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Fraternity and Equality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Abstract
Is there a connection between the values of fraternity and outcome equality? Is inequality at odds with fraternity? There are reasons to doubt that it is. First, fraternity requires us to want our ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ to fare well even when they are already better off than we are and their doing better will increase inequality. Second, fraternity seems not to require equality as a matter of fairness. Fairness requires (a certain) equality, but fraternity does not require fairness.
In examining what fraternity requires I discuss Rawls' suggestion that the difference principle corresponds to a natural meaning of fraternity, arguing that fraternity may be even more tolerant of inequality than the difference principle. Nevertheless, I defend the claim that fraternity and equality are linked, albeit not in such a way as to make inequality inconsistent with fraternity. Fraternity is related to equality since equalizing expresses the connectedness at the core of fraternity; but inequality is consistent with fraternity since there are other ways of expressing that connectedness.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2013
References
1 It might be argued that inequality affects reality as well as perceptions – that it affects not only who I perceive as my brother (and thereby when I have, and may be moved by, fraternal sentiments), but also who is my brother. The inequality between a bourgeois and a proletarian, say, may be thought to undermine their being brothers (irrespective of whether they recognise that this is so or not). In this way inequality might limit not only fraternal sentiments and behaviour, but the scope of fraternity – how often the duties of fraternity are brought into play.
2 Egalitarianism (proper) is to be distinguished from prioritarianism – the view that those doing less well (absolutely) have a stronger or prior claim – on the basis of its concern with the comparative. See Parfit, Derek, ‘Equality and Priority’, Ratio 10 (1997), 202–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 105Google Scholar. My discussion of the difference principle will be limited to its relationship with the requirements of fraternity. I make no comment on whether the difference principle is to be accepted as a principle of justice, except to say that the fact (if it is a fact) that the difference principle captures the requirements of fraternity, is not a reason to think that it satisfies the requirements of justice.
4 Ibid., 82–3.
5 Ibid., 82–3.
6 Ibid., 80.
7 It is true that I might still have had reason to set aside my qualms about becoming better off even if my sister had wanted me not to. Where fraternal love is unrequited, we might wonder if the connection is one to take seriously. But this does not make her wanting immaterial – making no difference to the situation. My becoming better off may be right both when my sister wishes it and when she does not; but what makes it right in the case where she wishes it will be quite different to what makes it right where she does not.
8 Ibid., 106.
9 I have presented material included here, or earlier versions of this paper, at the International Philosophy Conference on Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Bursa, Turkey (2010); the Australasian Association of Philosophy (NZ) Conference, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand (2010); the 22nd World Congress of Political Science (RC31), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain (2012); and at seminars at the University of Liverpool, the National University of Ireland, Galway, and the University of Stirling. I am very grateful for the comments I received on those occasions.