Liberal Equality Research Articles

Liberal Equality, Exploitation, and the Case for an Unconditional Basic Income

This paper considers whether arguments presented in Philippe Van Parijs' Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? succeed in rebutting the objection that the introduction of a substantial unconditional basic income (UBI) would allow non-working citizens to free-ride on the efforts of, and so exploit, working citizens. It considers Van Parjis' ‘external assets argument’ for UBI, and finds that this argument does not succeed in reconciling payment of a substantial UBI with the reciprocity principle which underpins this ‘exploitation objection’. It considers and rejects Van Parijs' implicit claim that the exploitation objection must be grounded in a distributive principle which contradicts the egalitarian commitment to prevent brute luck inequality. It concludes that Van Parjis has failed, thus far, to articulate a convincing response to the exploitation objection.

How Liberal is Liberal Equality?:A Comment on Ronald Dworkin's Tanner Lecture

Liberalism is a wonderful theory, but its adherents have a difficult time explaining why. In his Tanner Lecture entitledFoundations of Liberal Equality, Ronald Dworkin proposes to defend liberalism in a new way. Dworkin is not content to view liberalism as a political compromise in which people set aside their personal convictions in the interest of social peace. Instead, he undertakes to make liberal political theory “continuous” with personal ethics, by describing an ethical position that endorses liberalism as a matter of conviction.

Dworkin on the Foundations of Liberal Equality

Ronald Dworkin's Tanner Lectures, “Foundations of Liberal Equality,” have hardly elicited comment within the academic political theory community. This is surprising for a number of reasons. First, Dworkin is widely taken to be one of the leading liberal theorists in the English-speaking world, and “Foundations” is a major statement (120 pages in length) involving reflection upon issues of principle that are at the center of contemporary scholarly debate among liberals. Secondly, “Foundations” introduces a number of ideas and concepts that are new in Dworkin's corpus and that serve to illuminate and clarify some of his wdely discussed earlier works, especially the famous article “Liberalism,” which sparked so much argument over the idea of neutrality and its place within liberal political theory. Finally, the lectures are interesting because of the approach they take to the matter of “defending liberalism,” an approach that departs in interesting and significant ways from those presently pursued by other leading liberal thinkers, notably John Rawls and Joseph Raz.

Bounded Culture and Liberal Equality

Bounded Culture and Liberal Equality

External Preferences and Liberal Equality

External Preferences and Liberal Equality

Liberal Equality and the Justification of Multicultural, Civic Education

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.

Cultural Rights Again

IN HIS REPLY TO MY ESSAY, Are There Any Cultural Rights? (Vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 105-39), Will Kymlicka (Vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 140-6) responds to two objections I raised against his theory defending group and raises some further criticisms of views I advance. In this rejoinder, I wish to take issue with Kymlicka's arguments once again. A part of my intention is to offer some considerations in defense of my own proposals addressing concerns of cultural minorities. Kymlicka's first reply is to my objection that his theory may be found wanting from perspective of liberal equality. I had argued against granting of special cultural on basis of liberal equality on grounds that Kymlicka was mistaken to assume that all members of cultural minorities faced same inequality. If were to be given to disadvantaged, I had suggested, they should go to them regardless of group membership. But this, according to Kymlicka, misses point. We cannot give all disadvantaged same because they suffer different kinds of disadvantage and so require different kinds of rights: we match to kinds of disadvantage being compensated for (p. 141). The disabled might get special health care to be brought to a level of equality; Aborigines might require, instead, language rights. It is not clear, Kymlicka suggests, exactly what it means to give all Australians the same rights as Aborigines or how identical are supposed to overcome vastly different kinds of disadvantages (p. 141). I think Kymlicka misses my point. My concern was to argue that group could not be defended successfully from standpoint of liberal equality. The reason is that groups are not made up of persons and not all members of a group are unequal (in relevant respects) to all those outside it. To treat group as a whole as less equal to those outside with respect to, say, resources, would violate liberal equality to extent that some group members are, in fact, better endowed with resources than some

Postmodern Jurisprudence: The Law of Text in the Texts of the Law

Book synopsis: 'Postmodern Jurisprudence' brings together poststructuralism and legal theory. Contemporary legal theory is committed both to the major truth telling Enlightenment claims of clarity, logic, impartiality and analytical rigour, and to the normative demands of liberal equality, fairness and justice. But through a close reading of the leading texts of contemporary legal philosophy (Dworkin, Finnis, Fish, Norris, Goodrich, Jackson and recent Marxist theories of law), Postmodern Jurisprudence demonstrates that modernist discourses of law contain the unsettling thematics of postmodernity which these texts attempt to deny. Furthermore, by using an array of textual and contextual techniques in the reading of conventional legal works, such as law reports, Postmodern Jurisprudence points towards overcoming the impasse in the interpretation debate. The book concludes with an analysis around a piece of 19th-century literature which is approached via the dynamics of postmodern copyright law.

Equality, responsibility, and justice as seen from a utilitarian perspective

A liberal democratic society must find a proper balance between respect for the basic equality of all human beings and respect for individual differences, including respect for individual excellence. Excessively equalitarian attitudes can be a major obstacle in accomplishing this. I first discuss the highly detrimental effects that such attitudes have had on American primary and secondary education. Then I discuss Rawls's suggestion to replace the traditional common-sense conception of justice, which he calls thesystem of liberal equality, with a much more equalitarian conception, which he calls thesystem of democratic equality. I argue that Rawls's conception of justice would be highly detrimental to society because it would needlessly discourage talented people from using their talents for the benefit of society.

Liberal Justice and the Marxist Critique of Education: A Study of Conflicting Research Programs

1. Introduction: Liberalism and Marxism as Research Programmes for Education Part I: 2. Liberal Justice, Schooling, and the Marxist Critique of Liberalism 2. Marxism and Liberal Justice 3. A Liberal View of Eduction Part II: Disputed Concepts: Justice and Growth in Marxism and Liberalism 4. Epistemology, Community and the Conception of the Self 5. Freedom and the Good 6. Marx and Liberal Equality Part III: Ideology and the Marxist Critique of Schooling 7. The Marxist Critique of Schooling 8. Conclusion: Justice, Ideology and Education Endnotes Bibliography.

Some Thoughts about Natural Law

My first task is to define the subject. When I use the term law, I am distinguishing the category from other kinds of law such as positive law, divine law, or scientific law. When we discuss positive law, we look to materials like legislation, judicial opinions, and scholarly analysis of these materials. If we speak of divine law, we ask if there are any knowable commands from God. If we look for scientific law, we conduct experiments, or make observations and calculations, in order to come to objectively verifiable knowledge about the material world. Natural law-as I will be using the term in this essay-refers to a method that we employ to judge what the principles of individual morality or positive law ought to be. The natural law philosopher aspires to make these judgments on the basis of reason and human nature without invoking divine revelation or prophetic inspiration. Natural law so defined is a category much broader than any particular theory of natural law. One can believe in the existence of natural law without agreeing with the particular systems of natural law advocates like Aristotle or Aquinas. I am describing a way of thinking, not a particular theory. In the broad sense in which I am using the term, therefore, anyone who attempts to found concepts of justice upon reason and human nature engages in natural law philosophy. Contemporary philosophical systems based on feminism, wealth maximization, neutral conversation, liberal equality, or libertarianism are natural law philosophies. They start with assumptions about human nature and what is good for people, and they claim to employ reason to judge the relative justice or injustice of legal practices like slavery, the free market, patriarchy, and socialism. Like the man who was astonished to find that he had been speaking in prose all his life, we who make it our business to resolve differences about questions of morality and justice through the use of reason are surprised to find that we are expounding natural law. Next I should explain what I mean by reason, an ability available in theory to all humanity, however warped it may be in particular individuals or groups. Reason consists of two components: logic and clearheaded perception of reality. The rational mind must possess both qualities. For example, some paranoids have an impressive ability to think

Maximization and Fairness

Previous articleNext article No AccessSymposium on Rationality and MoralityMaximization and FairnessKurt BaierKurt Baier Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 96, Number 1Oct., 1985 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/292723 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1985 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:S. Deon Wu Fairness as comparative desert, Ratio (Sep 2022).https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12358Bryan S. Schaffer, Christine M. Riordan A Review of Cross-Cultural Methodologies for Organizational Research: A Best- Practices Approach, Organizational Research Methods 6, no.22 (Apr 2003): 169–215.https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428103251542Jeffrey A. Miles, Howard J. Klein The Fairness of Assigning Group Members to Tasks, Group & Organization Management 23, no.11 (Mar 1998): 71–96.https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601198231005P. M. O'Connor External Preferences and Liberal Equality, Utilitas 6, no.11 (Jan 2009): 117–133.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820800001369

Liberal Equality and Inherited Wealth

I am sure there are no men marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him. A Leveller Commonplace, circa 1647 ... the day will come when the individual will no more be permitted to bequeath his property to his descendents even by means of a will thatn he has been permitted (since the French Revolution) to bequeath his offices and his status. Emile Durkheim, 1892 ... despite the ideology of the `open society' and social democratic attacks upon inherited wealth through the imposition of estate and death duties, inheritance remains an important factor in the distribution of control over resources, especially wealth. Roderick Martin, 1977

Liberal Equality. Amy Gutmann

<i>Liberal Equality</i>. Amy Gutmann

Liberal Equality.

<i>Liberal Equality.</i>

Liberal Equality. Amy Gutmann

Liberal Equality. Amy Gutmann

Liberal Equality. By Amy Gutmann, PH.D., Assistant Professor of Politics, Princeton University. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1980, xi, 288, (Bibliography) 18 and (Index) 13 pp. Cased £20·00; Paperback £6·50 net.

Liberal Equality. By Amy Gutmann, PH.D., Assistant Professor of Politics, Princeton University. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1980, xi, 288, (Bibliography) 18 and (Index) 13 pp. Cased £20·00; Paperback £6·50 net.

Rawlsian Contractarianism: Liberal Equality or Inequality?

This paper will examine Rawls’ Theory of Justice as the most coherent twentieth century restatement of the liberal egalitarian paradigm. It will examine Rawls’ assertion that his theory is in the tradition of the state of nature/contractarian formulation of that paradigm, with particular reference to the parallels between Locke's formulation and his own. The paper will note that in both formulations:a) The principles of justice formulated are sub specie aeternitatis but it will be argued that in fact they are, in their more developed form under “more favourable” historical conditions, the principles acknowledged by liberal man.b) The principles developed by men in “reasonably favourable conditions” (R., 5.82,542) are principles both of equality and inequality. However, it will be argued that the inequality principle takes precedence over the equality principle and, in fact, in its theoretical and practical manifestations, makes void the fair value of the equality principle itself.