2 - The Egalitarian Turn in Liberalism

Summary

It is near impossible to disentangle egalitarian concerns from the wide range of philosophical issues and political crises that span and shape the history of Western thought. Luck and contingencies are of this sort. Fate, for instance, was a common theme in ancient Greek and Roman life. These cultures appealed to the gods, sought prophecies and consulted oracles. Fortune was personified in the goddess Fortuna, who was capricious in her distribution thereof. (For a more detailed discussion of this topic refer to Nussbaum 2001 and Chapter 5.) In response to cosmic justice, Stoics and Epicureans sought to cultivate apatheia and ataraxia, attitudes that are indifference to Fortuna's caprice. Chance appears in the Bible, with lots used to settle disputes, although as Proverbs 16:23 makes clear, the outcome is God's will. Indeed, theologians generally tend to discourage lots, as it seeks to force God's hand. Indeed, some branches of Christian thought believe that efforts to evade risk subvert God's divine intention.

In medieval Europe, fortune shifted from a fickle relationship with gods to a fickle relationship with nature. This is apparent in the iconography of the Rota Fortunae, The Wheel of Fortune; a water wheel motif that appears carved into medieval cathedrals or in 14th-century illustrations like Giovanni Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. While handmade, the waterwheel is still subject to nature's temperamental forces to turn. These characteristics can be illustrated by the Carmina Burana, a collection of poems written between the 11th and 12th centuries, which opens with a description of Fortune that is ‘ever waxing and ever waning’. The temperamental nature of fortune is expressly found in the opening to the Fortune Plango Vulnera:

I bemoan the wounds of Fortune

with weeping eyes

for the gifts she made

she perversely takes away.

Similarly, the temperamental character of nature is given a chapter in Machiavelli's (1988) classic work in political philosophy, The Prince. Invoking the metaphor of a raging river, he proposes that fortune is a real occurrence. When in flood, the river can make the land ‘yield to its violence’. Despite this force, men can make provisions against the possibility of a flood by building canals and levees. This imposition on fortune, though, is not absolute, as provisions can often be negated by circumstances beyond human control. The raging river could be so strong as to overcome the levies erected to withstand it.