Equality And Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism

Kai Nielsen; Rowman & Allanhield, 1985.
Reviewed by Taner Edis

The ambition of humanism is positive: to provide a framework to operate in with respect to ethical questions, analogous to reliable, rational knowledge we may obtain about factual concerns through science. Yet deep disagreements about ethics are common among humanists, who often have but a superficial unity deriving from minority status as uncompromising rationalists. A common division in Enlightenment political philosophies is long in roots, between the socialist tradition and the right-wing libertarian one, and the disagreements are likely as unreconcilable as any between atheists and traditional religionists.

Kai Nielsen, a prominent philosopher who has written much about atheism, and ethics (some published by Prometheus), is on the socialist side. There is much that is technical and difficult reading in Equality and Liberty, but it is a fuller exposition of Nielsen's views than his more semi-popular works that tend to concentrate on the autonomy of ethics from theistic myth, such as Ethics Without God, 1990. It defends an ethic described as radical egalitarianism, and the proposition that liberty and equality are inseparable, rather than being in opposition.

Nielsen's metaethics depends on the notion of "wide reflective equilibrium," which can be described as a form of maximal application of reason to ethics, while recognizing its basis in commitments of a preferential nature. Starting from that, a concept of justice as equality or fairness is proposed, as opposed to desert or entitlement based approaches, and implications of this in a broadly socialist context are discussed. This is then defended against criticism from an individualist libertarian perspective in particular.

The book is not necessarily convincing in its entirety, but it is a useful antidote to caricaturizations of socialism as a mindless political theology that many humanists are prone to. At the very least, the powerful critique of Nozick-style Libertarianism is important, as this view is all too common among humanists. There is no easy path to a comprehensive humanist morality by application of reason.