Equality Notes Bernard Williams main point is that Man ought to be treated as the equal human which he in fact is In his essay he explains how man is equal and what that means necessitates in society A Equality 1 Factual claim Man is equal 2 Normative claim Man ought to be treated equally B Bernard Williams The idea of Equality 1 Forms the claim man ought to be treated as the equal human that he in fact is Based on common humanity and shared potential for self reflection 2 Distinguishes between goods which should be distributed by need and those which should be distributed by merit Need Virtually Everyone who has the need for a good such as medical care also has a desire for it Merit Not everyone who desires some good such as university education has the merit for it Which is important because in the case of merit we can discuss not only the distribution of goods but also the opportunities of obtaining them C Distribution of goods according to Need 1 Basic idea is that a system which distributes goods such as medical services before the law on the basis of actual inequalities in wealth or power is inherently irrational D Distribution of merit goods Some goods like university education are beneficial to some but not all people There are three types of goods which must be distributed according to merit 1 Necessarily Limited Those which are limited by their very nature Prestigious positions 2 Contingently Limited There are conditions to access the goods but there is no real limit on the amount of people who could theoretically gain access to them assuming they meet the necessary criteria University Education 3 Fortuitously Limited Limited in the sense that there isn t enough to go around Material objects and expensive things Note that some goods can be both contingently and Fortuitously limited meaning there are many people who are qualified to receive the good but there isn t enough of said material to go around even among the qualified Also note that Williams believes for differences in the way people are treated relevant reasons should be given We then come to the idea of equality of opportunity Which is important in political philosophy when there are goods which not all people who desire them can have them Because of their limited nature E Equality of Opportunity 1 According to Williams it requires not merely that there should be no exclusion from access on grounds other than those appropriate or rational for the good in question but that goods considered appropriate for the good should themselves be such that people from all sections of society have an equal chance of satisfying them What is a section of society We cannot include under this term sections of the populace identified just by the characteristics which figure in the grounds for allocating the good because ANY GROUNDS at all must EXCLUDE some section of society We also can not include sections identified by characteristics which are with the grounds of exclusion because there are Causal Connexions between even those characteristics and ones which initially effected equality of opportunity Williams uses the example of the Warrior tribe Could also use the example of the child of a rich family having a natural advantage over one from a poor family therefore what appears to be merit based could actually be rewards based on unequal opportunities ALTHOUGH University acceptance may at first glance appear to be based on contingently limited factors there is actually a clear causal connexion that may give certain students an unfair advantage Equality of opportunity does not work if we simply apply the same criteria to both Smith and Jones at age 11 to determine who should be given a certain good on account of his merit because one of them is likely to be given an advantage over the other because the circumstances he was born into So according to Williams any system of allocation which distributes goods unequally or disproportionately between sections of society would fall short of equality of opportunity IF the unsuccessful sections are under a disadvantage which could be removed by further reform or social action F How then can equality of Opportunity Be reached 1 According to Williams Abstraction of persons in themselves from unequal environments is a way if not of regarding them as equal at least of moving recognizably in that direction Which is equaling up those conditions that provide some with advantages and therefore a greater opportunity Williams is careful to draw a distinction between those things which are part of our inherent identify and those which are part of our curable environment He says Part of what is done to Smith and Jones and not part of Smith and Jones themselves One might object that our identity is naturally tied up in with our environment without these differences we would have a horrible homogeneous society Williams disagrees saying that we could certainly still Pick out individuals by spatial temporal criteria at least G Objections Williams raises one objection to his own ideas 1 He says that equality of opportunity may be in conflict with equality of respect because in a society which we focused on equality of opportunity we would be placing too much emphasis on achieving high ability saying Equality of respect is one which urges us to give less considerations to those structures in which people enjoy status or prestige and consider them independently of those goods Whereas equality of opportunity focuses on those things 2 He then defends himself by saying that technically There is perhaps nothing formally incompatible in the two applications of the idea of equality one might hope to have a society where a fair rational distribution of goods existed but there was no contempt or lack of human communication between persons who were more or less successful recipients of distribution He does concede though that in THE REAL WORLD there is a deep conflict between the idea of equality of respect and equality of opportunity Additional Notes on Equality Bernard Williams A descriptive claim All men are equal A normative conclusion Therefore we should treat men as equals I What should we make of the descriptive claim There are many respects skill intelligence strength virtue in which men are not equal All men that is all people are equally human But that seems too trivial of a claim to bear the weight of the argument Is the claim all men are equally men trivial It s a way of drawing attention to the