the sort of value that equality is

What is equality essentially about, what is its scope, and how does it generally interact with the values of responsibility and freedom? Discover a truly excellent answer to these pressing questions in this very short (19 page) and readable paper on SSRN. The abstract is as follows:

This short (19-page) paper reflects on the sort of value which equality essentially is by examining why we think it might matter that people be equal with respect to anything at all. The paper defends a basic account of equality which sees equality as fundamentally about achieving a certain sort of non-subordinative, non-dominating community, and it opposes an account of equality which sees equality as fundamentally about the eradication of difference, of some (any) sort. It is argued that the former interpretation makes far better sense of a range of relevant intuitive data which it is the primary business of a philosophical account of equality to make sensible. The paper further argues that, in understanding equality as a value essentially and fundamentally about community, one does not thereby limit equality's scope (qua moral value) merely to de facto communities of a particular sort. As a value about community, equality makes demands with respect to all possible communities, but this demand is transcendent and not dependent on any empirical facts; equality would make the demands it did even if there were nothing existent that could be called 'community,' just so long as there could be community. (In fact, equality just is the reason to achieve community of the non-subordinative, non-dominating sort wherever such a community is imaginable.) Finally, the luck-egalitarian project is interpreted as being in part concerned to preserve a principled scope for the values of freedom and responsibility in an account of equality, and although the luck-egalitarian version of equality is rejected, this paper urges that this part of the luck-egalitarian project not be forgotten. Reflecting on the nature of equality reveals interesting ways in which its claims are exhausted (i.e., limited in a principled way) by the values of freedom and responsibility.