Not Equality but Equivalency for a Just Society

Sunday Business Post, 1998

Equality is not one idea, and one can advocate or criticize a number of forms of egalitarianism. Many egalitarians advocate the equal distribution of one of a range of equalisanda-in other words, what it is that should be equalized, such as political power, human rights, primary goods, opportunities for welfare, or capabilities. This notion that equality is best described according to some "thing" that should be distributed equally has been subject to criticism by a range of schools of thought. Of these critics, a number

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...

2003

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, 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.

International Studies Journal (ISJ), 2018

The problem is how ideas and ideologies intended to liberate the peoples from misery and oppression were reversed into oppression just in the name of freedom. The reason is the reduction of equality to a numerical concept, which was a milestone in world history but finally ended up in obscene inequalities to such an extent, that the social fabric of the Western societies is dissolving, far-right and populistic movements are gaining momentum and the corruption of our values can no longer be ignored. The crisis of the (neo)-liberal world order is returning from the margins to the center. For too long we thought that modern absolute or numerical equality would supersede the former aristocratic concept of proportional equality. But in the end this understanding of equality created a kind of blind spot in our perception-a prominent example is Thomas Jefferson who included the dignity of all people into the American declaration of independence and was virtually blind to realizing that this value contradicted his own practice of possessing slaves. Therefore we re-invent proportional equality in the footsteps of Aristotle, but transgress his aristocratic concept by balancing it with reversed-proportionality-we propose therefore to understand justice as a pair of scales between freedom and equality.

2023

Inequality eternally touches the human consciousness as an unjust phenomenon that must be eliminated. However, despite many attempts, including bloody revolutions, it persists as gender and race discrimination, even in its oldest form - slavery. Beyond these extreme cases, inequality is natural whereas equality is artificial

The Philosophical Quarterly