In the Beginning Was the Deed by Williams Bernard; Hawthorn Geoffrey;

Author:Williams, Bernard; Hawthorn, Geoffrey;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

EIGHT

The Idea of Equality

THE IDEA OF EQUALITY is used in political discussion both in statements of fact, or what purport to be statements of fact—that people are equal—and in statements of political principles or aims: that people should be equal, as at present they are not. The two can be, and often are, combined:the aim is then described as that of securing a state of affairs in which people are treated as the equal beings which they in fact already are, but are not already treated as being. In both these uses, the idea of equality notoriously encounters the same difficulty: that on one kind of interpretation the statements in which it figures are much too strong, and on another kind much too weak, and it is hard to find a satisfactory interpretation that lies between the two.1

To take first the supposed statement of fact: it has only too often been pointed out that to say that all people are equal in all those characteristics in respect of which it makes sense to say that people are equal or unequal, is a patent falsehood; and even if some more restricted selection is made of these characteristics, the statement does not look much better. Faced with this obvious objection, the defender of the claim is likely to offer a weaker interpretation. It is not, he may say, in their skill, intelligence, strength, or virtue that people are equal, but merely in their being people:it is their common humanity that constitutes their equality. On this interpretation, we should not seek for some special characteristics in respect of which all beings are equal, but merely remind ourselves that they are all human beings. But that if all that the statement does is to remind us that human beings are human beings, it does not do very much and in particular does less than its proponents in political argument have wanted it to do. What looked like paradox has turned into a platitude.

I shall suggest in a moment that even in this weak form the statement is not as vacuous as this objection makes it seem; but it must be admitted that when the statement of equality ceases to claim more than is warranted, it can rather rapidly reach the point where it claims less than is interesting. A similar discomfiture tends to overcome the practical maxim of equality. It cannot be the aim of this maxim that everyone should be treated alike in all circumstances, or even that they should be treated alike as much as possible. Granted that, however, there is no obvious stopping point before the interpretation which makes the maxim claim only that they should be treated alike in similar circumstances; and since “circumstances” here must clearly include reference to what people are, as well as to their purely external situations, this comes very much to saying that for every difference in the way people are treated, some general reason or principle of differentiation must be given. This may well

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