1987Equality as a Moral IdealHarry Frankfurt
Political PhilosophyEssay · 1987
Equality as a Moral Ideal
Harry Frankfurt
Frankfurt argues that economic equality has no moral value in itself, and that what actually matters is whether each person has enough. The claim is aimed at egalitarians who treat any gap as a wrong in need of correction. This link is his collection The Importance of What We Care About, Cambridge 1988, which carries the essay as chapter 11.
Why you should read this
Frankfurt argues against equality as a moral ideal in itself, proposing that what matters is whether people have enough rather than whether they have the same amount as others, a position now usually cited as the starting point for sufficientarian theories of distributive justice.
- Field
- Political Philosophy
- Form
- Non-fiction
- Published
- 1987
- Themes
- EqualityPolitical Philosophy
