Everywhere the right appeared to have taken the initiative, and when the decade culminated with the dramatic demise of communism, it was perhaps not altogether surprising that some people began to talk with euphoria of 'the end of history' and the final victory of a particular form of state - namely, the capitalist 'liberal' democracy. (查看原文)
Laponce even argues, without, in my opinion, any factual basis, that, unlike in traditional and especially religious terminology, where left represents the bad side, in political terminology the left is always associated with highly positive attributes such as the future, creativity and justice. 'While the majority of non-political cultures are dominated by the right wing, at least in the West, contemporary political culture is, according to LapoIice, dominated by the left wing (but most of his examples refer to French elections between 1880 and 1970). (查看原文)
One needs to establish what is meant by 'freedom', as on the one hand, there is freedom of the will in relation to the dispute between free will and determinism, and on the other, there is freedom of action, the particular concern of political philosophy, which distinguishes between various forms of freedom, such as negative freedom, freedom of action proper, and freedom as autonomy or obedience to one's own inner principle. (查看原文)
Only by answering all these questions is it possible to understand why there are situations in which freedom (but which freedom?) and equality (but which equality?) are compatible and complementary in the conception of an ideal society, others in which they are incompatible and mutually exclusive, and yet others in which they can, and should, be balanced one against the other. (查看原文)
Generally speaking, because it has to be imposed, every extension of the public sphere for egalitarian purposes restricts freedom of choice in the private sphere, which is intrinsically inegalitarian, because the private freedom of the rich is immeasurably greater than that of the poor. Loss of freedom naturally affects the rich more than the poor, whose freedom to choose a means of transport, a type of school or a way of dressing is normally restricted not by public decree, but by their economic situation within the private sphere.
Equality, it is true, has the effect of restricting the freedom of both rich and poor, but with this difference: the rich lose a freedom which they actually enjoyed, whereas the poor lose only a potential freedom. (查看原文)
I do not mean by this that an egalitarian measure always restricts freedom. The extension of voting rights to include women did not restrict the freedom to vote for men. It may have restricted their power in the sense that support for a government no longer depended only on them, but the right to vote was not restricted. (查看原文)
Whereas liberty is a personal condition, equality is a relationship between two or more entities. The proof is that the statement 'X is free' is meaningful, while 'X is equal' is not. Hence the unfailingly comic effect of Orwell's famous maxim: 'All men are equal, but some are more equal than others'; yet the statement that everyone is free, but some are freer than others is not in the least humorous, indeed it is entirely understandable. Thus while we can understand Hegel's assertion that despotism is a type of regime in which only one man is free and everyone else is a slave, it would be senseless to say that there was a society in which just one person was equal. This explains why freedom can be considered a personal good, unlike equality, which can only be a social good. (查看原文)
[Equal liberty] is ambiguous, because having equal freedom to everyone else could just mean having all the same free doms as everyone else, or having the same liberties with the same possibility of enjoying them as everyone else. It is one thing to possess the same freedoms as everyone else in an abstract sense, and quite another to enjoy each freedom to the same degree as everyone else. (查看原文)
It is argued that the discovery of difference, the essential theme of feminist movements, has subverted the left/right distinction. Galeotti rightly points out that this is not the case: difference is compatible with right-wing ideology, as would be expected, but is equally compatible with left-wing ideology, given that egalitarianism - that is, the levelling out of all differences - is only the left's ultimate design, more ideal than real. (查看原文)
The greatest egalitarian revolution of our times has achieved equal rights for women in the more advanced societies in many fields, starting with politics, then the family, and finally the work-place, but the confusion has been such that it has been carried out by movements which emphasized in an extremely polemical manner the different identity of women.
The category of difference cannot stand on its own in relation to the question of justice, for the simple reason that not only are women different from men, but all men and women are different from one another. Difference only becomes important when it is the basis for unjust discrimination. However, the injustice of discrimination depends not on the difference, but on the recognition of the lack of good reasons for the unequal treatment... (查看原文)
It should be pointed out, however, that even with utopian theories, you have to be very cautious before applying the principle 'equality for all in everything'. Baheuf's disciple Filippo Buonarotti wrote Congiura degli eguali, one of the works which most exalts equality, calling it the 'sacred equality'. However, equality is only specifically applied to power and wealth. Equality of power is understood to be submission to the laws which are decided by all (here the influence of Rousseau is obvious); and by equality of wealth, he means that everyone should have enough and no one too much (another of Rousseau's principles). As for the answer to the question 'Equality between whom?', 'everyone' does not even include women. (查看原文)
The feminist movement is an egalitarian movement, and, leaving aside the veracity of its position, its strength derives from the fact that it has consistently argued that the inequalities between men and women, although not without natural origins, are the product of customs, laws and coercion by the stronger, and are therefore socially modifiable. (查看原文)
The degree of discrimination is based on the degree of importance attributed to certain forms of diversity, which some consider grounds for different treatment and others do not. (查看原文)
The right of women to vote was not recognized when there were thought to be differences between men and women that justified a different treatment in the attribution of political rights: such differences as a more emotional nature, the lack of a specific desire to take part in political life, dependence on men, etc. (查看原文)
