Fair Equality of Opportunity and the Place for Individual Merit in a Liberal Democratic Society

Abstract

Opportunities open up the freedom to do and become things we otherwise could not" (FISHKIN, 2014, p. 02). [...]opportunities have a distinctive value because of the roles they play in shaping who we are. To be clear, according to an institution-dependent conception "what counts as a talent depends on the justification of the institution in question and the nature and justification of the position within it for which individuals are being selected" (SCANLON, 2018, p. 44). [...]in the first section, I will clarify the different ideals beyond the notion of equality of opportunity and the various normative prescriptions they entail. [...]a short list of distributive implications of the fair equality opportunity conception is provided with a particular attention to Brazilian socioeconomic distribution. On the contrary, if citizens believe that the strong distributive implications of a certain idea of equality of opportunity disregard some other moral and political ideas - such as individual merit and effort - shared and considered valuable in a liberal democracy, the chance to implement transformative public policies is sharply reduced. [...]a bridge is necessary between the normative debate and empirical and public debate5.