Equalities and Inequalities: Rethinking Justice

One of the most influential contemporary legacies of Kant’s legal and political philosophy is egalitarianism. At least in some of its guises, however, this protean doctrine seems highly un-Kantian. The Egalitarian Principle of distributing goods in society equally, unless unequal distributions are to the benefit of the worst off, seems a case in point. Not surprisingly, this principle is the target of theories belonging to another significant contemporary trend in Kantian political theory, libertarianism. Yet, Kant’s discussion of welfare has been seen as a possible source for contemporary egalitarianism and commentators have gone as far as to claim that Kant’s ethics is socialist in character. A standard current approach to social, political and economic problems is to identify stark inequalities between individuals, groups and countries as the root cause. The answer is usually redistribution towards more egalitarian outcomes. Yet, recent research in philosophy, psychology, political science and elsewhere questions the wisdom of such solutions. First, we do not seem to value equality for its own sake. A society in which everybody gets the same, but not enough does not seem to be valued more than one with great disparities, but where there is sufficient for all. Moreover, we usually react to being unfairly disadvantaged, rather than simply to not getting the same. Interestingly, very recent research draws a link between populist voting patterns in elections (specifically, in the US, in 2016, and in France and the EU in 2019) and economic unfairness measured in terms of low social mobility. People are taking to the streets, it is claimed, not because they have less than others, but rather because they want fair opportunities. If distributive justice is a combination of equal opportunities and fair reward for talent and effort, then outcomes are likely to be unequal. While all these seem to suggest a concerted effort to question and re-evaluate the egalitarian trend, it is worth noting that the meritocratic combination of opportunities and reward for talent has also been criticised as leading to low social mobility under the pretence of fairness. The aim of this section is to contribute to these recent debates on the nature of equality and justice. It is clear that one source of these debates and paradoxes is in the various ways in which the concepts of equality and inequality are being used, and the way their historical roots are being interpreted. To a significant extent, disagreements are also generated by various conceptualisations of justice and fairness. Current urgent issues, such as environmental justice and pandemic inequality, raise questions of application, which compound the challenge of providing a more promising view of the role of equality (and inequality) as part of a theory of justice. Papers and panels are invited on any of the issues relevant for these debates, whether of a historical, methodological, normative or applied character.