The debate over the nature of egalitarianism has come to dominate political philosophy. As ever more sophisticated attempts are made to describe the principles of an egalitarian distribution or to specify the good or goods that should be distributed equally, little is said about the fundamental basis of equality. In virtue of what should people be regarded as equal? Egalitarians have tended to dismiss this question of fundamental equality. In the first part of the paper I will examine some of (...) these strategies of marginalisation and assess whether the issue of fundamental equality matters. Jeremy Waldron has criticised this strategy of avoidance in his recent book God, Locke and equality. He argues that Locke’s turn to a theistic grounding for fundamental equality provides a better approach to the problem than the approach taken by contemporary liberals such as John Rawls. I will examine Waldron’s critique of Rawls and show that it is wanting. I will conclude by suggesting that Rawls’s approach to the issue has a bearing on the way in which equality should be understood as a political value. This argument for the primacy of a political conception of egalitarianism has a bearing on the interconnection between core liberal values and the idea of the state that has been emphasised by Rawls, Dworkin and Nagel. (shrink)

This article discusses various arguments for and against treating equality as a fundamental norm in law and political philosophy, combining prior arguments to the effect that equality is essentially an empty idea with arguments that treat it as a non‐empty but mistaken value that should be rejected. After concluding that most of the arguments for treating equality as a fundamental value fall victim to one or both of these arguments, it considers more closely arguments made by philosophers such as Ronald (...) Dworkin and Thomas Nagel that base a duty of promoting equality on the fact that governments impose a legal order on persons without their consent. It concludes that these arguments are mistaken: if the legal order imposed by government is justified then imposing it is not wrongful and generates no duty of equal treatment, while if that order is not justified no requirement of equality of treatment would cure the lack of justification. It concludes that equality should not be a value in law or political theory, but in some cases other considerations may justify particular rules that are sometimes mistakenly thought to be based on equality. (shrink)

It is possible that the fame of the Texas Rose Rustlers Society has not yet reached readers of these words. They may want to know then that its members prize roses that survive unattended in the wilds of Texas, having eluded the benevolent attention of gardeners. These unattended roses are not too distantly related to the ‘unofficial English rose’ that the poet says ‘Unkempt about those hedges blows’ in the proximity of The Old Vicarage at Grantchester. As all respectable societies, (...) the Texas Rose Rustlers has by-laws stating the principles that unite its members. Here are some of them: there is more than one way of being beautiful; good climates are in the eye of the beholder; if you are attacked by disease, abandonment, or a bad chain of events, do not despair, there is always the chance that you were bred to be tough; and everyone should not smell the same. I mention these admirable principles because they offend profoundly against egalitarianism, which happens to be my target on this occasion. (shrink)

How much are we morally required to do to aid others? After articulating some of the main contributions to this debate, I defend the position that we are sometimes morally permitted to spend our time and resources satisfying our own interests and needs rather than using them to aid others who are in desperate need. I argue that the duty to aid the needy should not always take priority over every other end we have. Whatever else we value, we most (...) highly value the ability and opportunity to live our lives on our own terms; this grounds both our obligation to aid others and places limits on how far these obligations ought to extend. Persons ought to respect others and fulfill their moral obligations but they must also be given the moral space to set ends and pursue those ends just because they are theirs. (shrink)

Faith in the universal moral equality of people enjoys close to unanimous consensus in present moral and political philosophy. Yet its philosophical justification remains precarious. The search for the basis of equality encounters insurmountable difficulties. Nothing short of a miracle seems required to stabilize universal equality in moral status amidst a vast space of distinctions sprawling between people. The difficulties of stabilizing equality against differentiation are not specific to any particular choice regarding the basis of equality. To show this, I (...) will provide a general diagnosis of the difficulty together with its application to the arguably best attempt at a solution, namely to ground moral equality in a form of subjectivity. In his recent book Equality for Nonegalitarians, George Sher advances the view that “we are moral equals because we are equally centers of consciousness. …The fact that we are equals in this respect—that each is a world unto himself—…explains why each person’s interests are of equal moral importance”. Yet the worlds we are unto ourselves can no more withstand the force of differentiation than previous candidates suggested in the literature, and the reasons why run deeper than even some critics have recognized. The prospects for vindicating universal moral equality remain bleak. (shrink)