Foreword: The Theoretical and Practical Pitfalls in Egalitarian Thought
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Description
This excellent volume offers an incisive, indeed, decisive, critique of modern egalitarian thought, whose intellectual strength remains weak even as its popularity becomes ever greater. No foreword can do justice to the arguments presented, all of which are strong in the two dimensions that matter most in policy work—a clear sense of theory, and a clear empirical grounding that tests the theories in question. The book’s individual chapters all share those characteristics. To be sure, there is, out of necessity, some useful overlap in their content, but the overall conclusion is inescapable. Whatever the abstract appeal of egalitarian arguments, they cannot survive the institutional, political, and economic pressures of any complex society. In writing this foreword I cannot go through all these arguments in the detail they deserve, but it is important to give some attention to the common strands that make In All Fairness cohere. My point of departure is clear enough. All of the authors, either explicitly or implicitly, adopt some form of classical liberalism as the benchmark from which they criticize the egalitarian moment. I believe that this is indeed the correct approach for dealing with any fundamental question of political theory. Classical liberalism, like egalitarianism, offers at its very root a social conception of the various rules and practices that, taken together, supply the foundation for a just society. In so doing, classical liberalism starts with a relatively narrow conception of harm that includes just these four elements: force, fraud, breach of promise, and the creation of monopoly power.
Source Publication
In All Fairness: Equality, Liberty, and the Quest for Human Dignity
Source Editors/Authors
Robert M. Whaples, Michael C. Munger, Christopher J. Coyne
Publication Date
2019
Recommended Citation
Epstein, Richard A., "Foreword: The Theoretical and Practical Pitfalls in Egalitarian Thought" (2019). Faculty Chapters. 2083.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/2083
