%0 Thesis
%9 Masters
%A O'Halloran, L.M.
%B Department of Philosophy
%D 2011
%F discovery:1310433
%I UCL (University College London)
%P 102
%T The value of equality
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1310433/
%X This thesis undertakes to explain the appeal of the ideal of equality and the  role of the intrinsic value of equality therein. Following John Rawls, it  ultimately argues that justice requires the equal distribution of fundamental  resources and privileges, and that equality may only be deviated from to the  extent that these deviations better the lot of the worst-off. Thus justice  requires equality. However, I argue that Rawls’s difference principle (DP)  is a way of respecting what is politically pragmatic without ensuring true  justice. A proper conclusion of Rawls’s reasoning in support of the  difference principle would permit inequalities only to the extent that they  reflect unequal burdens, as suggested by G. A. Cohen. Despite this  egalitarian conclusion, however, I argue that Rawls need not rely on the  intrinsic value of equality.  To this end, I begin by examining the value of equality as it appears in  egalitarian theories of distributive justice, noting the difficulty in proving  that equality is of underived or intrinsic worth. I then scrutinize two  challenges to Rawls’s DP which, however opposed in direction, share the  assumption that the DP relies on the intrinsic value of equality. Both  challenges reveal weaknesses in Rawls’s principle as it is typically  formulated, leading us to doubt its very appeal – let alone its ability to prove  the value of equality.  On a proper reading of Rawls, however, what politically matters about  equality doesn’t presuppose that equality itself is a value. Thus we can see  Rawls’s difference principle as intending to do justice to what is owed to  each citizen, without having to be axiologically creative in the way that  Cohen is. Conversely, arguments for the difference principle go beyond the mere sufficiency Frankfurt allows for. So, again, Rawls better reflects the  political attraction of equality than Frankfurt’s appeal to sufficiency can  recognize.  In closing, therefore, I argue that an alternative reading of Rawls’s argument  for the DP offers a compelling explanation for the appeal of the ideal of  equality, an explanation that warrants a more egalitarian conclusion than  Rawls himself concedes. Thus, justice requires equality, but not necessarily  because equality is intrinsically valuable.