Rethinking Liberal Equality

For more than a quarter century, academic political philosophy has been dominated by strains of liberal theory shaped decisively by John Rawls's seminal investigations of distributive justice and political legitimacy. By intervening sympathetically but critically into several ongoing debates initiated by Rawls's work, Andrew Levine suggests the possibility of a supra-liberal egalitarian political philosophy that incorporates the insights of recent developments in liberal theory, while reinvigorating the political vision of the historical Left. Taking current discussions about justice, equality and political neutrality as his points of departure, Levine suggests the need to rethink mainstream liberal understandings of equality and related notions. The rethinking he proposes lends support, ultimately, for a vision of ideal social and political arrangements of a kind intimated, though only barely sketched, in the work of Rousseau and Marx—a vision that, not long ago, was widely endorsed, but that nowadays is almost everywhere regarded as hopelessly utopian. In marked opposition to the reigning consensus view, Levine argues that, after compelling liberal concerns are taken into consideration, the vision of ideal social and political arrangements which motivated generations of progressive thinkers and political actors is anything but utopian and remains as timely today as it ever was. This vision, Levine insists, is indispensable for curing contemporary liberalism of its tendency to acquiesce in a status quo that is ultimately at odds with democratic, egalitarian and even liberal values.

This book makes a significant contribution to the tradition of liberal political theory: it explores the foundations and limits of the idea of equality within that theory and offers a sustained argument for a persuasive new view of liberalism. Liberal thinking has always displayed a tension between the claims of liberty and those of equality. Professor Gutmann examines the contributions of liberal theorists from Locke to Rawls on the subject of two kinds of equality - equality of opportunity to participate and the equal distribution of economic goods. Valuing both, she shows that, far from being alternatives, the two ideals are compatible to a much greater degree than has previously been thought. Liberal Equality restores egalitarianism to political theory in a way that will forcefully challenge its critics to deeper reflection.

Although formally equal, relations between citizens are actually characterised by many and varied forms of inequality. Do contemporary theories of equality provide an adequate response to the inequalities that afflict contemporary societies? And what is the connection between theories of equality and the contemporary politics of citizenship? Accessible and comprehensive, Rethinking equality provides a clear, critical and very up-to-date account of the most important contemporary egalitarian theories. Unusually, it also relates these theories to contemporary political practice, assessing them in relation to the impact of neoliberalism on contemporary welfare states, and the shift from ‘social’ to ‘active’ forms of citizenship. As well as representing a significant intervention within academic debates on equality and citizenship, this book represents essential reading for students of contemporary political theory.

Rethinking Rights examines pornography and hate speech as test cases in advancing an argument for the liberal state to engage in activism in the name of equality for women and minorities. Such cases expose a core tension within liberalism between neutrality and equality, since state neutrality in the face of a systemically sexist and racist culture only reinforces that culture and further silences the speech of women and minorities within it. I argue that, on the liberal's own terms, the commitment to equality has priority over the commitment to neutrality. Once that has been established, I address two issues commonly raised by liberals against state activism: the question of how to ensure that the state is acting in the name of equality, rather than in its own, or some other, interest; and the issue that censorship, in any form, is anathema to liberalism. Both discussions raise issues of state power, particularly as it intersects with feminist speech act theory and with the work of Foucault and Judith Butler. These theories, taken together, turn both state power and the notion of censorship on their heads---no longer is hate speech about the power of the speaker, but about the power of the state in permitting or regulating it; no longer is censorship about state suppression after an utterance, but about the very production of utterances at all. Taking these insights on board, the liberal should be in a position to embrace state activism in the service of equality, not as a compromise of liberal principles, but as an entailment of those very principles.

Opens up new histories of freedom and republicanism by building on Quentin Skinner's ground-breaking Liberty before Liberalism nearly twenty five years after its initial publication. Leading historians and philosophers reveal the neo-Roman conception of liberty that Skinner unearthed as a normative and historical hermeneutic tool of enormous, ongoing power. The volume thinks with neo-Romanism to offer reinterpretations of individual thinkers, such as Montaigne, Grotius and Locke. It probes the role of neo-Roman liberty within hierarchies and structures beyond that of citizen and state – namely, gender, slavery, and democracy. Finally, it reassesses the relationships between neo-Romanism and other languages in the history of political thought: liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and the human rights tradition. The volume concludes with a major reappraisal by Skinner himself.

Regarding Equality offers an innovative and controversial analysis of the relationship between equality and pluralism. Tackling an issue central to modern political thought, Freeberg highlights the struggle to characterize citizens as equals while respecting their moral, religious, and cultural diversity. The work ably contrasts and critiques the prevailing models for balancing equality with pluralism from thinkers Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, John Rawls, Amy Gutmann, Dennis Thompson, Michael Oakeshott, and Drucilla Cornell. From these liberal, democratic, and conservative approaches to equality and pluralism, Freeberg builds a theory of responsive regard: reciprocal civility between citizens that forms a chastened conception of what we share as free and equal persons. This work will greatly add to political theorists' and philosophers' arsenals of concepts for egalitarian and democratic theory.

This important new study presents a systematic and definitive critique of Ronald Dworkin's highly influential theory of liberal equality. Focusing on the connection Dworkin attempts to establish between economic markets and liberal egalitarian political morality, the study examines his contention that markets have an indispensable role to play in the articulation of liberal ideals of distributive justice, individual liberty, and state neutrality. Subjecting the central tenents of this theory to sustained critical analysis, the author argues that Dworkin's attempt to establish deep affinities between the market and equality is unsuccessful and his proposed solutions to some central controversies in political theory are seriously flawed. This powerful examination of the work of America's leading public philosopher reveals some timely lessons about the hazards and limitations of the market as a device for the articulation and realization of egalitarian justice.

Does biology help explain why women, on average, earn less money than men? Is there any evolutionary basis for the scarcity of female CEOs in Fortune 500 companies? According to Kingsley Browne, the answer may be yes. Biology at Work brings an evolutionary perspective to bear on issues of women in the workplace: the "glass ceiling," the "gender gap" in pay, sexual harassment, and occupational segregation. While acknowledging the role of discrimination and sexist socialization, Browne suggests that until we factor real biological differences between men and women into the equation, the explanation remains incomplete. Browne looks at behavioral differences between men and women as products of different evolutionary pressures facing them throughout human history. Womens biological investment in their offspring has led them to be on average more nurturing and risk averse, and to value relationships over competition. Men have been biologically rewarded, over human history, for displays of strength and skill, risk taking, and status acquisition. These behavioral differences have numerous workplace consequences. Not surprisingly, sex differences in the drive for status lead to sex differences in the achievement of status. Browne argues that decision makers should recognize that policies based on the assumption of a single androgynous human nature are unlikely to be successful. Simply removing barriers to inequality will not achieve equality, as women and men typically value different things in the workplace and will make different workplace choices based on their different preferences. Rather than simply putting forward the "nature" side of the debate, Browne suggests that dichotomies such as nature/nurture have impeded our understanding of the origins of human behavior. Through evolutionary biology we can understand not only how natural selection has created predispositions toward certain types of behavior but also how the social environment interacts with these predispositions to produce observed behavioral patterns.

This collection of original essays by prominent scholars of political theory contends that contemporary ideas of feminism have reached a theoretical impasse because they are unable to reconcile tensions between principles such as equality and difference. Finding A New Feminism places modern concepts of feminism within the historical context of political thought and uses feminism as a lens through which to examine the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy, both in practice and in theory. By reconsidering classic works of literature, philosophy, and political theory, the authors identify certain deficiencies of liberal democracy but do not call for its complete abandonment. Instead, they present a new theory of feminism that fosters the reconciliation of conflicting and competing principles, as well as the private and public realms of women's lives. This is compulsory reading for students and scholars of political and feminist theory.

Bhikhu Parekh argues for a pluralist perspective on cultural diversity. Writing from both within the liberal tradition and outside of it as a critic, he challenges what he calls the "moral monism" of much of traditional moral philosophy, including contemporary liberalism--its tendency to assert that only one way of life or set of values is worthwhile and to dismiss the rest as misguided or false. He defends his pluralist perspective both at the level of theory and in subtle nuanced analyses of recent controversies. Thus, he offers careful and clear accounts of why cultural differences should be respected and publicly affirmed, why the separation of church and state cannot be used to justify the separation of religion and politics, and why the initial critique of Salman Rushdie (before a Fatwa threatened his life) deserved more serious attention than it received. Rejecting naturalism, which posits that humans have a relatively fixed nature and that culture is an incidental, and "culturalism," which posits that they are socially and culturally constructed with only a minimal set of features in common, he argues for a dialogic interplay between human commonalities and cultural differences. This will allow, Parekh argues, genuinely balanced and thoughtful compromises on even the most controversial cultural issues in the new multicultural world in which we live.