Liberal Faith: Essays in Honor of Philip Quinn

6. Egalitarianism without Equality?

145 Six Egalitarianism without Equality? Paul J. Weithman Like, I expect, many other people, I am drawn to democratic egalitarianism in large part because it seems to me to fit so well with my religious convictions. Democracy’s ethos of equal respect for all seems to me to be among the proper political and cultural expressions of the universal love my religion enjoins. Egalitarian principles of distributive justice seem to me to be among the proper ways of expressing the demands for justice found throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. If I try to be more specific about just what I mean by talking of a good fit between my religious and my political convictions, I am led to the following. Both a democratic ethos and egalitarian principles seem to me somehow to be underpinned by two claims: the claim that human beings are by nature equal and the claim that our natural equality must be expressed in our social and political relations. The first of these claims seems to me to be one of which my religion WeithProof.indb 145 WeithProof.indb 145 6/30/08 11:53:18 AM 6/30/08 11:53:18 AM 146 Paul J. Weithman contains at least the elements of an account, in the form of claims about our common paternity and destiny. But on examination, the connections that seem to me to be in place among democratic egalitarianism, the two claims I have said underpin it, and religious accounts of human equality all appear rather loose. Even if we suppose, as I will, that my version of Christianity is committed to the equality of all people, it is far from clear exactly how that commitment supports the ethical and distributive commitments of democratic egalitarianism. Pace some recent work by Jeremy Waldron , it is also far from clear that any such underpinning is needed.1 For there are reasons to think that egalitarian principles of distributive justice can be sustained, or at least publicly sustained, without the support of the sort of robust account of natural equality that I have suggested religion can provide. Some of those reasons depend upon Rawlsian arguments about the political character of political philosophy. According to those arguments , egalitarian principles can derive all the public justification they need from ideas to be found in political culture. Deeper religious justi- fications are not necessary. Other reasons depend upon the very challenging claim that our egalitarian convictions about distributive justice do not depend upon the value of equality at all. Here I shall ignore the first set of reasons for thinking that egalitarianism can get by without robust ideas of human equality and shall concentrate on the second. Let me begin by trying to state my concerns more precisely. The Fairness Conditional I am concerned with the distribution of an important class of socially created goods that I shall refer to as “basic social benefits.” Basic social benefits are those goods that together constitute the so-called currency of egalitarian justice. They are the goods with the distribution of which distributive justice is most fundamentally concerned. For now I shall remain noncommittal about what the currency of egalitarian justice is, though later I shall say something about what I believe to be one of the currency’s more important denominations. I shall also suggest the need to distribute some basic social benefits differently than others— to use the currency of egalitarian justice to, as it were, make change. But for the moment we can take the currency to be Rawlsian primary WeithProof.indb 146 WeithProof.indb 146 6/30/08 11:53:18 AM 6/30/08 11:53:18 AM Egalitarianism without Equality? 147 goods, preference satisfaction, opportunities for welfare, access to advantage , or Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities. The questions that concern me are how these basic social benefits should be distributed and why.2 By saying that I am attracted to egalitarian principles, I do not mean that I am attracted to the equal distribution of these benefits. I am, however, attracted to the claim that departures from equal distribution must be justified, so that there is a presumption in favor of equal distribution. I want to ask how that presumption can be defended and among what class of beneficiaries it holds. It is natural to think that the presumption in favor of equal distribution...