The Ideal of Equality in Political Philosophy

Roland Pierik
[email protected]

1 Introduction
From all the disciplines in the Humanities, political philosophy seems to be the natural home base for ideals.
History provides us with several appealing examples: The French revolution took place in name of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity, while Marxists were united under the slogan From each according to his ability, to
each according to his needs.1 Of course, such ideals are never completely realizable. Nevertheless they are
essential notions in political philosophy because they enable to extend “what are ordinarily thought of as the
limits of practical political possibility.”2 As such, ideals provoke our imagination and function as guiding
ideas in the transition from the status quo towards an ideal state of the world. Indeed, especially within
political philosophy, ideals are helpful tools because they “transcend concrete formulation and
implementation by way of principles and rules, they are open to continuous reformulation in the light of new
circumstances.”3
This chapter discusses the ideal of equality in political philosophy. Equality can be discussed at different
levels of abstraction, following the distinction between ‘concept’ and ‘conception.’4 At a high level of
abstraction we refer to equality as a concept; at a lower level of abstraction, we refer to the conception of
equality as a particular interpretation of that concept. As Dworkin explains: “At the first level agreement
collects around discrete ideas that are uncontroversially employed in all interpretations; at the second the
controversy latent in this abstraction is identified and taken up.”5 Concepts are phrased in such a high level
of abstraction that possible disagreements about their interpretation and implementation are concealed. Only
when they are made more concrete, that is, translated into conceptions, these disagreements come to the fore.
Argued the other way around, two conceptions of justice that look different at first sight, might share one
underlying concept. This is the line of thought that I shall follow in this paper, bridging two strands of
thought in contemporary political philosophy: liberal egalitarianism and multiculturalism. Liberal
egalitarianism focuses on welfare-state redistribution whereas multiculturalists focus on accommodation of

1
Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” in Marx/Engels Selected Works in One Volume, ed. Karl Marx and
Fredrich Engels (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1875), p. 321.
2
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 6.
3
Wibren van der Burg, “The Importance of Ideals,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 31 (1997), p. 29.
4
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duckworth, 1977), pp. 134-136; John Rawls, Political Liberalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 14, n. 15; Wibren van der Burg, Het democratisch perspectief. Een
verkenning van de normatieve grondslagen der democratie (Arnhem: Gouda Quint, 1991), p. 125.
5
Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1986), p. 71.

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social and cultural diversity. Although both strands of thought are dominant in contemporary political
philosophy, there has been little cross-boundary public debate. They are generally seen as distinct paradigms,
with different (and possibly contradicting) assumptions and methods – aptly summarized by Nancy Fraser as
the dilemma between redistribution and recognition.6 Although one of the classics in multiculturalism,
Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship, is defended as A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, liberals have not
been too enthusiastic to include multiculturalists in their midst.7 Brian Barry, for example, claims that: “I
have found that there is something approaching a consensus among those who do not write about it that the
literature of multiculturalism is not worth wasting powder and shot on.”8
Instead, I shall argue that these two approaches have more in common than the liberal-egalitarian critics
of multiculturalism, the ‘doctrinaire liberals’ like Barry, are willing to admit.9 Moreover, I shall argue that an
ideal-oriented approach enables us to find this shared basis. The concept of equality shall be interpreted as an
ideal that can bridge the divide between adversaries in this political-philosophical debate.10 Both approaches
share the same concept of equality as the underlying ideal and they can be seen as consistent, equivalent, and
non-conflicting conceptions thereof.

2 The liberal concept of equality: equal respect and concern

We can find a first formulation of the concept of equality in Ronald Dworkin’s work, namely his abstract
egalitarian claim:

I presume that we all accept the following postulates of political morality. Government must treat those
whom it governs with concern, that is, as human beings who are capable of suffering and frustration, and
with respect, that is, as human beings who are capable of forming and acting on intelligent conceptions of
how their lives should be lived. Government must not only treat people with concern and respect, but with
equal concern and respect.11

This claim sums up three important elements of Dworkin’s approach. Firstly moral individualism. In our
evaluation of government and its institutions we should only focus on the interests of the members of the

6
Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age,” New Left Review
212 (1995).
7
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995).
8
Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2001), p. 6.
9
Cf. the title of David Miller’s review of Barry’s book: Doctrinaire Liberalism versus Multicultural Democracy David
Miller, “Doctrinaire Liberalism versus Multicultural Democracy,” review of Brian Barry’s “Culture and Equality”,
Ethnicities 2, no. 2 (2002).
10
(Van der Burg and Taekema: ***)
11
Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, pp. 272-273.

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community.12 Only persons are seen as ‘ends in themselves’ unlike, e.g. tradition, the family, tribe or ethnic,
cultural or religious communities. Secondly, impartiality. From a moral point of view, there are no privileged
persons: everyone’s life has the same value.13 Therefore, each individual’s interests are equally important in
our evaluation of institutions. Finally, Dworkin focuses on the role of government: the abstract egalitarian
claim starts from the standpoint of politics. Government has an important role in providing the basic
conditions, necessary for the well-being of its citizens: “equality as a political virtue demands … not only an
attitude, but concrete institutions.”14

3 A first conception of equality: equality of resources

From 1981 onwards, Ronald Dworkin published four articles under the name “What is equality?” which
have become classics in the literature on distributive justice. They are reprinted as the first four chapters in
Sovereign Virtue.15 Dworkin provides a defense of the welfare state and his work has generated a rich
literature on economic justice.16 Besides the abstract concept of equality – the abstract egalitarian claim – his
work on redistributive justice also gives a conception thereof, namely equality of resources.
Dworkin develops his theory of distributive justice from a counterfactual example, an imaginary story in
which a group of people is shipwrecked on a desert island with abundant resources. Dworkin seeks to
demonstrate the role and effects of the abstract egalitarian claim in a ‘state of nature’, a situation in which
immigrants have to make decisions about the design of their societal institutions. This detour via ideal theory
is a common element in political philosophy.17 The idea is that one has to abstract from concrete situations in
society to be able to formulate principles of justice. One starts by describing a hypothetical situation in which
contingent and unjust institutional heritages of our actual world do not exist (e.g. accumulation of wealth in
specific families, history of slavery, the feudal system). Moreover, other interfering issues of injustice are
removed to focus only on the issue at hand. Such abstractions “are justified only because they enable us to
focus on certain main questions free from distracting details.”18 Moreover, ideal theory can help us to
formulate the line of action we should undertake, given the ideals we are committed to. Any observation of a
gap between our ideals and political practice should not be seen as a critique of our ideals to be “unduly

12
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2000), p. 5.
13
James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th ed. (New York [etc.]: McGraw-Hill, 2003), p. 13.
14
Ronald Dworkin, “Do Liberty and Equality conflict?,” in Living as Equals, ed. Paul Barker (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996), p. 44.
15
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue.
16
It is therefore important to distinguish Dworkin’s work and reputation in jurisprudence from his work and reputation
in political philosophy – especially in the field of distributive justice. Here Dworkin inspired G.A. Cohen, John Roemer,
Eric Rakowski, Richard Arneson, Derek Parfit and Philippe van Parijs, to name a few.
17
Of course, Thomas More’s Utopia and John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance are the most notorious examples of the use of
ideal theory in political philosophy.
18
Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 12.

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demanding in practice;” instead it be seen as “a critique of our practice as insufficiently attentive to our
principles.”19
Once the ‘principles of justice’ have been formulated in this ideal situation, they are used as criteria in our
evaluation of justice in the real world. Ideal theory should “provide some guidance in thinking about
nonideal theory, and so about difficult cases how to deal with existing injustices. It should also help to clarify
the goal of reform and to identify which wrongs are more grievous and hence more urgent to correct.”20 The
inherent hypothetical character of ideal theory is not by default a disqualifier. Quentin Skinner argues that
ideal theory can show us what line of action we should undertake, given the ideals we are committed to.21
Dworkin assumes that the shipwrecked people on the utopian island agree that “no one is antecedently
entitled to any of these resources, but that they shall instead be divided equally among them.”22 Their
deliberation proceeds in two steps. The first contains an auction in which the resources, available on the
island (ground, cattle etc.) are divided equally amongst the shipwrecked.23 In the second stage, institutions
are developed to preserve this equal distribution of resources in a dynamic economy with labor, investment
and trade.24 Dworkin asserts that the deliberations of the immigrants will result in a rule of fair distribution
that he summarizes as follows:

[W]e must … recognize that the requirements of equality pull in opposite directions. On the one hand we
must … allow the distribution of resources at any particular moment to be (as we might say) ambition-
sensitive. It must, that is, reflect the cost or benefit to others of the choices people make so that, for
example, those who choose to invest rather than consume, or to consume less expensively rather than more,
or to work in more rather than less profitable ways, must be permitted to retain the gains that flow from
these decisions in an equal auction followed by free trade. But on the other hand, we must not allow the
distribution of resources at any moment to be endowment-sensitive, that is, to be affected by differences in
ability of the sort that produce income differences in a laissez-faire economy among people with the same
ambitions.25

This formulation exemplifies again Dworkin’s statocentric approach. Since a distribution of resources in a
laissez-faire society is not choice-sensitive and endowment-insensitive by default, the implicit argument here
is that the ideal of equality presupposes a clear role for government. The government should aim at a choice-
sensitive distribution of resources, for example by supporting personal autonomy, fighting monopolies, and
formulating anti-trust laws26. Moreover it should strive for the endowment-insensitivity of the distribution of

19
Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 79.
20
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001),
p. 13.
21
Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, pp. 78-79.
22
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, pp. 66-67.
23
Ibid., pp. 5-71.
24
Ibid., pp. 66-67.
25
Ibid., p. 89.
26
Ibid., pp. 120-183.

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resources. Dworkin focuses on two unchosen endowments in particular: handicaps and lack of talents. His
redistributive approach focuses on the limited individual earning capacities resulting from these
endowments. To this effect Dworkin proposes a “periodic redistribution of resources through some form of
income tax.”27
Moreover, this formulation of the conception of equality is entirely phrased in terms of distribution of
resources; it is essentially a theory of distributive or economic equality.28 Dworkin simply takes for granted
that justice requires the equal distribution of something.29 “Our final aim is that an equal share of resources
[is] devoted to the lives of each person.”30 Dworkin’s preoccupation with distributive justice can be
understood in the light of the circumstance that the paper is written in the mid-1970s, as a defense of welfare
state arrangements against attacks inspired by libertarians.31 As a result, Dworkin’s theory is (generally
interpreted as) primarily a defense of distributive justice. However, as I shall argue, distributive justice is
only one interpretation of, and anchored in the more general ideal of equality.

4 A reformulation of the liberal concept of equality

I have described Dworkin’s work in terms of a concept of equality – claiming that government should treat
its citizens with equal respect and concern and a conception thereof – his assertion that government should
strive for a distribution of resources in society is both choice-sensitive and endowment-insensitive. Although
the maxim of equal respect and concern is clear in its intention, it does not give much direction.32 In this
section I will reformulate the concept of equality by including elements of its conception as presented in
section 3, without also including its distributive focus. The concept of equality can be formulated as follows:

Inequalities in the advantages people enjoy due to choices about the good life are seen as part of the
personal autonomy and responsibility and therefore morally legitimate. Inequalities in the advantages
people enjoy that derive from unchosen features of their endowments are seen as morally arbitrary and
therefore generate a responsibility for government to remedy this inequality.

The assertion that government should distinguish in its policies between choice-sensitivity and endowment-
insensitivity is implicit in the abstract egalitarian claim, given the emphasis of respect and concern. The idea
that government should treat citizens with equal respect demands that choice involves personal
responsibility. Government should respect the autonomy of individuals and therefore not interfere with
personal preferences or ambitions by force or manipulation. As a result, persons themselves are responsible
for (the formation of) their aims, ambitions, and decisions and, therefore, the consequences thereof.

27
Ibid., pp. 90-91, see also 92-109.
28
Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, p. 135.
29
Samuel Scheffler, “What is Egalitarianism?” (paper presented at the Center for Politics, Law, and Society Seminar
Series, University College London, London, 23 January 2002), p. 11.
30
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, pp. 84-85.
31
E.g. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
32
Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, p. 135.

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Therefore equal respect implies that government should make a big effort to ensure that citizens bear the true
costs and benefits of their choices and decisions.
The idea that government should treat citizens with equal concern demands that endowments induce
collective responsibility. In the case of endowments there is no moment in which a person, through choosing,
can make a difference, instead, endowments simply involve brute bad luck. The concept of equality demands
that government has a duty to act to compensate adverse consequences of unchosen endowments – e.g.
limited individual earning capacities resulting from handicaps and lack of talent. Of course, nor every
inequality can be rectified, or only at too high a cost. The paradigmatic example is the forced transfer of
body parts, e.g. when a sighted person has to donate one eye to a blind person. In this case the remedy is seen
as worse than the disease because it wrongfully interferes with the bodily integrity of the sighted person.
In this way, the abstract egalitarian claim implies a division of responsibility between individuals and
government. It is a formulation of equality as an ideal: it is a value that is never completely realizable,
because it is a “compromise of two conflicting requirements of equality, in the face of both practical and
conceptual uncertainty how to satisfy these requirements.”33 Moreover, this ideal of equality plays a role in
justifying decisions and opinions, since it is the background against which equality of resources is
defended.34
Moreover, this formulation of the ideal of equality is a concept in the concept/conception distinction as
described in the introduction, because it is abstract enough to generate general support.35 “The best, perhaps
the only, argument for the egalitarian principle lies in the implausibility of denying any of the components
that make it up….”36 Indeed, only racists might be capable of doing so.37

5 Is socioeconomic distribution the only valid conception of equality?

The importance of the conceptual contribution by liberal-egalitarians on distributive justice is undisputed.
But they have been criticized for limiting the ideal of equal respect and concern, to this narrow scope of
distributive justice. Doing so, they have ignored many issues, central in current political debates, such as
social and cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Iris Marion Young claims that, although “distributive
issues are crucial to a satisfactory conception of justice, … it is a mistake to reduce social justice to

33
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 91.
34
(Van der Burg and Taekema: ***)
35
Will Kymlicka uses the abstract egalitarian claim as the founding idea of his textbook on contemporary political
philosophy. Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy. An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), pp. 1-9, esp. 3-4. It should be seen as an egalitarian plateau against which differential theories can be
compared. Libertarians, for example, could argue that the interests of the members of society are best guaranteed by an
extensive interpretation of equal self-ownership rights.
36
Ronald Dworkin, “In Defense of Equality,” Social Philosophy and Policy 1, no. 1 (1983), p. 32.
37
But, again, racists presuppose equality amongst ‘whites’ and ‘blacks,’ so even racists cannot escape the egalitarian
logic.

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redistribution.”38 Elisabeth Anderson claims that Dworkin and other liberal-egalitarians neglect “the much
broader agendas of actual egalitarian political movements” discussing, for example, racial and gender
inequality, etc. Therefore she claims that they have a flawed understanding of equality and precisely miss
“the point of equality.”39 Kymlicka argues that most countries today are culturally diverse and that this
diversity gives rise to a series of important and potentially divisive questions. ”Finding morally defensible
and politically viable answers to these issue is the greatest challenge facing democracies today.”40 However,
this challenge is not answered by contemporary liberal egalitarians: because they “have operated with an
idealized model of the polis in which fellow citizens share a common descent, language, and culture.”
Moreover, they seem to assume that “the culturally homogeneous city-states of Ancient Greece provided the
essential or standard model of a political community.”41 Indeed, the issue of distributive justice has
dominated current liberal egalitarianism whereas the issue of cultural diversity has long been ignored. I agree
with Samuel Scheffler’s conclusion that:

[U]nless the relations between distributive norms and broader ideals of equality are kept firmly in view, the
putatively artificial device of treating distributive equality as an independent topic can all too easily take on
a life of its own, and the inquiry can lose touch with what is ultimately at stake when questions of
distribution are debated. The trajectory of the luck-egalitarian literature over the years seems to me to
provide a clear illustration of this danger.42

Socioeconomic redistribution has dominated liberal egalitarianism while other conceptions of equality have
been ignored. Multiculturalism, for example, has also been an important strand in political philosophy, but
excluded from the egalitarian circle. One can doubt whether this exclusive attitude by luck egalitarians is
justified. Dworkin explicitly acknowledges that distributive equality “is only one aspect of the more general
problem of equality, because it sets aside a variety of issues that might be called, by way of contrast, issues
about political equality.”43 Moreover he argues that:

Distributional equality, as I describe it, is not concerned with the distribution of political power, for
example, or with individual rights other than rights to some amount or share of resources. It is obvious, I
think, that these questions I throw together under the label of political equality are not so independent from
issues of distributional equality as the distinction might suggest … But it nevertheless seems likely that a
full theory of equality, embracing a range of issues including political and distributional equality, is best
approached by accepting initial, even though somewhat arbitrary, distinctions among these issues.44

38
Iris Marion Young, “A Multicultural Continuum: A Critique of Will Kymlicka’s Ethnic-Nation Dichotomy,”
Constellations 4, no. 4 (1997), p. 16.
39
Elisabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” Ethics 109 (1999), p. 288.
40
Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, p. 1.
41
Ibid., p. 2.
42
Scheffler, “What is Egalitarianism?” pp. 25-26.
43
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 12.
44
Ibid., pp. 12, emphasis added.

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The application of the abstract egalitarian claim in the imaginary story of the shipwrecked is a helpful ideal-
theoretical tool to illustrate the intuitive strength of the choice-endowment distinction. In this hypothetical
society, Dworkin tailors his cases and argues from trivial examples. This enables him to demonstrate the
logic of the choice-endowment distinction. In his examples the endowment-element is so evident that the
choice-element is locked out and vise versa. So, equality of resources is not a set of first principles. Instead,
it is one conception of equality, an important one, that is also used as an example to spell out of the more
general concept of equality.45
Brian Barry, on the other hand, is convinced that equality and multiculturalism have nothing in common.
He argues that multiculturalism takes away the attention from the really important issue, namely socio-
economic inequalities.46 He warns us that the “whole thrust” of multiculturalism is “that it seeks to withdraw
from individual members of minority groups the protections that are normally offered by liberal states.”47
And indeed, some multicultural claims might be focused on cultures themselves and therefore inconsistent
with moral individualism.48 But, as I will argue in the next section, there is no intrinsic incompatibility
between multiculturalism and liberal egalitarianism.

6 Multiculturalism as a second conception of equality

Dworkin has simplified the examples in the ‘fable of the shipwrecked’ to clarify the choice-circumstance
distinction. However, outside ideal theory, and especially in the context of multicultural societies, the choice-
endowment distinction, so clear as an analytical device, gets blurred. I will discuss the notions of choice and
endowment concepts in turn.

6.1 Reconsidering Endowments

Iris Marion Young argues that liberal-egalitarians have focused too much on the question what should be
distributed equally – resources, welfare, opportunities for welfare, access to advantage, etc.49 The result is
that liberals neglected the flipside of the egalitarian coin, namely, the question of equality of whom. If we
claim that people should be treated with equal respect and concern, which categories or groups of people are
we discussing? Precisely this question, ignored by liberal egalitarians, is central to many actual political
debates in multiculturalism. These debates start by comparing actual social and cultural groups: women and
men, whites and people of color, members of minority and majority religious groups, etc. In these
discussions, the language of redistribution of resources is not very helpful. Young seeks to provide an

45
Scheffler, “What is Egalitarianism?” p. 25.
46
Barry, Culture and Equality, pp. 63-64.
47
Ibid., p. 326.
48
Examples are Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, ed.
Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal, “Liberalism and
the Right to Culture,” Social Research 61, no. 3 (1994).
49
Iris Marion Young, “Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgments of Injustice,” The Journal of Political
Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2001).

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alternative approach and therefore she focuses on the question “whether and how such group-conscious
practices of assessing inequality are justified.”50
In her evaluation of liberal-egalitarians, Young focuses on the individualistic character of their approach.
On the one hand she endorses that “the ultimate purpose of making assessments of inequality is to promote
the well-being of individuals considered as irreducible moral equals.”51 That is, she shares the liberal
egalitarian moral individualism (see sect. 2). Moreover, she endorses the intuitions towards endowments and
choices, as conceptualized in the ideal of equality, and the importance of their distinction in a normative
framework.52
However, she criticizes the liberal-egalitarian methodological individualism, that is, the claim that only
individual choices and endowments can cause morally relevant inequalities. Indeed, Dworkin’s
conceptualization of endowment, is very individualistic, only concentrating on physical and mental
characteristics of the person: physical and mental powers, genetic predisposition to particular diseases, and
personal resources of health, strength, and talent.53 For this reason, we could name them natural
endowments. Young argues that many other instances of injustice cannot be understood if one only focuses
on individual attributes of personal inability.

Instead, the causes of many inequalities of resources or opportunities among individuals lie in social
institutions, their rules and relations, and the decisions others make within them that affect the lives of the
individuals compared.54

Evaluating inequality in terms of social groups enables us to claim that some situations are unjust, although
they cannot be recognized as unjust in the framework of distributive justice. Also Kymlicka argues that since
no one chooses to be born in a minority culture, the choice-endowment logic demands that they should
somehow be seen as an endowment. Therefore the concept of endowments should not only include natural
endowments but also elements of one’s social environment.55
Group-based evaluations are helpful because they reveal inegalitarian effects of institutional relations and
processes in society.56 To acknowledge these (inegalitarian) effects of institutions, we have to understand
social mechanisms and social structures. Social mechanisms are well-established and recurring patterns of

50
Ibid., p. 1.
51
Ibid., p. 6.
52
Ibid., pp. 6-8.
53
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, pp. 81, 287 and 322.
54
Young, “Equality of Whom?,” p. 8.
55
Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 186-188. In this book
Kymlicka attempts to defend attention for cultural difference by adjusting Dworkin’s model of the shipwrecked
immigrants in such a way that not one but two – culturally different – groups of shipwrecked arrive at the island
simultaneously. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, pp. 192-194.
56
Young, “Equality of Whom?,” p. 2.

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behavior in society.57 The working of social mechanisms cannot be reduced to discernable individuals and
their considerations and preferences. Instead, it must be understood in terms of interpersonal processes,
conventions, social norms, and herding. Over time, these social mechanisms have resulted in social
structures. A social structure can be described as the way in which social life is organized into predictable
relationships and patterns of social interaction – including social positions and the related status and role
differentiation between them. Social structures are the inevitable result of living together and social
cooperation. Results of social structures are social institutions such as the educational system, the welfare
state, legal, economic and political institutions, and the geographical layout of cities. The complex of social
structures in society can be brought together under the name of basic structure of society.
The options and possibilities, available to individuals are not only determined by their natural
endowments – as discussed by liberal-egalitarians – but also by the way society is organized. John Rawls
argues that the basic structure of society:

… [C]ontains various social positions and … men born into different positions have different expectations
of life determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances. In this
way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over others. These are especially deep
inequalities. Not only are they pervasive, but they affect men’s initial chances in life.”58

Rawls mainly focuses on socio-economic inequalities between classes, whereas multiculturalists broaden the
analysis to group-differentiations of gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, and other “ascribed characteristics
that historically served as markers of inferiority and exclusion. … Categories such as these name groups
[that] are positioned by social structures that constrain and enable lives in a way that is largely beyond their
individual control.”59 These inequalities are caused by social mechanisms and social structures and are
structural inequalities because:

They describes a set of relationships among assumptions and stereotypes, institutional policies, individual
actions following rules or choosing in self-interest, and collective consequences of these things, which
constrain the options of some at the same time as they expand the options of others.60

The resulting inequalities are not reducible to individual characteristics, since they typically affect
individuals because they are members of a specific group. They “are positioned by social structures that
constrain and enable individual lives beyond their individual control.”61 Understanding behavior in terms of
social mechanisms reveals that “people themselves treat others as group members, and that the product of
many such actions sometimes results in structural inequalities.”62 Social structures make that individuals,

57
Although they do not need to have a law-like causal necessity.
58
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 7.
59
Young, “Equality of Whom?,” pp. 4, 6.
60
Ibid., p. 11.
61
Ibid., p. 6.
62
Ibid., p. 17.

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“despite any good intentions they might have, act and react in a way that has the aggregate effect of
structural inequality.”63
So, besides inequalities caused by natural endowments, such as handicaps and lack of talent, we can
identify inequality caused by what we could call societal endowments.64 They are named societal
endowments because someone’s gender, color of skin, etc., are unchosen elements of one’s being that affect
one’s options and chances. A societal endowment does not in itself determine someone’s life inescapably, in
the way natural endowments do – e.g. the inability to see. Societal endowments affect the situation of
persons via “social structures that involuntarily position people, constraining some more than others and
privileging some more than others.”65
This implies that it is very well possible for multiculturalists to start from the ideal of equality and
embrace the idea that endowments generate morally relevant inequalities. But they do not use the detour of
ideal theory; instead they focus on real-life issues of injustice, and broaden the concept of morally relevant
endowments, by also acknowledging societal endowments. However, societal endowments are less
straightforward to recognize. Dworkin restricts himself to useful and clear-cut examples of endowments, and
his ideal-theoretical approach enables him to argue in a clear deductive cause-effect logic: endowments
cause inequality. Once we have discovered the morally relevant endowments, we can identify the correlating
categories of persons between whom government should redistribute resources. However, societal
endowments cannot be explained in such straightforward cause-effect logic. Although we can observe clear
differential positions of social groups in society – for example between men and women or people of color
and whites – it is less obvious to recognize the cause of that inequality, and whether this cause is a choice or
an endowment. This is not a distinction of strong and weak theories, but, instead, a result of differences
between ideal theory – deliberately excluding ambiguous cases – and non-ideal theories for the real world.
As mentioned above, Dworkin tailored his cases to exemplify the logic of the ideal of equality.
In itself, there is nothing wrong with (starting with) straightforward examples: usually they are the best
illustrations of a theoretical position. The multicultural analysis, however, goes one step further, by using the
liberal egalitarian ideal-theoretical framework to evaluate less straightforward cases. In these cases we need
an inductive method and to argue in an inverse logic: from evident result, namely inequalities to possible
causes, namely societal endowments. To be sure that these inequalities are morally relevant, we have to
formulate some requirements to confirm that they are really caused by unchosen societal endowments.66
Firstly, it should be observable that a specific category of individuals is unequal to others on certain
important measures of well-being. The groups evaluated should be “generally recognized social positions” in
the basic structure of society. Second, we need to give a plausible explanation for the observed inequality in

63
Ibid., p. 9.
64
The terms ‘natural endowments’ and ‘societal endowments’ are developed in Roland Pierik and Ingrid Robeyns,
“Dworkin on Sen: on the Role of Social Mechanisms in Egalitarian Theory,” (2001).
65
Young, “Equality of Whom?,” p. 7.
66
Ibid., pp. 15-16.

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terms of societal endowments: “about how the relations, rules, expectations, and cumulative consequences of
collective action specifically condition the lives of that group.” Finally, we need a plausible explanation how
the social mechanisms and the social structures account for observed inequalities. “We must explain how
institutional rules and policies, individual actions and interactions, and the cumulative collective and often
unintended material effects of these relations reinforce one another in ways that restrict the opportunities of
some to achieve well-being in the respect measured, while it does not so restrict that of the others to whom
they are compared, or even enlarge their opportunities. This story will be aided, moreover, by evidence that
the basic configuration of the patterns shows little change over decades.”67
Let me conclude. In section 4 I formulated the endowment part of the ideal of equality as follows:
Inequalities in the advantages people enjoy that derive from unchosen features of their endowments are seen
as morally arbitrary and therefore generate a responsibility for government to remedy this inequality.
Besides morally relevant inequalities generated by natural endowments as discussed by liberal egalitarians,
in multicultural societies we can also encounter morally relevant inequalities generated by societal
endowments. The latter are as much unchosen features of a person’s circumstances and are in line with the
concept of equality as presented in section 3.

6.2 Reconsidering choices

In section 4 we saw that the notion of equal respect is strongly connected to choice. It was argued that
government should respect personal autonomy and not interfere with the relations between preferences, ideas
about the good life, the successive choices made, and the effects of these choices. Although choice is an
important element in Dworkin’s theory, the concept itself is hardly elaborated. It can be described in three
features.68 First, choosing requires a choice set: a number of options (at least two) from which to can choose.
Secondly, choosing depends on preferences: “comparative evaluative attitudes that permit the agent to rank
the various elements in the choice-set in terms of their relative desirability.” Thirdly, choosing consists in a
selection process: ranking the options and picking out the most preferred option.69
In ideal theory, individual choice is – by default – unproblematic. However, the capacity to make choices
in a rational and informed way is not innate, instead, it must be developed in the course of one’s upbringing
and education. This raises questions of social and cultural preconditions of choice, that are dealt with in Will
Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship. His aim is “to show that the liberal value of freedom of choice has
certain cultural preconditions, and hence that issues of cultural membership must be incorporated into liberal

67
Ibid., p. 16.
68
Meir Dan-Cohen, “Conceptions of Choice and Conceptions of Autonomy,” Ethics 102 (1992), p. 222; John Rawls, A
Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 124.
69
Dan-Cohen also describes a fourth feature: “Finally, choosing involves opportunity costs, roughly, the value to the
agent of the opportunities forgone in favor of the selected option.” Dan-Cohen, “Conceptions of Choice,” p. 221. This
element is less important for our discussion because it is not an element of the process of choosing, but a result of that
process.

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principles.”70 The theoretical background against which Kymlicka develops his Liberal Theory of Minority
Rights is liberal egalitarianism, as defended by Dworkin and Rawls.71 Moreover he endorses the choice-
endowment distinction as described by Dworkin and formulated here as the ideal of equality.72
To what extent are choice and culture related? “Put simply, freedom involves making choices amongst
various options, and our societal culture not only provides these options, but also makes them meaningful to
us.”73 Individuals make choices on the basis of their preferences: beliefs about the value of several options.
But where do these beliefs come from? The freedom of choice is not “free-floating in the void.”74

To have a belief about the value of a practice is, in the first instance, a matter of understanding the meaning
attached to it by our culture. … The availability of meaningful options depends on access to a societal
culture, and on understanding the history and language of that culture – its ‘shared vocabulary of tradition
and convention.75

So both individual preferences and the selection process are influenced by upbringing and socialization in a
societal culture, defined by Kymlicka as: “A culture which provides its members with meaningful ways of
life across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational, and
economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres. These cultures tend to be territorially-
concentrated, and based on a shared language.”76 This societal culture serves as the context of individual
choice, and therefore provides the institutional background for individual freedom of choice.
Liberal-egalitarians do not disagree here.77 Dworkin, for example, argues that culture “provides the
spectacles through which we identify experiences as valuable”78 and therefore: “We inherited a cultural
structure, and we have some duty, out of simple justice, to leave that structure at least as rich as we found
it.”79 Kymlicka and Dworkin disagree, however, about the question whether this societal culture is equally
available. Dworkin assumes the borders of the societal culture overlap with the borders of nation states. He
tends to think of culture as a kind of societal “public good” – important but equally available to all members
of society, and therefore unproblematic from an egalitarian point of view. Dworkin never makes this
assumption explicitly, but it seems implicit throughout his work, and this could explain why he never

70
Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, p. 76.
71
Ibid., p. Ch. 5.
72
Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, pp. 38, 186; Multicultural Citizenship, pp. Ch.5, esp. pp. 80-82;
Contemporary Political Philosophy, p. ch.4.
73
Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, p. 83.
74
Ibid., p. 76.
75
Ibid., pp. 76 & 83, referring to Dworkin.
76
Ibid., p. 76.
77
Dworkin discusses this subject in Ronald Dworkin, “Liberal Community,” California Law Review 77, no. 3 (1989);
“Can a Liberal State Support Art?,” in A Matter of Principle (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1985).
78
Dworkin, “Can a Liberal State Support Art?,” p. 228.
79
Ibid., pp. 232-233.

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discusses the potential for inequality stemming from cultural differences. It is reflected in several passing
references he makes to citizens sharing a common language and culture, having “a shared vocabulary of
tradition and convention.”80 He also suggests that the United States contains a single “cultural structure”
based on and related to a “shared language.”81 Kymlicka emphasizes the multicultural character of
contemporary liberal democratic societies. He distinguishes two main sources of cultural diversity. The first
is multi-nationality, which refers to the coexistence of more than one nation within a state, where ‘nation’
means a historical community more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory or homeland,
sharing a distinct language and culture.82 Examples of multi-national states are Belgium (inhabited by
Walloons, Flemish and a small German nation) and, of course, Canada (inhabited by an Anglophone and a
Francophone nation and Aboriginal groups). The second form of cultural diversity is poly-ethnicity, which
refers to a diversity in society as a result of immigration of individuals and families from other states (and
cultures) and who are allowed “to maintain some of their ethnic particularity.”83 Examples of immigration
countries are Canada, the United States and Australia. Described this way, states can be both multi-national
and poly-ethnic – as for example Canada is.
Culture as a context of choice is not a matter-of-course for national minorities and ethnic minorities.
Kymlicka asserts governments should support national minorities which seek to preserve their distinct
societal culture and support ethnic groups that seek to integrate into the dominant societal culture of their
new state, while maintaining their ethnic distinctiveness. Kymlicka discusses three sorts of rights to support
the culture as a context of choice for these minority groups.84 Kymlicka’s work is in line with the choice-
element of the ideal of equality:

Inequalities in the advantages people enjoy due to choices about the good life are seen as part of the
personal autonomy and responsibility and therefore morally legitimate.

Kymlicka emphasizes the fact of cultural diversity in contemporary societies as potential cause of inequality
that is ignored by Dworkin and other liberal egalitarians. Multi-nationality and poly-ethnicity undermines the
liberal assumption that all members of society share one single context of choice. Since choices are made in
a cultural environment, and since these contexts of choice differ in multicultural societies, the choice-
endowment distinction, so clear as an analytical device, is complicated outside the context of ideal theory in
real multicultural societies. Therefore Kymlicka uses Dworkin’s emphasis on choice to defend group-
specific rights for minority groups.

80
Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 231.
81
Ibid., pp. 231-233; Dworkin, “Liberal Community,” p. 488.
82
Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, p. 11.
83
Ibid., p. 14.
84
Ibid., pp. 27-33.

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7 The relation between the two conceptions of equality
Let me recapitulate the argument so far. I have given a concept of equality – the ideal propagating that
government should protect individual autonomy and responsibility and eliminate unchosen inequalities – and
two conceptions thereof: socioeconomic redistribution in the welfare state and the accommodation of cultural
difference in the multicultural society. The latter conception proposes some adaptations of the first. In a
multicultural context, the term ‘endowment’ should not only include natural endowments but also societal
endowments, whereas ‘choice’ presupposes a cultural context and that therefore the acknowledgement of
cultural diversity generates unchosen inequalities between members of different cultural groups.
Let me discuss one possible counterargument against my analysis. One could object that I interpret the
liberal-egalitarian conception of equality too narrowly in terms of socioeconomic redistribution. Dworkin,
for example, is not only well known for his What is Equality? articles, but is also one of the most prominent
defenders of the legality and justifiability of race and gender conscious policies of affirmative action.85 One
could argue that I overstate the dichotomy liberal-egalitarian and multiculturalism by interpreting liberal
egalitarianism too narrowly. Let me discuss this argument by evaluating Dworkin’s work. Within the context
of redistributive justice, Dworkin firmly holds on to the methodological individualism. Equality of resources
(willfully) ignores socially generated inequalities, because “it aims to provide a description of (or rather a set
of devices for aiming at) equality of resources person by person, and the considerations of each person’s
history that affect what he should have, in the name of equality, do not include his membership in any
economic or social class. … [Therefore, equality of resources] proposes that equality is in principle a matter
of individual right rather than one of group position.” He also emphasizes the strict individualist
considerations underlying the choice-endowment distinction since it is based on “judgments about particular
people’s particular tastes and ambitions, in the interests of giving them what they are, as individuals, entitled
to have, rather than as part of any premise that equality is the matter of equality between groups.”86 One
could thus argue that equality of resources is insensitive to issues of cultural diversity.
In his work, Dworkin draws a principled and hierarchical distinction between equality of resources and
affirmative action, based on his distinction between ‘policy’ and ‘principle.’ For Dworkin, a policy is a
standard that sets out a goal to be reached, which is to be evaluated (only) in terms of the common good. A
principle is a standard that is to be observed, not because enforcing it promotes the common good, but,
instead, because it is a requirement of justice or fairness.87 Policy decisions, on the other hand, might have
unfavorable effects on persons, but do not violate their rights. For example, the rights of an impassioned
swimmer are not violated if a city council, in making a policy decision between spending money on a
swimming pool or a opera house, chooses to subsidize the latter. In general, policy decisions can only be

85
See e.g., Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, p. Ch 9; A Matter of Principle, p. Ch. 14 and 15; Ronald Dworkin,
Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the Constitution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. Ch.6;
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. Ch. 11 and 12.
86
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, pp. 114-115.
87
Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, pp. 22-23.

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assessed in consequentialist terms: which policy does the best job in increasing the common good? Dworkin
claims that affirmative action programs, that is, issues of cultural diversity, are not a matter of principle but
of policy.88 The rights of whites, disadvantaged by affirmative action programs, are not infringed by that
policy; on the other hand, blacks do not have a right to compel government to adopt such policies. That
explains why Dworkin treats these issues separately: the issue of resource equality is seen as a requirement
of justice and affirmative action as a matter of policy.
Andrew Altman has argued that Dworkin does not offer enough good reasons to maintain this distinction
and claims that affirmative action should also be interpreted in terms of principles.89 I agree with Altman; as
I have argued in this chapter, socioeconomic redistribution and accommodation of cultural difference share
the same concept of equality as the underlying ideal and can be seen as consistent and equivalent conceptions
thereof. It is interesting that Dworkin now accepts – in his own ambiguous way – that the distinction can no
longer be maintained. In his reply to Altman, Dworkin writes:

I agree that government has an obligation to treat all those subject to its dominion with equal concern, and
that a government that does nothing to redress structural discrimination fails in that obligation. … It is true
… that without some direct and positive action the American governments fail in their responsibilities to
treat all citizens as equals, and that is a matter of principle and not just policy.”90

This seems to be an indirect way for Dworkin to admit that cultural difference is of normative importance
and should be included in the normative framework of liberal egalitarianism.

8 Conclusion: is an Ideal-oriented Approach Helpful in Normative Debates?

In this chapter I have used an ideal-oriented approach to discuss the contemporary debate on equality. I
followed assertion of the editors that we can understand normative debates as debates between different
interpretations of the same ideal. At first sight there is a vast difference between the redistributive and the
multicultural conception of equality. However, after distilling the more general ideal of equality, it was very
well possible to understand the connection between their theories.
Although we should not overstate its effect, I think an ideal-oriented approach is helpful in analyzing
debates in political philosophy. This chapter makes clear that an ideal-oriented approach is very helpful in
reflecting on relations between different theories. Young and Kymlicka use the concept of equality to defend
their position, however, their approach is very different from the mainstream liberal-egalitarian defenses. So
an ideal-oriented approach is a helpful conceptual tool in analyzing debates in political philosophy because
in this debate it provided a common frame of reference. I therefore assume that the editors mean conceptual

88
Dworkin, Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the Constitution, p. 155; Taking Rights Seriously, p. 22; Andrew
Altman, “Policy, Principle, and Incrementalism: Dworkin’s Jurisprudence of Race,” The Journal of Ethics 5 (2001), p.
242 and 254.
89
Altman, “Policy, Principle, and Incrementalism.”
90
Ronald Dworkin, “replies to Endicott, Kamm and Altman,” Journal of Ethics 5 (2001), p. 267.

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improvement when argue that: “In normative theory, recognition of the role of ideals is basically recognition
of room for improvement.”91
The strength of the ideal-oriented approach is its ability to clarify ongoing debates, by separating the
abstract concepts and ideals from their application in actual policy debates. In the case of liberal egalitarians,
the emphasis on the underlying ideal of equality enables us to criticize their single minded focus on socio-
economic redistribution: why would this be the only legitimate interpretation of the maxim of equal respect
and concern? In this sense, an ideal oriented approach is helpful for separating the rhetoric from the content.
In the case of multiculturalism, this emphasis on the abstract egalitarian claim as the maxim of Young’s and
Kymlicka’s claims is helpful in distinguishing their claims from more communitarian defenses of the
recognition of identity groups, based on Hegel’s work, as presented by for example Charles Taylor and Axel
Honneth.92 Moreover, it shows the relations between Young and Kymlicka on the one hand, and liberal-
egalitarians on the other on the other hand. So an ideal-oriented approach is helpful because it elucidates a
debate, clarifies the diverse positions, and reveal differences and (unlooked-for) similarities between
different positions.
The question remains, however, what the ‘ideal’-component adds to the more general idea of ‘concept.’
The distinction between concept and conception is the cornerstone of my paper, however, one could ask why
this would support the claim that ideals are important. My answer is twofold. For one thing, he notion of
‘concept’ is more appropriate in conceptual and descriptive theories, whereas the notion of ‘ideal’ fits better
in normative theories. Moreover, concepts can be formulated and defined very precisely – if so desired,
provisionally or formal. Concepts refer to agreements to formulate specific issues within a theory in a
specific way. Ideals, on the other hand, always refer to substantive ideas and transcend every attempt to
enclose it in one single formulation.93 Ideals can only be formulated within a specific context, e.g. the context
of socioeconomic redistribution or the context of cultural diversity. None of these conceptions are a complete
interpretation of the general ideal, and together they do not exhaust all possible interpretations of the ideal.
To conclude: the concept of ‘ideal’ differs substantively from the concept of ‘concept’ and my discussion in
this chapter shows the value of the former in debates in normative political philosophy.

91
Introduction to this volume 7 and 16.
92
Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition.”; Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social
Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
93
Wibren van der Burg, “The Morality of Aspiration,” in Rediscovering Fuller. Essays on Implicit Law and
Institutional Design, ed. Willem Witteveen and Wibren van der Burg (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999),
pp. 177-178.

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