Equality Since Rawls: Objective Philosophers, Subjective Citizens, and Rational Choice

Abstract

Since the publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971, the presumably controversial notion that under ordinary circumstances no person should possess more useful goods than any other person has been more freely propagated, and more respectfully received, than ever before. Yet except in the one restrictive context of American race relations, the literature of equality seems barely to have made contact with political and social possibility in the late twentieth century. Explicit egalitarian proposals, such as for wage supplements (Jencks et al., 1972) or “fair shares” (Ryan, 1981), enter the realm of policy devoid of serious philosophical justification, whereas philosophical justifications of equality enter that same realm devoid of any apparent application. To paraphrase an earlier egalitarian, I cannot make this separation between theory and policy legitimate; but I think I can explain how it came about.