(3089/898) Equality, morality - Rawls, Sen, de Waal

1957) The fundamental equality in social arrangements that [John] Rawls [in A Theory of Justice] deduces [...] is an equal distribution of primary goods, which include, among other things, incomes, wealth, opportunities, and the social basis of self-respect. Rawls modifies this equality in only two important ways. He allows an unequal distribution when it benefits everyone - perhaps we have to reward doctors with more income and status in order to get people to slave through medical school. And his famous "difference principle" give special attention to the neediest. The moralist in [Amartya] Sen makes him urge [in Inequality Reexamined] that equal distribution of primary goods does not go to the core of human needs and aspirations. We should be equally placed to fulfill our potentials as nearly as possible, and we should be equally free to choose the goals for which we might strive. [...]

[F]our [...] observations about equality are worth close attention. First, despite the stirring words at the start of the Declaration of Independence, it makes no sense to say that two persons, or all men, are equal, period, or are created equal, period. Sen's central question is always "equality of what?" This is a point of logic, not of economics or ethics. Things are equal only in some respect or other (2+3 equals 5, yes, but only because we have an implicit criterion of identity for numbers). More than a few English words resemble "equal" in this respect. The word "resemble," for example. Nothing is just two, it must be two of some kind. [...] In political economy we must ask, equality of what? Income? Rights? Opportunity?

In these reactionary times, equality has become, for different reasons, unpopular, among both the strong and the weak. Sen observes that when you examine positions that question equality you will find that they oppose one measure or another that mitigates inequality - welfare, minimum support for the homeless, or better education for the poor. But it makes literal sense, in English, to oppose equality only if you oppose equality in some particular respect or other. This is not some deep fact of political science but a bald point of logic. It leads to a substantive thesis, which Sen states in two ways. First, as a matter of history, virtually all theories that are about how rightly to order a society are, he writes, "egalitarian in some significant way." All the theories we know of argue "resolutely for equality of something which everyone should have, and which is crucial to their own particular approach." Libertarians want equality of rights, welfarists want equal welfare, free marketers want equal access to the market. It is a little mischievous of Sen to say that libertarians are "egalitarian" - a word commonly used to describe programs or attitudes that advocate aspirations, in the socialist tradition, for the political, social and economic equality of all human beings. The intention of his mischief is to wake us up. Those who see political confrontations as between those who favor and those who oppose equality are bound to "miss something central to the subject."

Quite aside from history, Sen asserts that any economic or political theory that can be plausibly defended today must resort to proposals for equality of something or other.

Ian Hacking
"In Pursuit of Fairness" in
New York Review of Books (9/19/1996)
[review of Inequality Reexamined (1996)
by Amrtya Sen]

1958) [In Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, Frans] de Waal adduces a strong body of evidence that humans and other animals share the following tendencies and capacities: sympathy as expressed in succor, special treatment of the disadvantaged, and cognitive empathy; norms exemplified in both prescriptive and proscriptive social rules; reciprocity embodied positively in the exchange of services and balanced negatively by the punishment of violators; and concern for community, which finds its expression in peacemaking and negotiating. Summed up in this way, the above suite of demonstrated qualities sounds moral indeed.

William C. McGrew
"Moral Kin?" in
Scientific American (9/1996)