Liberal nationalism is a boundary‐making project, and a feature of this boundary‐making enterprise is the belief that the compatriots have a certain priority over strangers. For this reason it is often thought that liberal nationalism cannot be compatible with the demands of global egalitarianism. In this essay, I examine the sense in which liberal nationalism privileges compatriots, and I argue that, properly understood, the idea of partiality for compatriots in the context of liberal nationalism is not at odds with global (...) equal concern for all persons. In particular, I argue that the three central goals and aspirations of liberal nationalism—promoting individual autonomy and cultural identity, the realization of deliberative democracy, and the aspiration for social justice within the state—do not entail or require a form of compatriot partiality that is inconsistent with the demands of global egalitarian justice. (shrink)

Bioethicists often present ‘saving lives’ as a goal distinct from, and competing with, that of extending lives by as much as possible. I argue that this usage of the term is misleading, and provides unwarranted rhetorical support for neglecting the magnitudes of the harms and benefits at stake in medical allocation decisions, often to the detriment of the young. Equal concern for all persons requires weighting equal interests equally, but not all individuals have an equal interest (...) in ‘life-saving’ treatment. (shrink)

Systemic risks are risks produced through interconnected non-wrongful actions of individuals, in the sense that an individual's action is a negligible cause of the risk. Due to scale effects of interaction, their consequences can be serious but they are also difficult to predict and assess via a risk assessment. Since we can have good reason to engage in the interconnected activities giving rise to systemic risk, we incur a concurrent collective responsibility to ensure that the risks are fairly distributed and (...) well regulated. James argues that fairness in this context requires taking reasonably available precautions ensuring for each risk-bearer a favourable ratio of expected benefits over expected losses. In sections 2 and 3 we argue that such a conception of fairness applies but only on the condition that the systemic risks created are irreversible risks and that the general background conditions of justice are imperfectly fair. When risks are reversible, compensatory justice can correct for unfairness in risk imposition. Where risks are irreversible, compensatory justice necessarily fails, giving rise to a collective responsibility to regulate fairly ex ante. Additionally, where background conditions of justice are fully fair and the systemic risk is well understood, risk bearers can be said to have consented to the systemic risk. If they are not fair, we argue that the primary political obligation should lie in fixing the fairness of the backgrounds of justice. A related reason for addressing the general background conditions of fairness is that James’ account of fairness in systemic risk imposition encounters a baseline problem. If expected risks and benefits are calculated again an unfair historic background condition, systemic risk imposition would not be fully fair. Section 4 shows why differences in evidentiary uncertainty as to probability and levels of harm and effective responses require a normatively appropriate response in the form of additional precautions. We show that the evidentiary standards set for risk-based cost-benefit analysis have a connection with deontology because they express a postulate of equal treatment in formal terms. Systemic risks can have different possible degrees of epistemological certainty due to factors of social and natural origin, such as more available research funding or higher degrees of complexity for some systemic risks but not others. These differences have to be mitigated by taking even greater precautions in difficult-to-research systemic risks. (shrink)

I argue that the often-heard claim that all serious present-day political philosophers subscribe to the principle of equal respect and concern or to the doctrine of equal moral status or are in some other fundamental sense egalitarians is wrong. Also wrong is the further claim that the usual methods currently used in political philosophy presuppose basic equality. I further argue that liberal egalitarianism itself is wrong. There is no universal duty “of equal respect and concern” (...) towards every person, for one does not owe one’s nice sister and a serial rapist equal respect and concern. There is also no duty of the state to respect all citizens equally, for a state need not be equally concerned about murderous criminals on the one hand and their innocent victims on the other. The potential maneuver of saving liberal egalitarianism by claiming that people have equal rights is unsuccessful. Human beings clearly do not have equal rights, nor are they born with equal rights; and merely having an equality of some rights, for example of “basic” or human ones, would not suffice for egalitarianism. Appeals to “recognition respect” and related concepts are also to no avail. Trying to go back still a step further and to claim that certain rights inequalities or justified discriminatory rules are themselves “grounded” in equal respect and concern at some deeper, norm-generating level (like, for example, the original position or a discourse-ethical principle of justification) is also futile. Finally, I argue that the “This is not what we mean”-strategy of escaping the above arguments reduces egalitarianism to triviality and empty rhetoric. Liberal egalitarianism should be abandoned. (shrink)

In his recent book, Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights, Andrea Sangiovanni argues that the principle of moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors insofar as this constitutes an act of social cruelty. In this short piece, I will raise two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality: first, Sangiovanni’s account seems to give rise to disturbing implications as to how those beings that have basic (...) moral status relate to each other. Second, grounding moral equality in the rejection of social cruelty may fail to capture some wrongs qua violation of moral equality. (shrink)

IntroductionThe various special concerns and commitments that individuals ordinarily have, for example towards family members, friends, and possibly compatriots, present an interesting challenge for justice. Justice, after all, is said to be blind and imposes demands on persons that ought to be impartial, at least in some respects, to personal ties and relationships. Yet individual special concerns are obviously of moral importance and are deeply valued by participants in these relationships. Thus any conception of justice to be plausible has to (...) be able to accommodate to some extent the various types of valuable and valued special concern characteristic of ordinary social life. In particular, it is important to see how the impartial demands of justice can be maintained while accommodating special concern. (shrink)

In present-day political and moral philosophy the idea that all persons are in some way moral equals is an almost universal premise, with its defenders often claiming that philosophical positions that reject the principle of equal respect and concern do not deserve to be taken seriously. This has led to relatively few attempts to clarify, or indeed justify, 'basic equality' and the principle of equal respect and concern. Such clarification and justification, however, would be direly needed. (...) After all, the ideas, for instance, that Adolf Hitler and Nelson Mandela have equal moral worth, or that a rape victim owes equal respect and concern to both her rapist and to her own caring brother, seem to be utterly implausible. Thus, if someone insists on the truth of such ideas, he or she owes his or her audience an explanation. The authors in this volume - which breaks new ground by engaging egalitarians and anti-egalitarians in a genuine dialogue - attempt to shed light into the dark. They try to clarify the concepts of "basic equality", "equal moral worth","equal respect and concern", "dignity," etc; and they try to justify-or to refute-the resulting clarified doctrines. The volume thus demonstrates that the claim that all persons have equal moral worth, are owed equal concern and respect, or have the same rights is anything but obvious. This finding has not only significant philosophical but also political implications. (shrink)

The distinction between ‘relational' and ‘distributive’ equality has come to play an important role in discussions of equality and justice. But the nature of the distinction is not as clear as we might hope. In this regard, Juliana Bidadanure makes an interesting and important proposal: the two views involve differing kinds of temporal concern. The distributive approach, she suggests, is concerned with equality over people’s complete lives (diachronic equality), whereas the relational approach is concerned with egalitarian social relations at (...) each moment in time (synchronic equality). I argue that this suggestion, while insightful, is not entirely satisfactory. Both relational and distributive equality, I demonstrate, have diachronic and synchronic aspects. Nonetheless, they do so in distinctive ways. So, while the diachronic/synchronic distinction does not provide a clean cut between relational and distributive equality, examining the temporal aspects of each approach helps to illuminate their distinctiveness. (shrink)

The seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, is widely recognized as one of the seminal sources of the modern liberal tradition. _Liberty, Toleration and Equality_ examines the development of Locke’s ideal of toleration, from its beginnings, to the culmination of this development in Locke’s fifteen year debate with his great antagonist, the Anglican clergyman, Jonas Proast. Locke, like Proast, was a sincere Christian, but unlike Proast, Locke was able to develop, over time, a perspective on toleration which allowed him to (...) concede liberty to competing views which he, personally, perceived to be "false and absurd". In this respect, Locke sought to affirm what has since become the basic liberal principle that liberty and toleration are only meaningful when they are accorded to views to which we ourselves are profoundly at odds. John William Tate seeks to show how Locke was able to develop this position on toleration over a long intellectual career. Tate also challenges some of the most prominent contemporary perspectives on Locke, within the academic literature, showing how these fall short of perceiving what is essential to Locke’s position. (shrink)

This paper is a response to papers by Wilson, Burwood and White concerning equal opportunities as an educational ideal. I seek to legitimate this ideal, in contrast to these earlier attempts to persuade us that it is incoherent, unreasonable or misguided. I argue that, given the social context in which the term is used, it is meaningful and represents rational and praiseworthy goals. I identify four aspects of ‘equal opportunities’ and conclude that the concern to promote such (...) opportunities arises from desire for a more just educational provision and out of concern for the well-being of children in oppressed groups. (shrink)

Expressive theories of state action seek to identify and assess the ‘meaning’ implicit in state action, such as legislation and public policies. In expressive theories developed by relational egalitarians, state action must ‘express’ equal concern and respect for citizens. However, it is unclear how precisely we can determine and assess the meaning of what states do. This paper considers how an expressive theory could be developed, given the commitments of a relational account of equality, and how such a (...) theory would relate to relational egalitarianism more broadly. I suggest that expressive considerations should be tied more closely than they are in the current literature to agents’ attitudes and to their intentions. I discuss a range of real-world policies that are problematic for what they can be taken to express. (shrink)

The central feature of modern liberal political morality is the principle of equal respect for persons. According to Ronald Dworkin, governments have an obligation to treat each person as an equal, with equal concern and respect. In distributive contexts, this principle stipulates that each individual is entitled to an “equal” share of social resources, where equal is a function of what is required by the abstract principle of equal concern and respect. For (...) Dworkin, this requirement means that liberal justice is fundamentally concerned with treating peopleas equalsand notequally. By treating someone as an equal he supposes that government must treat each of its citizens with equal dignity, regarding her as an individual with a standing interest in leading a truly good life. By contrast, to treat someone equally, according to Dworkin, “...requires that government treat all those in its chargeequallyin the distribution of some resource or opportunity....” To treat persons as equals, that is, with equal concern and respect, is to arrange for all individuals to receive those material goods and opportunities that make living a good life possible. For my purposes, I will assume that treating people as equals is the constitutive feature of liberal equality. (shrink)

Equality of opportunity is a complex and contested ideal. There is disagreement about what the most plausible account of equal opportunity is, why equal opportunity matters, and how much it matters relative to other considerations that bear on how we ought to act. Over and above those disagreements about the general ideal of equal opportunity, there are further disagreements about what equal educational opportunity requires, why equal educational opportunity matters, and how much it matters relative (...) to other considerations that bear on what educational policies we ought to enact. Much of the literature on equal opportunity and education focuses on equal opportunity and K-12 (i.e., primary- or secondary-level) education. But there is now also a sizeable literature that focuses on distinctive questions about equal opportunity and higher (i.e., tertiary-level) education. That latter set of questions – how the ideal of equal opportunity bears on higher education – is the primary topic of this chapter. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part of the chapter focuses on more theoretical issues in normative ethics and foundational political philosophy. It first surveys some disagreements about the nature, scope, grounds, and stringency of equal opportunity requirements; in light of those disagreements, it then surveys a variety of views about how the ideal of equal opportunity bears on higher education. The second part of the chapter focuses on more practical issues in applied ethics and applied political philosophy. It surveys some contemporary controversies in higher education that implicate concerns about equal opportunity. (shrink)

The classical liberal argument that each human being has equal moral value and is deserving of equal concern and respect has had an enormous impact on our understanding both of equality and of individuals. Using this as a foundation, liberals have formulated theories of what is required for treating individuals with equal concern and respect that have provided ever more substantive interpretations of what individuals need to flourish in social relations marred by a legacy of (...) discrimination and inequality. Yet the view that relationships are of primary significance in the lives of individuals and that individuals are essentially interdependent and dependent beings has played a limited role in equality theory. If anything, these features of selves have been perceived to be inimical to equality, aspects of human lives that need to be transcended or left behind in the political community of fully participating members. ;This essay argues that insights into the relational features of language and of selves in communities provide what is needed to make up for the shortcomings of liberal conceptions of equality. Through a critique of Nozick's libertarianism, Rawls's liberal substantive theory, and communitarianism, a relational conception of the self and a relational theory of equality begin to emerge. I use Gilligan's inadequate account of relationships as a springboard for developing the idea that the interactive relationships between the oppressed and the oppressor, the disadvantaged and the advantaged, the powerless and the powerful have important implications for what should count as full equality and even for political action to eliminate inequalities. ;The essay closes by applying relational insights to a practical policy issue, the issue of affirmative action. Here we begin to see in concrete detail how relational theory can expand an understanding of the conditions needed for treating all individuals with equal concern and respect. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Swiss minaret ban as a threat to equal citizenship rather than a threat to freedom of religion. The main argument of the paper is that cultural differences can threaten the fair value of equal political participation rights as well as socio-economic ones. These differences are morally troubling despite legitimate emphasis on the need for a shared (political) culture. To ensure that the state treats its citizens as equals with regard to cultural differences requires a (...) form of liberal neutrality which consists of two elements. Equal citizenship requires, first, justificatory neutrality in deciding which matters are legitimate concerns for legislation. It requires also—as a second safeguard—institutional arrangements which ensure that in the process of implementing justificatory neutral decisions the interests of all affected citizens receive a fair hearing. This means that the factors which tend to undermine the equal standing of citizens in society should be counteracted. (shrink)

A possible person’s conditional expected well-being is what the quality of their prospects would be if they were to come into existence. This paper examines the role that this form of expected well-being should play in distributing benefits among prospective people and in deciding who to bring into existence. It argues for a novel egalitarian view on which it is important to ensure equality in people’s life prospects, not merely between actual individuals, but also between all individuals who, given our (...) choices, have a chance of coming into existence. The paper argues that such egalitarianism for prospective people springs from equal concern for each person and has plausible implications. It further shows that it has a rationale in respect for both the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons. Finally, it defends this view against a key objection and shows it is superior to a rival view. (shrink)

Fifty years ago this year a legal practitioner turned military intelligencer turned philosopher, Herbert Hart, published The Concept of Law, still deservedly best-seller in thought about law. It presents law, especially common law and constitutionally ordered systems such as ours, as a social reality which results from the sharing of ideas and making of decisions that, for good or evil, establish rules of law which are what they are, whether just or unjust. But right at its centre is a chapter (...) on justice, informed by Hart’s professional knowledge of Plato and Aristotle and the tradition of civilized thought about justice, thought which he sums up like this: “the general principle latent in [the] diverse applications of the idea of justice is that individuals are entitled in respect of each other to a certain relative position of equality or inequality.” “Hence”, he goes on, “[the] leading precept [of justice] is often formulated as ‘Treat like cases alike’; though we need to add … ‘and treat different cases differently’”. This article will say something about three aspects of this vast topic: (i) about the factual basis and normative grounds of equality; (ii) about the proposed principle of equal concern; and (iii) about laws and social policies that pursue equality by selective prohibition of direct and indirect discrimination, and of harassment or vilification, victimisation and offence. (shrink)

A frenetic search for equality lies at the center of much secular and even “Christian” bioethics. In a secular world, if one does not believe in God, if this life is one's whole existence, it would seem that one could not settle for less than equal approbation, especially equality before the risks of suffering and death, which medicine promises to ameliorate. Yet, the concern for equality in health care is puzzling. After a modest level of access to health (...) care there is little difference in average life expectancy. Are concerns for equality in health care even vaguely Christian? The pursuit of Christian perfection has never been correctly equated with state-imposed egalitarianism. Furthermore, an all-encompassing, secular, egalitarian health care system may provide equal access to significantly immoral medical treatments. In contrast to secular thought, the call of Christianity is a call to holiness, not a call to an egalitarianism that superficially resonates with certain elements of Christian thought. (shrink)

Beginning with liberalism's foundational idea of moral equality as the basis for treating people with equal concern and respect, Christine Koggel offers a modified account of what makes human beings equal and what is needed to achieve equality. Koggel utilizes insights from care ethics but switches the focus from care as a moral response within personal relationships to the broader network of relationships within which care is given or withheld. The result is an account of moral personhood (...) and agency that is richer than the view propounded by liberal theory and care ethics. This exciting and original work challenges theoretical resistance to the idea that relationships are relevant to an understanding of equality, and it provides an opening to a critical analysis of relationships and care that informs and transforms our understanding of what is needed to treat all people with equal concern and respect. (shrink)

What kind of equality among Europeans does equal citizenship require, especially regarding education? In particular, is there good reason to insist of equality of education among Europeans—and if so, equality of what? To what extent should the same knowledge base and citizenship norms be taught across state borders and religious and other normative divides? At least three philosophical issues merit attention: (a) The requirements of multiple democratic citizenships beyond the nation state; (b) how to respect diversity while securing such (...) equality and inculcating commitments to justice and norms of citizenship, and (c) The multiple reasons for equality of various kinds among political equals living in a Union as compared to a unitary state. The article responds on the basis of several arguments in favour of certain kinds of equality. All Union citizens must enjoy a high minimum level of education, and all pupils must be informed concerning the various ways of life prevalent in Europe. Furthermore, there must be standards for securing equality of opportunity across the EU, though it is difficult to measure under multiculturalism. Citizens must also be socialised to certain ‘citizenship norms’. This shared basis to be taught in schools should avoid contested religious or philosophical premises as far as possible. Yet the school system should socialise pupils to three commitments: to the just domestic and European institutions and hence the legislation they engender, to principles that justify these institutions; and to a political theory that grounds these principles in a conception of the proper role of individuals, of member states and of the Union. I also argue that equality of result is not a plausible normative requirement among Europeans, while equality of opportunity is. The paper concludes with some comments on the lessons to be drawn for ‘Global’ citizenship. (shrink)

I am concerned that, in our quest to end discrimination, we as feminists may be concentrating too much on equality and ignoring more basic issues of social justice. I argue that we must not lose sight of where we as a society are going in the effort to make sure we all get there together. The primary goal, after all, is not simply for women to get what men have, but justice for all.

This volume brings together a range of theoretical responses to issues in Irish politics. Its organising ideas: recognition, equality, and democracy set the terms of political debate within both jurisdictions. For some, there are significant tensions between the grammar of recognition, concerned with esteem, respect and the symbolic aspects of social life, and the logic of equality, which is primarily concerned with the distribution of material resources and formal opportunities, while for others, tensions are produced rather by certain interpretations of (...) these ideas while alternative readings may, by contrast, serve as the basis for a systematic account of social and political inequality. The essays in this collection will explore these interconnections with reference to the politics of Northern Ireland and the Republic. The Republic has gone through a period in which its constitution was the focus for a liberal politics aimed at securing personal autonomy, while Northern Ireland’s political landscape has been shaped by the problem of securing political autonomy and democratic legitimacy. While the papers address key questions facing each particular polity, the issues themselves have resonances for politics on each side of the border. (shrink)

Egalitarians think that equality in the distribution of goods somehow matters. But what exactly is egalitarianism? This article argues for a characterization based on novel principles essentially involving risk. The characterization is then used to resolve disputed questions about egalitarianism. These include: the way egalitarianism is concerned with patterns, in particular its relationship to strong separability; the relationship between egalitarianism and other distributive views, such as concerns with fairness and with giving priority to the worse off; and the relationship between (...) egalitarianism and evaluative measurement. But egalitarianism is subject to a particularly severe form of the levelling-down objection, and is claimed to be false. (shrink)

ExcerptThe following essay is an investigation into the nature of the contract, the way in which the contract indexes “right” and equality, and the textual and historical expressions—as well as echoes—that this has taken from Thomas Hobbes to Karl Marx.1 The opening set of conceptual remarks will lead to a reading of Hobbes's Leviathan and Marx's On the Jewish Question, with the intent of arguing that both texts were concerned with theoretically explicating the relationship between right and equality, germane to (...) which was the problematic of the “nation,” which was itself conceived via the “Jewish question.” It will be argued…. (shrink)

By fundamental equality is meant the idea of the equal worth of human beings understood as a constitutive principle of morality. The paper is concerned with how this principle may be justified. Attempts to justify it in an objectivist way by citing some quality of human beings in virtue of which they are supposed to be of equal worth are rejected. Such approaches in fact justify inequality to the extent that some people possess the quality to a greater (...) degree than others. The endeavour to avoid this trap, by attributing an inherent worth to each individual by virtue of their possession of the quality, succeeds only in generating a deep tension between the absolute principle of inherent worth and the relative principle of equal worth which the absolute principle is supposed to justify. The idea that the relation of equality as such is inherently valuable independently of any other consideration is also rejected. The paper then adopts a subjectivist view of equality grounded in an antirealist perspective on value. The argument for equality follows a Rawlsian contractarian procedure but not the Rawlsians' simple assumption of equality. Equality is shown to offer a stable principle of co-operation and so is more advantageous to the subjectivist contractors than the only alternative – to each according to his relative bargaining power. However, the appeal to advantage is necessary but not sufficient. An existential commitment to co-operate on the basis of mutual respect as equals is also required. (shrink)

The middle ages is commonly seen as an age of inequality, when society was structured by fixed social hierarchies. However, beginning in the late eleventh century and continuing through the thirteenth century, widespread economic and cultural changes, together with a revival of spiritual intensity and widespread concern for religious reforms, transformed the dominant structures of Western European society. These changes did not immediately transform Europe into an egalitarian society, but they did give new saliency to ancient Christian ideals of (...) equality, particularly among scholastic theologians and canon lawyers of the period. In this paper, I focus on the virtue of obedience and its limits as one entrée into the scholastic concept of natural equality, further restricting myself to a comparison of Bonaventure and Aquinas on this topic. I will argue that while both theologians value the virtue of obedience highly, both also place clear limits on the obligation of obedience, limits which point beyond themselves to a norm of natural equality which constrains the exercise of authority. (shrink)

Equality and Liberty: Analysing Rawls and Nozick is an indispensable source for those seriously interested in some rigorous assessments of the ideas of America's two most popular political philosophers. The essays in this volume cover a wide range of topics, some engaging each other in their analyses of particular Rawlsian or Nozickian themes. This collection of recent essays brings the student up-to-date concerning some of the more recent developments and assessments of Rawlsian and Nozickian ideas.

The article concerns selected problems related to the postulates of equalizing the level of positive liberty. The classic understanding of individual freedom, called as negative, identified with a lack of compulsion, can be in opposition to the so-called positive liberty. The last notion is generally defined by an ability, which brings its relation with a concept of power. The postulate of equality in “freedom to” can be justification for conducting a social redistribution of goods. The cases of voluntary and compulsory (...) donation are considered in the text, whose aim is to visualize consequences resulting from a compulsory expansion of the scope of positive liberty. (shrink)

If ever there were a time in which concerns about equality as a primary issue for social policy disappeared from public view, now is not that time. Recent work in economics on inequality has climbed to the top of best-sellers lists, and the issue was a major talking point in American midterm elections in 2014. The sheer bewildering volume of scholarship and discussion of equality makes it difficult to distinguish signal from noise. What, of all that we know about ways (...) in which we are equal and ways in which we are unequal, matters? If, as seems plausible, we neither are nor should desire to be equal in every respect that we could in theory be equal, in which ways ought we to care about being equal? Does the kind of equality of outcome — perhaps equality of income or wealth — that is frequently the focus of discussion matter most? Does opportunity matter more? What about less material forms of equality such as equality of status, or power, or authority? How do these various forms of equality interact with each other? The essays in this volume represent the work of a number of leading scholars from different disciplines on these questions. Drawing on sources in philosophical analysis, empirical science, and history, they sort through competing claims and counterclaims about the intuitions that drive our concern for equality. Their conclusions are not in unison, but nonetheless represent important advances in our attempts to grapple with this crucial social value. (shrink)

In Part 1, I argue that Watson and Hartley’s relational feminist political liberal approach – grounded in the idea of equal citizenship – produces a rather elusive liberal feminist agenda (because of its reliance on intuitions) and that it may lose track of the importance of goods whose value stems from the role they play in an individual woman’s or girl’s life rather than from the role they play in securing equal citizenship. I suggest that a distributive principle (...) approach – like that of Susan Okin – might do better on both scores. In Part 2, I argue that Watson and Hartley may have overpromised what the state can and may do. Discussion includes focus on policy questions concerning, for example, prostitution and the gendered division of labor. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to discuss the general idea of a Central-European ethos in comparison with the values that shaped the contemporary form of Western societies. My argument is threefold. First, I briefly discuss the emergent character of Western modernization. Second, I pinpoint those historical and material conditions that have shaped the general situation of Central Europe in the last two hundred years in order to indicate their influence on what Charles Taylor calls "social imaginaries", shared by the (...) peoples of the region. And in part three, I attempt to point out some consequences of the otherness of the Central-European mode of modernization for regional ethos and its perspectives. My general thesis is that the countries of Central Europe, members of what-is-now the Visegrad Group, that is to say, for the last two hundred years (and some of them, like Poland for instance, for last three or even four centuries) are in the process of some kind semi-modernization, This semi-modernization concerns not only their economies and social relations, but also certain moral and world views (Weltsschauungen), whose basic outlines are derived from inferiority complex about the modernized West. But at the same time they are mostly unable, for the reason I shall refer to below, to propose their own way of modernization. Hence, claims to equality and justice made within Central-European are are of a special kind, which involves a strong recognition of history as the source and basis for them. (shrink)

Historically, as well as more recently, women's emancipation has been seen in two ways: sometimes as the `right to be equal' and sometimes as the `right to be different'. These views have often overlapped and interacted: in a variety of guises they have played an important role in both the development of ideas about women and feminism, and the works of political thinkers by no means primarily concerned with women's liberation. The chapters of this book deal primarily with the (...) meaning and use of these two concepts in the context of gender relations, but also draw attention to their place in the understanding and analysis of other human relationships. (shrink)

This essay explores two largely distinct discussions about equality: the 'luck egalitarian' debate concerning the appropriate metric of equality and the 'equality and difference' debate which has focused on the need for egalitarianism to consider the underlying norms in light of which the abstract principle to 'treat equals equally' operates. In the end, both of these discussions point to the importance of political equality for egalitarianism more generally and, in the concluding section, an attempt is made to show how the (...) ideal of 'equal concern and respect' might best be pursued given the results of these important discussions. (shrink)

Pursuing equality is an important challenge for any modern democratic society but this challenge faces two sets of difficulties: the theoretical question of what sort of equality to pursue and for whom; and the practical question concerning which legal and political institutions are the most appropriate vehicles for implementing egalitarian social policy and thus realizing egalitarian justice. This book offers original and innovative contributions to the debate about equality of opportunity. The first part of the book sets out a theory (...) of equality of opportunity that presents equal opportunities as a normative device for the regulation of competition for scarce resources. The second part shifts the focus to the consideration of the practical application by courts or legislatures or public policy makers of policies for addressing racial, class or gender injustices. The author examines standardized tests, affirmative action, workfare, universal health-care, comparable worth, and the economic consequences of divorce. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm by David WeinsteinDaniel PalmerDavid Weinstein. Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 235. Cloth, $69.95.Herbert Spencer, though influential and widely read in the nineteenth century, has been largely neglected by contemporary philosophers. David Weinstein argues that this neglect is unjustified, and that Spencer’s moral and political thought deserves the (...) same attention that has been afforded to Spencer’s contemporary John Stuart Mill. The comparison with Mill is particularly important for Weinstein. Indeed, he claims that, like Mill, Spencer was a liberal utilitarian who attempted to preserve a place for strong moral rights within a broadly utilitarian framework.A large part of Weinstein’s study is devoted to delineating the precise nature of Spencer’s utilitarianism. Weinstein argues that Spencer is both more consistently utilitarian and more systematic than has often been alleged. In the first two chapters he discusses Spencer’s utilitarianism in relation to his metaphysical principles and his account of moral psychology. Weinstein convincingly demonstrates that Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism follows from his views on social evolution. Spencer viewed evolutionary processes as leading to increasing differentiation among phenomena, which implied for Spencer a trend towards greater individuation of persons as societies evolve. Evolutionary principles also led Spencer to view happiness as largely dependent upon the exercise of faculties. Together, these views lend support to what Weinstein sees as the centerpiece of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism, his principle of equal freedom, or the claim that “each shall have as much liberty to pursue his ends as consists with maintaining like liberties to pursue their ends by others” (38). The increasing individuation of individuals coupled with the dependence of happiness upon the free exercise of our faculties guaranteed for Spencer that the greatest happiness will be generated through the adoption of the principle of equal freedom.Weinstein’s central argument is that Spencer’s moral philosophy offers a distinctive version of indirect utilitarianism. In chapters 3 through 5 he outlines the main contours of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism and its relevance to contemporary discussions, maintaining that Spencer accepted the utilitarian principle as the ultimate criterion of actions. However, much like Mill, and in reaction to Bentham, he argued that any direct pursuit of the greatest happiness is self-defeating. Spencer’s indirect utilitarianism sought to promote the conditions upon which happiness is founded through the principle of equal freedom. Moral rights were for him merely corollaries of the principle that flesh out its empty formalism, providing the basis for deliberation. Concrete moral rights such as property rights, contract rights, and exchange rights are therefore the basis for our primary obligations and yet find their ultimate justification in the principle of utility.Spencer’s two-tiered account of our moral obligations is thus remarkably similar to Mill’s account of moral rights in Chapter 5 of Utilitarianism. The difference between them concerns the stringency of moral rights. While Mill saw moral rights as important, but ultimately defeasible, Spencer viewed them as indefeasible. While Mill’s position seems more plausible from the utilitarian perspective, Weinstein shows that Spencer’s stronger position must be judged in terms of his beliefs about the exercise of human [End Page 685] faculties. Weinstein correctly shows that if Spencer is wrong, it is not because, as critics have charged, his position is logically inconsistent, but because he held mistaken views about human nature and society.While the heart of Equal Freedom and Utility concerns the relation between utility and moral rights in Spencer’s work, the final two chapters are devoted to metaethics and applied ethics respectively. Weinstein marshals strong textual support to show that Spencer never simply defined the good as happiness and that G. E. Moore’s use of Spencer in Principia Ethica as an example of someone who committed a glaring version of the naturalistic fallacy was not justified. Spencer simply avoided prolonged treatments of such metaethical concerns. In the last chapter Weinstein argues that Spencer’s evolving views on land nationalization reveals both the general nature of Spencer’s derivation of moral rights from the principle... (shrink)

All conceptions of equal opportunity draw on some distinction between morally justified and unjustified inequalities. We discuss how this distinction varies across a range of philosophical positions. We find that these positions often advance equality of opportunity in tandem with distributive principles based on merit, desert, consequentialist criteria or individuals' responsibility for outcomes. The result of this amalgam of principles is a festering controversy that unnecessarily diminishes the widespread acceptability of opportunity concerns. We therefore propose to restore the conceptual (...) separation of opportunity principles concerning unjustified inequalities from distributive principles concerning justifiable inequalities. On this view, equal opportunity implies that that morally irrelevant factors should engender no differences in individuals' attainment, while remaining silent on inequalities due to morally relevant factors. We examine this idea by introducing the principle of ‘opportunity dominance' and explore in a simple application to what extent this principle may help us arbitrate between opposing distributive principles. We also compare this principle to the selection rules developed by John Roemer and Dirk Van de Gaer. (shrink)

This paper examines the arguments presented by the Roman Catholic Bishops in their 1993 Pastoral Resolution, Comprehensive Health Care Reform: Protecting Human Life, Promoting Human Dignity, Pursuing the Common Good, concerning health care reform. Focusing on the meaning of equality in health care and traditional Roman Catholic doctrine, it is argued that the Bishops fail to grasp the force of the differences among persons, the value of the market, and traditional scholastic arguments concerning obligatory and extraordinary health care. To attempt (...) to equalize the distribution of health care would be ruinous. A more traditional understanding of Christian thought reveals an acceptance of inequality in health care distribution and a bias against using the secular state to coerce a solution to such concerns for social justice. (shrink)

In public reason liberalism, equal respect requires that conceptions of justice be publicly justifiable to relevant people in a manner that allocates to each an equal say. But all liberal public justification also excludes: e.g., it accords no say, or a lesser say, to people it deems unreasonable. Can liberal public justification be aligned with the equal respect that allegedly grounds it, if the latter calls for discursive equality? The chapter explores this challenge with a focus on (...) Rawls-type political liberalism. I suggest that political liberalism’s commitment to equal respect can cohere with the standing of the unreasonable in public justification if that standing is not impermissibly unequal in discursive purchase. I then consider one candidate view of the permissibility of purchase inequality. On this broadly sufficientarian view, purchase inequality is permissible provided relevant people have standing of enough purchase to be able to avoid relevant bads. A plausible variant of this view suggests that political liberalism’s commitment to equal respect does not cohere with the discursive standing of the unreasonable. It emerges that where liberal public justification accords actual people discursive respect but relevantly idealizes at least around its fringes, the permissibility of purchase inequality must be a central concern. (shrink)

This essay seeks to provide a justification for the ‘egalitarian authority claim’, according to which citizens of democratic states have a moral duty to obey (at least some) democratically made laws because they are the outcome of an egalitarian procedure. It begins by considering two prominent arguments that link democratic authority to a concern for equality. Both are ultimately unsuccessful; but their failures are instructive, and help identify the conditions that a plausible defense of the egalitarian authority claim must (...) meet. The first argument (discussed in Section II, after Section I clarifies what authority and democracy are taken to consist in) appeals to the simple idea that fairness disallows granting ourselves special privileges that we deny to others; and it suggests that fairness thus requires obeying democratic decisions rather than acting on our own judgment of the right policy. I show that this argument fails; and its failure indicates that we must invoke a less formal, more substantive understanding of equality to justify democratic authority. The second argument, recently suggested by Thomas Christiano, does just that. Democratic authority is, on this account, not justified by the formal demand for equal treatment but by the distinctive value of showing public equal respect to our fellow citizens. Such public equal respect requires treating as authoritative the democratic decisions in which citizens had an equal say. This argument does not, however, succeed in its goal either. While it plausibly establishes the value of democratic institutions, it does not provide grounds for a duty to obey democratic decisions (Section III). This essay thus develops an alternative argument, according to which egalitarian procedures have authority because, by obeying them, we can avoid acting on certain considerations that must be excluded from our intrinsically valuable egalitarian relationships. The authority of democratic decisions rests on the egalitarian fact that none of us has more of a say than any other, not on the further fact (crucial to the previous argument) that each of us has a positive say (Sections IV and V). The argument in turn helps us understand the limits of democratic authority: it is constrained not only by a demand for equality, and by considerations of justice, but also by a requirement of mutual concern without which our egalitarian relationships lack their distinctive value (Section VI). (shrink)

The paper discusses various concepts of 'species equality' and 'species superiority' and the assumptions concerning intrinsic value on which they depend. I investigate what philosophers from the traditional deontological (Taylor and Lombardi) and utilitarian (Singer and Attfield) perspectives have meant by their claims for species equality. I attempt to provide a framework of intrinsic values that justifies one sense in which members of a species can be said to be superior to members of another species.

Do differences in income or wealth matter, morally speaking? This essay addresses a broader issue than this question seems to pose. But this broader issue is, I believe, the salient philosophical issue which this question actually poses. Let me explain. Narrowly read, the question at hand is concerned only with inequality of income or wealth. It asks us to consider whether inequality of income or wealth as such is morally problematic. On this construal, the question invites us to consider whether (...) the bare fact that Joshua has a greater income or net worth than Rebekah is a morally defective social state of affairs. Is there at least a significant moral presumption on behalf of equality of income or wealth such that, if an inequality of income or wealth obtains vis-à-vis Joshua and Rebekah, that inequality ought to be nullified unless some impressive positive justification for the inequality can be provided? On this narrow reading, the salient issue is whether there exists in particular an egalitarian presumption with respect to income or wealth. But I believe that the genuinely salient issue here is whether there exists in general an egalitarian presumption with respect to whatever factual condition of individuals one is supposed to attend to when assessing social states of affairs. The crucial question is not whether income or wealth or utility or well-being is the condition the unequal distribution of which is as such morally problematic. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of G. A. Cohen’s essay “If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?” the matter of personal responsibility for the amelioration of economic disadvantage has become a question for egalitarian political philosophers to wrestle with both theoretically and personally. This essay examines “the demands of equality” in light of an egalitarian philosophy that focuses on human flourishing. I consider Cohen’s call for personal commitments to the egalitarian project to show both the power and problems of (...) his approach and propose an alternative view, where individuals’ concern for living well involves an engagement with the demands of equality, but also some respite from its strictures. (shrink)

(OPEN ACCESS) In this paper, I criticize two views on how political equality is related to equally distributed political power, and I offer a novel, pluralist account of political equality to address their shortcomings—in particular, concerning their implications for affirmative action in the political domain, political representation, and the situation of permanent minorities. The Equal Power View holds that political equality requires equally distributed political power. It considers affirmative action—e.g., racial or gender electoral quotas—, representation, and more-than-equal power (...) to permanent minorities pro tanto objectionable. The Equal Status View, in contrast, holds that political equality concerns equal relations and status, and it is only contingently related to equally distributed power. I argue that while the Equal Status View is right that equal power can be insufficient for—or even objectionable from the viewpoint of—political equality, it is wrong to conclude that equal power has no independent significance in an account of political equality. My pluralist account shows that political equality entails not only status-based requirements but also independent egalitarian requirements to distribute political power equally. This account provides a finer-grained understanding of affirmative action in the political domain. It justifies affirmative action but holds that it should only be used to realize equal political status until thorough-going social reform allows us to maintain both equal political status and equally distributed political power at the same time. Similarly, representation should be amended with power-balancing institutions, and permanent minorities should enjoy equal status with minimal compromise to power equality. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of equal opportunity. I argue that equal opportunity occurs where two or more persons with equal natural abilities and willingness to work hard have chances at various jobs that are in the aggregate of equal value. I then argue that equal opportunity is neither valuable nor something that the government ought to pursue. First, it is not clear why we should value opportunities rather than outcomes. Second, the value (...) of equal opportunity rests on the value of interest satisfaction. However, if interest satisfaction is relatively constant across different jobs and different job opportunities, then the concern for interest satisfaction will not ground the value of equal opportunity. Third, equalizing opportunities is not in itself valuable because persons are not equally valuable. Fourth, even if equal opportunity were valuable, the government can pursue it only by trespassing on individual rights. (shrink)

In the luck egalitarian literature, one influential formulation of luck egalitarianism does not specify whether equalities that do not reflect people’s equivalent exercises of responsibility are bad with regard to inequality. This equivocation gives rise to two competing versions of luck egalitarianism: asymmetrical and symmetrical luck egalitarianism. According to the former, while inequalities due to luck are unjust, equalities due to luck are not necessarily so. The latter view, by contrast, affirms the undesirability of equalities as well as inequalities insofar (...) as they are due to luck. The symmetrical view, we argue, is by far the more compelling, both by internal luck egalitarian standards and in light of the external rightist emphasis on choice and responsibility to which luck egalitarianism may partly be seen as a response. Our main case for the symmetrical view is that when some people, against a background of equal opportunities, do not exercise their responsibility to the same degree as others, they cannot justifiably call for equalizing measures to be put in place. Indeed, such measures would be positively unfair. The symmetrical view, accordingly, rejects compensation in such cases, whereas the asymmetrical view, implausibly, enjoins it. We also examine two objections to this argument. First, that this view fails to qualify as genuinely egalitarian, instead collapsing the notion of equality into the notion of desert. Second, that the opposing asymmetrical view, in contrast to the symmetrical view, can draw support from its compatibility with sufficientarian concerns. Both objections are rebutted. We conclude that luck egalitarians are best served by endorsing the symmetrical, luck-neutralizing stance. (shrink)

What does it mean to treat people as equals when the legacies of feudalism, religious persecution, authoritarian and oligarchic government have shaped the landscape within which we must construct something better? This question has come to dominate much constitutional practice as well as philosophical inquiry in the past 50 years. The combination of Second Wave Feminism with the continuing struggle for racial equality in the 1970s brought into sharp relief the variety of ways in which people can be treated unequally, (...) while respecting the formalities of constitutional government. Most obviously, the content of laws can mistreat them by wrongfully assuming that they are either threats to others, or that, like children, they need to be protected from harm through paternalistic limitations on their freedom of action. Or, as those concerned with class inequality have long noted, formal equality can create legal requirements, permissions, and prohibitions whose burdens fall predictably, and often solely, on groups who are already marginalised, and most in need of state protection. (Kairys, David 1990) Above all, what these two great political movements made plain, is that a concern for group inequality and, specifically, group injustice must figure in the formulation and adjudication of individual rights, if legal protections for equality are adequately to combat the causes of inequality. Getting to grips with that challenge, it became obvious, required going beyond the familiar analyses of inequality inherited from Liberalism and Marxism, given the many different ways in which people can be equal or unequal.(Hackett and Haslanger 2006, 3 - 15) In the first part of this chapter, I will seek to illustrate these claims, by focusing on efforts to reframe the theory and practice of constitutional equality given demands for sexual and racial equality. I will then show that analytic philosophy has also come to recognise the various non-reducible dimensions of equality in ways that reinforce the claims of critical legal theory, even as philosophers highlight their disconcerting consequences. If equality has multiple irreducible dimensions, conflicts between the legitimate demands of equality are unavoidable features of law and politics, even in the best possible world, and are likely to be particularly painful when set against a background of historical injustice. The chapter concludes with the challenges to democratic constitutionalism, and the scope for constructive responses to those challenges, which the rapprochement between critical and analytic thinking on equality suggests. (shrink)