BROCK, G. “How Does Equality Matter?” Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume XLII, Number 1, 76-87, 2011. [An article which forms part of an exchange titled, “Global Justice and Equality: An Exchange” with Richard Miller and Darrel Moellendorf, pp. 76-109.] (original) (raw)
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THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY. NEW AND OLD CHALLENGES
The principle of equality: new and old challenges Equality, as a concept, is as old as mankind. Conceived as a principle intimately related to the fundamental rights and freedoms of people, its political consecration can be traced back to the American and the French Declarations of 1776 and 1789. Since then, it began to exercise its innovative drive in the development of the legal systems all over the world, during the following Centuries. Equality in the modern sense of the notion, as equality of all people before the law, thus started to impose itself as a principle able to limit the power. After the Second World War, it became a core element of the "Postwar paradigm", as part of international documents and national constitutions. The spread of the principle in written legal texts was accompanied by the new awareness about the insufficiency of the merely affirmation of everyone's equality before the law, unable to effectively fight against social and economic discriminations. Public powers must act in the fight against social inequalities. Afterwards, substantial equality has been entrenched in many constitutions, in the context of the "transformative constitutionalism" movement, especially in the Global South. Equality principle represents a founding element of contemporary constitutionalism. Fundamental rights are universal, and the defence of human dignity must be placed at the centre within plural societies, notably with reference to the current globalised and multicultural world. Still, the increasing growth of inequalities currently represents a major topic to be addressed. How can law fill the gap between the equality political project and the discriminations constantly present in our societies? Which are the tools able to reconcile the tension between formal and substantial equality? Are the non-discriminations clauses enshrined in domestic constitutions and international documents enough to guarantee an effective implementation of the equality principle? How can the interpretation of such written clauses contribute to an extensive protection of human dignity and pluralism? Which tools can be used in case of unwillingness of the legislator to proactively act for the protection of substantive equality? Could courts make up for legislators, to fill in their omissions? Evidently, new challenges have developed in the 21st century, in the context of democratic decay. In many democracies, old and new, political forces hostile to liberal democracy appear to attack the rule of law and constitutional guarantees, after winning electoral majorities in the polls. Therefore, equality is even more challenged, and increasingly difficult to concretely guarantee. Those questions have driven the reflections exposed and debated within the IACL-AIDC Roundtable "The
Equality and Political Philosophy
Equality is an undisputed political and moral value. But until quite recently, political philosophers have not fully explored its complexity. This article tackles the vast literature on equality and egalitarianism of the past thirty-five years or so, and shows how complex and multi-layered the concept of equality can be. Specifically, it unpacks three major questions we might ask about equality. We first ask what is equality. This question can be unpacked into two sub-questions. Distinguishing first between formal and distributive accounts of equality, we may ask what the currency of egalitarianism can be. The article goes through currencies such as welfare, resources, and capabilities, showing their respective strengths and weaknesses. A second important sub-question here is what is the relevant scope as well as temporal dimensions of equality. Among whom is equality valuable, and in what time-frame, precisely, is it valuable? This hints at our second major question, namely concerning the value of equality. Is equality indeed valuable, or are we confusing it for some other value, be it giving priority to the worse off, or lifting individuals above a certain threshold of deprivation. The article goes through some famous criticisms to equality's purported lack of value (the leveling down objection), explores some potential answers, and then examines the relative strength of equality's two main rivals, namely priority and sufficiency. The third major question we ask concerns what is the proper account of egalitarian justice. In particular, setting aside the question of currency, should our conception of distributive justice be informed by responsibility-sensitive accounts, or rather be focused on a responsibility-insensitive accounts that moreover place an emphasis on equality of relations rather than individuals holdings? We explore this in the two final sections, one devoted to understanding luck egalitarianism, and the other to its rival, relational egalitarianism.
Social Equality and the Global Society (Forthcoming in Journal of Moral Philosophy)
Are democratic egalitarians bound to endorse statism? It seems so, given their insistence on relations of democratic reciprocity, and the lack of such relations in the global realm. If so, it would apparently be inconsistent to endorse both cosmopolitanism and democratic egalitarianism. Democratic egalitarians actually face an apparent dilemma: either they must accept statism, or they must provide further explanation regarding why they do not. Luck egalitarianism, by contrast, seemingly offers a more straightforward ground to the claim that the scope of justice is global. My thesis is twofold: first, I show that (a) democratic egalitarians can escape the dilemma, to the effect that, as such, they need be committed neither to statism nor to cosmopolitanism, and (b) that luck egalitarians are not, so to speak, as shielded from the dilemma as it might first appear. Second, I defend the plausibility of global social egalitarianism against both statist variants of democratic egalitarianism and luck egalitarianism, and suggest a form of division of labor between domestic and global justice.
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (May 2017)
would be the central characteristics of a society in which its citizens are truly treated as equals? While egalitarian thinkers are united in their affirmation of the value of equality, they notoriously have --for centuries --disagreed about its interpretation. Egalitarianism now is a dominant current within Western moral and political philosophy, but it is also very broad and multifaceted. There is a wide range of mutually inconsistent egalitarian conceptions, ranging from libertarian and meritocratic positions to social liberal, communitarian and socialist ones. Therefore, the decisive question is not whether one should be an egalitarian, but what kind of egalitarian one should be, and how to interpret the central tenet of equal treatment more concretely in political theory and practice.
The Centrality of Equality: Equality and Other Values
Equality, 2009
Equality is one of the central ideas in contemporary politics. But how does it relate to other human values, and particularly with the progressive values of the political left? I will argue that there is a close connection between one particular conception of equality, which I call 'equality of condition', and such values as human rights, diversity, liberation, freedom, solidarity and environmentalism. Overall, my argument is intended to support the claim that equality should be at the centre of our thinking about existing social institutions and how they should be changed. 1 'Equality of condition' is one of several possible conceptions of equality. It is, broadly speaking, the belief that people should be as equal as possible in relation to the central conditions of their lives. Equality of condition is not about trying to make inequalities fairer, or giving people a more equal opportunity to become unequal, but about ensuring that everyone has roughly equal prospects for a good life, that they are equally enabled and empowered in living their lives. To make this a little more specific, it helps to focus on five key 'dimensions' in which people can be equal or unequal in societies like ours. These five dimensions represent five major determinants of how well a person's life goes, in relation to a wide range of conceptions of what a good life looks 1 This article is part of continuing collaborative research in the Equality Studies Centre at UCD and in particular collaboration with Kathleen Lynch, Sara Cantillon and Judy Walsh. Because the ideas in this article rely on so many sources, I refer readers to our more academic publications for elaborations, acknowledgements and references and in particular to our forthcoming book, Equality from Theory to Action.
Equality and social justice : a philosophical approach
2018
Cette thèse s’inscrit au sein de la littérature des théories modernes et contemporaines de la justice sociale, en s’intéressant plus particulièrement à la question de l’égalité et à la manière dont elle s’est affirmée en tant que préoccupation fondamentale pour ces théories. En s’appuyant essentiellement sur les travaux d’Amartya Sen, d’Emmanuel Levinas et de G.W.F. Hegel, il est suggéré que l’égalité constitue la condition de possibilité de la justice, et ainsi de la liberté, cette dernière étant affirmée comme l’objet de la justice. Ce travail tend également à envisager les limites d’une telle conception : le premier chapitre permet d’affirmer la relation d’interdépendance des valeurs de liberté et d’égalité au regard de la justice sociale en démontrant la nécessité d’un principe d’égalité par l’argument de la raison humaine. Le second chapitre approfondit l’argument de l’impartialité, tel que développé par Sen. De là, le troisième chapitre déploie la nécessité d’une médiation ins...