Equality is the endangered species of political ideals. Even left-of-centre
politicians reject equality as an ideal. In this text, Ronald Dworkin insists,
to the contrary, that equality is the indispensable virtue of democratic
sovereignty.Equality is the endangered species of political ideas. Even left-of-centre
politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they
say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension. In this
new book the author insists, to the contrary, that equality is the
indispensable virtue of democratic sovereignty. A legitimate government must
treat all its citizens as equals, that is, with equal respect and concern, and,
since the economic distribution that any society achieves is mainly the
consequence of its system of law and policy, that requirement imposes serious
egalitarian constraints on that distribution.; What distribution of a nation's wealth is demanded by equal concern for
all? Dworkin draws upon two fundamental humanist principles - first, it is of
equal objective importance that all human lives flourish, and second, each
person is responsible for defining and achieving the flourishing of his or her
own life - to ground his well-known thesis that true equality means equality in
the value of the resources that each person commands, not in the success he or
she achieves. Equality, freedom, and individual responsibility are therefore
not in conflict, but flow from and into one another as facets of the same
humanist conception of life and politics. Since no abstract political theory
can be understood except in the context of actual and complex political issues,
the author develops his thesis by applying it to heated contemporary
controversies about the distribution of health care, unemployment benefits,
campaign finance reform, affirmative action, assisted suicide, and genetic
engineering.
