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In this systematic and scathing attack on the dominant contemporary version of liberalism, John Kekes challenges political assumptions shared by the majority of people in Western societies. Egalitarianism, as it's widely known, holds that a government ought to treat all citizens with equal consideration. Kekes charges that belief in egalitarianism rests on illusions that prevent people from facing unpleasant truths.Kekes, a major voice in modern political thought, argues that differences among human beings in the areas of morality, reasonability, legality, and citizenship are too important for governance to ignore. In a rigorous criticism of prominent egalitarian thinkers, including Dworkin, Nagel, Nussbaum, Rawls, Raz, and Singer, Kekes charges that their views present a serious threat to both morality and reason. For Kekes, certain "inegalitarian truths" are obvious: people should get what they deserve, those who are good and those who are evil should not be treated as if they had the same moral worth, people should not be denied what they have earned in order to benefit those who have not earned it, and individuals should be held responsible for their actions. His provocative book will compel many readers to question their faith in liberalism.
Educational policy and discussion, in Britain and the USA, are increasingly dominated by the confused ideology of egalitarianism. David E. Cooper begins by identifying the principles hidden among the confusions, and argues that these necessarily conflict with the ideal of educational excellence - in which conflict it is this ideal that must be preserved. He goes on to criticize the use of education as a tool for promoting wider social equality, focussing especially on the muddles surrounding 'equal opportunities', 'social mix' and 'reverse discrimination'. Further chapters criticize the 'new egalitarianism' favoured, on epistemological grounds, by various sociologists of knowledge in recent years and 'cultural egalitarianism' according to which standard criteria of educational value merely reflect parochial and economic interests.
In this systematic and scathing attack on the dominant contemporary version of liberalism, John Kekes challenges political assumptions shared by the majority of people in Western societies. Egalitarianism, as it's widely known, holds that a government ought to treat all citizens with equal consideration. Kekes charges that belief in egalitarianism rests on illusions that prevent people from facing unpleasant truths.Kekes, a major voice in modern political thought, argues that differences among human beings in the areas of morality, reasonability, legality, and citizenship are too important for governance to ignore. In a rigorous criticism of prominent egalitarian thinkers, including Dworkin, Nagel, Nussbaum, Rawls, Raz, and Singer, Kekes charges that their views present a serious threat to both morality and reason. For Kekes, certain "inegalitarian truths" are obvious: people should get what they deserve, those who are good and those who are evil should not be treated as if they had the same moral worth, people should not be denied what they have earned in order to benefit those who have not earned it, and individuals should be held responsible for their actions. His provocative book will compel many readers to question their faith in liberalism.
Explores how Enlightenment values have been transformed in a technological civilization.
Probably no issue is more confounding in the social policy arena or more closely argued among political philosophers than the question of the relationship between equality and liberty: are they compatible in a just society? In a systematic discussion that expands our understanding of what constitutes liberty, equality, and, especially, justice, Professor Nielsen puts forth a vigorous defense of an uncompromising egalitarianism based on a commitment to the belief that the interests of everyone matter, and matter equally. Marshalling the most persistent arguments against egalitarianism, the author presents accounts of Nietzschean elitism, meritocracy, and conservative libertarianism, as well as various shades of egalitarianism, and systematically responds to each opposing view. Followers of contemporary debates will especially welcome Nielsen's searching critiques of the liberal egalitarianism of John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, and of the conservative libertarianism of Milton Friedman, Frederich Hayek, and particularly Robert Nozick.
Egalitarianism. This concept in political philosophy, which for centuries, has been the epicenter of political and social debates between intellectuals, but also between ordinary people. Equality between men has always been the perpetual quest of the collective. Not that of the individual. The fight for equality is always rooted in morality. Egalitarianism in itself has no economic, political or social foundation; but strictly and purely a moral one. A society that makes egalitarianism its highest and ultimate purpose has resulted in more inequality. The purpose of this book is to explain why the quest for equality does not serve society on a long-term basis, but on the contrary; widens the inequalities that already exist between men.
"In the Shadow of Justice tells the story of how liberal political philosophy was transformed in the second half of the twentieth century under the influence of John Rawls. In this first-ever history of contemporary liberal theory, Katrina Forrester shows how liberal egalitarianism--a set of ideas about justice, equality, obligation, and the state--became dominant, and traces its emergence from the political and ideological context of the postwar United States and Britain. In the aftermath of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Rawls's A Theory of Justice made a particular kind of liberalism essential to political philosophy. Using archival sources, Forrester explores the ascent and legacy of this form of liberalism by examining its origins in midcentury debates among American antistatists and British egalitarians. She traces the roots of contemporary theories of justice and inequality, civil disobedience, just war, global and intergenerational justice, and population ethics in the 1960s and '70s and beyond. In these years, political philosophers extended, developed, and reshaped this liberalism as they responded to challenges and alternatives on the left and right--from the New International Economic Order to the rise of the New Right. These thinkers remade political philosophy in ways that influenced not only their own trajectory but also that of their critics. Recasting the history of late twentieth-century political thought and providing novel interpretations and fresh perspectives on major political philosophers, In the Shadow of Justice offers a rigorous look at liberalism's ambitions and limits."--
Liberalism is doomed to failure, John Kekes argues in this penetrating criticism of its basic assumptions. Liberals favor individual autonomy, a wide plurality of choices, and equal rights and resources, seeing them as essential for good lives. They oppose such evils as selfishness, intolerance, cruelty, and greed. Yet the more autonomy, equality, and pluralism there is, Kekes contends, the greater is the scope for evil. According to Kekes, liberalism is inconsistent because the conditions liberals regard as essential for good lives actually foster the very evils liberals want to avoid, and avoiding those evils depends on conditions contrary to the ones liberals favor. Kekes argues further that the liberal conceptions of equality, justice, and pluralism require treating good and evil people with equal respect, distributing resources without regard to what recipients deserve, and restricting choices to those that conform to liberal preconceptions. All these policies are detrimental to good lives. Kekes concludes that liberalism cannot cope with the prevalence of evil, that it is vitiated by inconsistent commitments, and that—contrary to its aim—liberalism is an obstacle to good lives.