Anderson continues to light up most scholarly-based news and forums due to her significant definition of equality. The concept of equality stemmed from her bank experience, in which she had to conquer a hierarchy that offered neither freedom nor equality. In her famous 1999 article, she expresses the notion that people incline more on inequality than they do with fairness. Also, the report seeks to understand the changes we apply when we observe bias. This paper analyses Anderson as a champion of the perspective that both freedom and equality are linear. To analyze this sentiment, we focus on her concept of democratic equality.
In her article, What Is the Point of Equality? She is concerned that the society lost its definition of equality since the era of conservatives. Also, she critiques the results availing from conservative works, by asking if egalitarians would be ashamed of the consequences their theories have had on the present society. She proposes that the conflict arises when the community is fixated on luck egalitarianism, that is arbitrary from the moral point of view. Egalitarians justify that transferring resources from the lucky persons to the unlucky, is the highest form of equality: With option luck, persons are allowed to benefit if they succeed, or suffer if not. Contrary, with brute luck, the individuals do not deserve their positions because of nature capacities like disabilities, poverty, and illiteracy.
With democratic equality, she is opposing conservative ideologies that people’s outcomes stem from nature, not the people themselves. Conservatives define that some people suffer undeservingly, or equality is the attempt to make everyone uglier or make the rich a little miserable. Anderson notes that this is not the type that the society deserves; instead, it is socially non-human.
Anderson’s solution is the relational equality. Relational equality seeks to eliminate socially oppressing paternalism created by nature capacities. Besides, democratic equality incorporates social relationships that allow for balance based on principles. For instance, she illustrates equality in group discussions. If a member arrives late, then the coordinator holds a democratic duty to update the person so they can all be equal in understanding. In conclusion, in a society comprised of unlucky people, lower-class or disabled, Anderson proposes that increasing their participation capacities, is the reliable way to offer relational equality.
Works Cited
Anderson, Elizabeth S. “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics, vol. 109, no. 2, 1999, pp. 287-337.