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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 July 2015
This paper is concerned with certain connections and oppositions that Brudner perceives between liberty, equality and community. As I understand his project, he begins with a strong atomist conception of the worth of individuals, which he calls libertarian, and claims to show how egalitarian and communitarian ideas of individual worth are unavoidably contained in the original idea and must be developed out of it in order to arrive at a coherent and conceptually stable view. This is the inclusive conception, which retains the libertarian and egalitarian moments as subordinate but essential aspects of a liberal ethical community. This paper is sceptical of the validity of the proposed deduction. It concentrates on a few passages, which purport to show how an initial position has implications that nevertheless are in contradiction with the premises from which they are derived. As a result of this concentration, the paper, unavoidably, ignores a great wealth of illuminating material that, together with the impressive sweep of the project as a whole, fully justifies the attention the book is receiving, even if, as I believe, the overall argument does not succeed.
1. Brudner, Alan, Constitutional Goods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) at 13.Google Scholar
2. Ibid. at 14.
3. Ibid. at 66.
4. Quoted in Brudner at 66.
5. Ibid. at 66.
6. Ibid at 67.
7. Ibid at 67.
8. Gewirth, Alan, “The Justification of Egalitarian Justice” (1971) 8 Am. Phil. Q. 331.Google Scholar See also his book Reason and Morality (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1978) chs. 2 and 3.
9. Williams, Bernard, ‘Egoism and Altruism’ in his Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana Press/Collins, 1985) at 60-64 and Charvet, John, The Idea of an Ethical Community (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995) at 111–13.Google Scholar
10. Supra note 1 at 69-70.
11. Ibid. at 261-63.
12. Ibid. at 158.
13. See Barry, Brian, Justice as Impartiality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) at 11; also at 200-07.Google Scholar Scheffler, Samuel discusses the same issues in his Human Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) at 104f.Google Scholar
14. Godwin, William, Political Justice, ed. by Kramnick, Isaac (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985) at 169–70.Google Scholar
15. Supra note 1 at 255-58.
16. Ibid. at 258.
17. This in itself could produce obvious injustice if the natural-asset rich chose lives that yielded below-average financial rewards.
18. Anderson, Elizabeth, “What is the Point of Equality?” (1999) 109 Ethics 287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. Ibid. at 313.
20. Supra note 1 at 254.
21. Ibid. at 254.
22. Ibid. at 258.
23. Ibid. at 299-300.
24. Ibid. at 302-03.
25. Supra note 1 at 319.
26. Ibid. at 319.
27. Ibid.
28. Hegel, G.W.F., The Philosophy of Right, trans. by Nisbet, H.B. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) para. 145 at 190.Google Scholar
29. Ibid. at 196.