Equality and Partiality

by Nagel, Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780195098396
• ISBN10: 0195098390
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-05-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Derived from Thomas Nagel's Locke Lectures, Equality and Partiality proposes a nonutopian account of political legitimacy, based on the need to accommodate both personal and impersonal motives in any credible moral theory, and therefore in any political theory with a moral foundation. Within each individual, Nagel believes, there is a division between two standpoints, the personal and the impersonal. Without the impersonal standpoint, there would be no morality, only the clash, compromise, and occasional convergence of individual perspectives. It is because a human being does not occupy only his own point of view that each of us is susceptible to the claims of others through private and public morality. Political systems, to be legitimate, must achieve an integration of these two standpoints within the individual. These ideas are applied to specific problems such as social and economic inequality, toleration, international justice, and the public support of culture. Nagel points to the problem of balancing equality and partiality as the most important issue with which political theorists are now faced.

Author Biography

Thomas Nagel is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
Two Standpoints	p. 10
The Problem of Utopianism	p. 21
Legitimacy and Unanimity	p. 33
Kant's Test	p. 41
The Moral Division of Labor	p. 53
Egalitarianism	p. 63
Problems of Convergence	p. 75
Problems of Structure	p. 85
Equality and Motivation	p. 96
Options	p. 120
Inequality	p. 130
Rights	p. 139
Toleration	p. 154
Limits: The World	p. 169
Bibliography	p. 181
Index	p. 185
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