Equality and Political Community: the Foundations of Rawls's "A Theory of Justice". (Volumes I and II).

This dissertation explores the relationship between alternative ideas of equality in liberal society and the central themes of John Rawls's theory of Justice as Fairness. The introductory chapter considers the meaning of equality in political philosophy and also distinguishes between equality as a treatment st and ard (treatment-equality) and equality as a proposition about human beings (attribute-equality). I argue that equal means "of equivalent worth," not "the same," and that equality is an issue of valuation rather than of comparison. The discussion then turns to the origins of liberalism in the English civil conflicts of the seventeenth century. Thomas Hobbes's theory is considered not only as the basis of liberal individualism but also as centering about a completely secular conception of equality. Hobbes's system, however, is a response to a still vital idea of moral equality rooted in religion. The "liberal tradition," as opposed to the classical liberalism discussed in political philosophy, in fact centers on an argument about equality between the Hobbesian liberal individualism and an alternative moral equality derived from religion. Subsequent liberal struggles over equality result from the conflict of these conceptions, the disarray in thinking about distributive justice that comes from Hobbes's dismissal of the topic, and attempts to approach the problem from what I call alternative theoretical time frames. The major elements of Rawls's argument for a conception of distributive justice that takes equality seriously are the theoretical construct of "the original position and veil of ignorance," the idea of the "natural lottery," and the difference principle. I contend that "the natural lottery," previously known as "accident of birth," and discussed in various works by Herbert Spiegelberg, is an old one in Western thought, rooted in religion but carried forth by secular reformers as well, and that it provides the basis for an alternative view of justice and equal treatment. Rawls's difference principle builds on this foundation but transforms it into a new conception of distributive justice. This provides the basis for a theory that is original and quite removed from Hobbesian liberal individualism.