Egalitarianism with a human face
My thesis vindicates the ideal of egalitarianism with a human face by answering the threefold challenge that contemporary egalitarians fail to capture what really matters when it comes to distributions of burdens and benefits among human beings, that egalitarian concerns apply only within specific institutional contexts, and that there is no account of human nature that would furnish a commitment to distributive equality with a coherent foundation. The ideal of egalitarianism with a human face marks a turn against both non-egalitarian variants of humanism and non-humanist variants of egalitarianism. My thesis is divided into three parts. The first set of arguments offers a powerful line of reasoning in support of the claim that our concern for the wellbeing of other people is egalitarian. I argue that the principle of equality is in two important respects superior to both the priority view and a contractualist commitment to strict priority. The second set of arguments maintains that whether or not our concern for other people is egalitarian does not depend on wether individuals share a common institution. I argue against the recently prominent idea that whether some are worse off than others matters only among
Wollner, G.
Egalitarianism with a human face. My thesis vindicates the ideal of egalitarianism with a human face by answering the threefold challenge that contemporary egalitarians fail to capture what really matters when it comes to distributions of burdens and benefits among human beings, that egalitarian concerns apply only within specific institutional contexts, and that there is no account of human nature that would furnish a commitment to distributive equality with a coherent foundation. The ideal of egalitarianism with a human face marks a turn against both non-egalitarian variants of humanism and non-humanist variants of egalitarianism. My thesis is divided into three parts. The first set of arguments offers a powerful line of reasoning in support of the claim that our concern for the wellbeing of other people is egalitarian. I argue that the principle of equality is in two important respects superior to both the priority view and a contractualist commitment to strict priority. The second set of arguments maintains that whether or not our concern for other people is egalitarian does not depend on wether individuals share a common institution. I argue against the recently prominent idea that whether some are worse off than others matters only among
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