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Fundamental Equality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
Abstract
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.
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References
1 Most famously by Alan Gewirth whose work I shall be referring to and criticizing shortly. See also Benn, S. I., ‘Egalitarianism and the Equal Consideration of Interests’, in Equality: Nomos IX, ed. Pennock, J. Roland and Chapman, John W., New York, 1967, pp. 61–78Google Scholar; Vlastos, G., ‘Justice and Equality’, in Social Justice, ed. Brandt, R. B., Cliffs, Engle-wood, N.J., 1962Google Scholar. Bernard Williams's influential article on the subject should also be included in this category, I believe: ‘The Idea of Equality’, in Philosophy, Politics and Society: Second Series, ed. Laslett, P. and Runciman, W. G., Oxford, 1962, pp. 110–31Google Scholar.
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6 It may well be that Temkin in his recent book is committed to such an absurd position. This would be on the grounds of his espousal of an impersonal version of equality which condemns inequality even if there is no one for whom it is worse. Still, Temkin's attack on the contrary view does not exclude the possibility that there is something besides harm to a person that condemns inequality other than the mere fact of inequality itself. In other words he does not unequivocally say that equality is a good in itself independently of any other consideration. See Temkin, L. S., Inequality, Oxford, 1993, ch. 9Google Scholar.
7 The above remarks apply to the Rawls of A Theory of Justice. His political conception of the values of freedom and equality in his later work avoids this problem only by piling up others.
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9 By the communitarians I have in mind Sandel, MacIntyre, Taylor and Walzer.
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11 I am not supposing, of course, that social inequalities are ipso facto justified by the rejection of the brute luck principle. I should add that some theorists claim that Rawls never rejected the idea of self-ownership but only denied that it implied any claim to the products of a person's exercise of his powers. See Waldron, J., The Right to Private Property, Oxford, 1988, pp. 401–4Google Scholar; Lehning, P., ‘Right Constraints? An Analysis of Gauthier's Reasoning about Morals’, Acta Politica, XXV (1990)Google Scholar. I argue against this claim also in The Idea of an Ethical Community, p. 194.
12 I am grateful for comments on earlier versions of this paper to Matt Matravers, members of the political philosophy seminars at LSE and Sussex University, and the London University Political Philosophy Group.