distinction allows him to defend a version of complex equality at home while articulating a constrained, liberal version of self-determination abroad [citation:4].

Walzer opens the book with a photograph of Prague demonstrators carrying signs reading 'Truth' and 'Justice.' He asks how he could immediately understand and acknowledge the values they were defending despite sharing little cultural context with them. His answer: the marchers were not defending epistemological theories or particular distributive programs. They wanted true statements from leaders, impartial law enforcement, and an end to party privilege—'common, garden variety justice.' Minimalist meanings became universally accessible because they were liberated from their Czech particularity during a moment of political confrontation [citation:13]. This example grounds the book's central distinction in lived political experience.

A significant criticism, voiced by Francis Fukuyama in Foreign Affairs, is that Walzer's compartmentalization of maximalist critiques may be an unnecessary concession to relativism, given the degree of cultural homogenization occurring alongside cultural differentiation [citation:1]. Other critics question whether Walzer's reliance on shared social meanings can adequately ground moral criticism when those meanings are themselves unjust or contested [citation:8]. The thick/thin distinction, while useful for understanding cross-cultural moral discourse, risks leaving the theorist without resources to criticize a community's own self-understanding from an external standpoint.

The 2019 edition includes a new preface and afterword describing how the book's reasoning connects with arguments Walzer made in Just and Unjust Wars about the morality of warfare [citation:5]. The final chapter on 'Justice and Tribalism' develops a qualified defense of self-determination in international society, arguing that minimalist morality in international politics must respect the rights of communities to shape their own political existence, barring cases of extreme human rights violations like genocide [citation:2]. This connects the thick/thin framework directly to the intervention and non-intervention debates central to Walzer's just war theory.

The book concludes with a chapter on the divided self. Walzer argues that we are all made up of several selves—based in our histories, identities, and associations—that we juggle as we confront complex decisions and ambiguous choices [citation:9]. The most profound moral reasoning occurs among these selves rather than in a community of eager discussants. This is a commentary on what Walzer sees as the sad state of public moral debate, where sound-bite sloganeering at the thin level often substitutes for the thick reasoning that democratic citizenship requires [citation:9]. The divided self is the psychological counterpart to the book's political argument about complex equality.