UNIVERSALISTICS CONCEPT OF CIRCUMSTANCES OF JUSTICE AND SCOPES OF ITS PRACTICAL USE (Universalistska kontseptsia obstavyn spravedlyvosti ta mezhi yii praktychnoho vykorystannia)

The main theme of the article is formation of the theory of justice that could help in solving the applied ethics' problem (such as gender equality, death lethal injection, the death penalty etc.). Two paradigms in modern theory of justice - universalism and contextualism - are analyzed from the viewpoint of this approach. Circumstances of justice are one of the basic principles of universalistic paradigm. But on the basis of this principle one cannot give the answer to the problems which applied ethics confronts with. Contextualist paradigm considers justice in the context of certain social practice. As we can see, the comprehension of justice as the rule that determines the social practices of exchange, punishment, distribution and recognition enables to solve the applied ethics problems. The theory of justice that is developed within the framework of the contextualist's paradigm has a great potential.