Demosthenes quotes from a Michael Waltzer interview, and in doing so reminded me that Waltzer wrote an article about Israel and Palestine that I admired and blogged about last October.
Reading the Waltzer interview led me in turn to Elizabeth Anderson’s essay, “What is the Point of Equality?” (Not online, sorry). Anderson argues that many academic philosophers – by framing the question of equality in terms of “unequal native talents” and the like – have missed the point. Here’s a passage I enjoyed:
There must be a better way to conceive of the point of equality. To do so, it is helpful to recall how egalitarian political movements have historically conceived of their aims. What have been the inegalitarian systems that they have opposed? Inegalitarianism asserted the justice or necessity of basing social order on a hierarchy of human beings, ranked according to intrinsic worth. Inequality referred not so much to distributions of goods as to relations between superior and inferior persons. Those of superior rank were thought entitled to inflict violence on inferiors, to exclude or segregate them from social life, to treat them with contempt, to force them to obey’, work without reciprocation, and abandon their own cultures. These are what Iris Young has identified as the faces of oppression: marginalization, status hierarchy, domination, exploitation, and cultural imperialism. Such unequal social relations generate, and were thought to justify, inequalities in the distribution of freedoms, resources, and welfare. This is the core of inegalitarian ideologies of racism, sexism, nationalism, caste, class, and eugenics.
Egalitarian political movements oppose such hierarchies. They assert the equal moral worth of persons. This assertion does not mean that all have equal virtue or talent. Negatively, the claim repudiates distinctions or moral worth based on birth or social identity-on family membership, inherited social status, race, ethnicity, gender, or genes. There are no natural slaves, plebeians, or aristocrats. Positively, the claim assert that all competent adults are equally moral agents: everyone equally has the power to develop and exercise moral responsibility, to cooperate with others according to principles of justice, to shape and fulfill a conception of their good.”
Egalitarians base claims to social and political equality on the fact of universal moral equality. These claims also have a negative and a positive aspect. Negatively, egalitarians seek to abolish oppression – that is, forms or social relationship by which some people dominate, exploit, marginalize, demean, and inflict violence upon others. Diversities in socially ascribed identities, distinct roles in the division of labor, or differences in personal traits, whether these be neutral biological and psychological differences, valuable talents and virtues, or unfortunate disabilities and infirmities, never justify the unequal social relations listed above. Nothing can justify treating people in these ways, except just punishment for crimes and defense against violence. Positively, egalitarians seek a social order in which persons stand in relations of equality. They seek to live together in a democratic community as opposed to a hierarchical one. Democracy is here understood as collective self-determination by means of open discussion among equals, in accordance with rules acceptable to all. To stand as an equal before others in discussion means that one is entitled to participate, that others recognize an obligation to listen respectfully and respond to ones arguments, that no one need bow and scrape before others or represent themselves as inferior to others as a condition of having their claim heard.
Interesting stuff… and very relevant to current debates about same-sex marriage, in my opinion.
Relevant link: Check out the discussion on Half the Sins of Mankind, too (mostly of the Waltzer interview, but there’s a little bit about Elizabeth Anderson)...
Elizabeth Anderson, a student of John Rawls, is brilliant and humane.
Amp: In the first paragraph you quote from Anderson, that should be Iris Young, not “Iris Voting,” who writes about the five faces of oppression.
Anyone who wants to take a look at Young’s groundbreaking article (and still one of the few philosophical pieces written about oppression) can find it in Iris Young’s book: Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990).
Such unequal social relations generate, and were thought to justify, inequalities in the distribution of freedoms, resources, and welfare.
I’ve been defining egalitarianism as the struggle for universal equality before the law, which doesn’t quite cover it because there are non-legal forms of systemic oppression. (E.g. There’s no law saying captial punishment should be applied disproportionately to African-Americans, yet it is a systemic problem.)
I’ve always hated the “classic” Vonnegut story, “Harrison Bergeron” (http://penguinppc.org/~hollis/personal/bergeron.shtml) because it’s all about the Egalitarianism = Homogeneity straw man. Had he addressed that point and then moved on to a substantive exploration of egalitarianism, I wouldn’t take it for an annoyingly enthymemetic assertion that all inequality stems from the “natural inferiority” of the oppressed.
I only wish it were a straw man, Camryl, but far too many highly intelligent people – Bernard Levin in “A World Elsewhere” for instance – have fallen for the notion that when Jefferson wrote “All men are created equal” he meant “all men are created the same,” and as the latter is absurd they’ve concluded Jefferson was an idiot.
Maybe they should start with the assumption that Jefferson was not an idiot, and try to figure out what he might have meant. In fact Jefferson was righter than he knew – it is now, in western culture, such a self-evident truth that all people are created equal, that these folks can’t figure out that that’s what Jefferson meant, and they think he must have meant something else.
The Anderson quote explains the difference more clearly and elegantly than anything else I’ve seen. Thank you for posting it, Amp.
Thanks for the correction, Cleis. (The dangers of using text-recognition software!)
Ahh, that has cleared something up for me. I could never understand deference to the upper classes nor racism. But to say “all men are created the same” makes me realise that to a stupid person, these could be tenable positions. A false proposition implies any proposition.
It is going to take time before we realise that we all are the same – in the sense that we are all human, all alive and have loves and favourite foods and favourite colours.
Just because I like blue, and you like red, does that make you better than me? No, they are equally valid selections. Perhaps more philosophy should be taught in schools.
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