Aristotle considers equality to be the core of justice and characterizes a just person as a friend of equality. He understands equality as a norm for distribution. It follows from this that, for the distribution of positive and negative values in society, there must be a standard that has general validity. At the same time, however, only equal cases can be judged equally. Thus, equality can always be spoken of only in relation to something that must be based on one ground or from one point of view.
The ideal of equality, however, has undergone many changes since Aristotle, and even today one can speak of a diverse understanding of what we mean by the term equality. For classical liberals, equality meant the requirement to remove human-made obstacles that would prevent some people from rising. Another demand was the abolition of any individual advantages, and the task of the state was to contribute to the creation of equal conditions for individuals so that they would have an equal chance of success, i.e. equal opportunities. The point was not for the government to ensure equal chances for everyone to attain a certain position, but for all to have access, under equal conditions, to those material opportunities that by their nature depend on government activity.(1) Everyone should therefore have the opportunity to test their strengths and make their way. This understanding was later replaced by the demand for an equal start and equal prospects, but adapting opportunities to individual goals would ultimately be the opposite of freedom, which is unacceptable to liberals.
John Dewey explains the position according to which freedom understood in liberal terms (political freedom) is seen as incompatible with equality. (2) According to this argument, we cannot fully unleash natural abilities without creating significant inequality in cultural, economic, and political status as a necessary consequence. On the other hand, if equality is the goal, then significant restrictions must be imposed on the exercise of freedom. The original idea and ideal of democracy, however, placed equality and freedom in mutual relation, because the possibility of realizing the democratic ideal is conditioned by the possibility of achieving, in social practice and institutions, a connection between equality and political freedom.
The principle of early democratic liberalism, then, was that people are born free and equal and political inequality is only a product of social institutions. The same principle applies to economic inequality. If someone is born wealthy and another is not, this difference also arises from social laws that regulate ownership and the control of property. Inequalities in the distribution of power and products in society should strictly correspond to natural inequalities. According to Dewey, progressive liberal democracy raises the demand that institutions and laws be such as to ensure and establish equality for all, so the usual claim about the mutual incompatibility of equality and political freedom rests on a formal and limited concept of political freedom. Here it is understood very abstractly, because it overlooks and excludes the fact that a person's political freedoms depend on the real power to act that the existing institutional arrangement grants to other individuals. "The democratic ideal, unifying equality and political freedom, on the other hand, recognizes that real and concrete political freedom of opportunity and action depends on the balancing of the political and economic conditions in which individuals themselves are actually, not in some abstract metaphysical sense, free."(3) Dewey concludes his discussion by stating that identifying political freedom with the maximum of unrestricted individualist activity in the economic sphere is fatal both to the realization of political freedom and to the realization of equality.
Views on equality therefore differ and depend to a large extent on differing understandings of freedom. Together with Swift, we may venture to state that political philosophers today are increasingly abandoning the view that equality is a political ideal, although they do not reject the need for some "more equal" distribution of goods. (4)
The subject of our interest, however, is primarily equality according to Friedrich August von Hayek. As a liberal, Hayek is willing to accept only such equality as does not conflict with the freedom of the individual: "Equality of the general rules established by law and of general rules of conduct is (...) the only kind of equality compatible with freedom, and it is also the only equality we can secure without destroying freedom."(5) According to Hayek, such equality necessarily creates inequalities, because it accepts that people are different. The fact that such differences exist among people does not entitle the government to treat them differently. The demand for equality before the law is the basis of the functioning of a democratic society; however, the widely defended theory of the uniformity of human nature could easily undermine the most basic ideals of freedom and the individual worth of each person. People are equal before the law, but the fact must not be overlooked that they are already different from one another from birth. If we treat them equally, the result will necessarily be inequality, which is natural. Equality before the law, as required by the liberal understanding of freedom, leads to material inequality, so economic inequality does not represent an evil for society that would entitle us to use discriminatory violence or privilege against it.(6)
Hayek doubts the realization of one of the central points of classical liberalism, equal opportunities, because if it were to be achieved, the government would have to control the entire physical and human environment of all persons and would have to try to provide at least equivalent chances for everyone. This would lead to the government directing every circumstance that could affect someone's well-being. And thus, however attractive the idea of equal opportunities might initially seem, "once this idea ceases to be limited to those services and facilities which the government must provide for other reasons, it becomes an entirely illusory ideal and any attempt to implement it concretely can easily end in something terrifying." (7)
Hayek is convinced that much of what may appear to be a demand for equality is actually an effort to achieve a fairer distribution. He links this with value and merit. In a free system, in his view, it is undesirable for material rewards generally to be based on what people consider to be merit. A basic feature of a free society is that the position of the individual does not necessarily depend on the opinions of others regarding the merit he or she has obtained: "... the value which a man's achievements and abilities have in the eyes of his fellows does not necessarily correspond to his ascertainable merit ..." (8) According to Hayek, merit is not a matter of objective result but rather of subjective effort. A reward corresponding to merit cannot be combined with freedom in the choice of one's own goal. The possibility of genuinely assessing merit depends on the presence of precisely those conditions whose general absence is the main argument for freedom. If we let other people decide, it is because we want them to use the knowledge that we ourselves do not have. But if we want them to freely use their knowledge and abilities, which we ourselves do not possess, then we are unable to assess what merit they have in their performance. If people pursuing uncertain goals are to use their own knowledge and abilities, they must not be guided by the idea that others have of what they should do, but by the value that others assign to the result they are striving for.
Merit and value are closely related to fair remuneration: "Not only would it be impossible for us fairly to reward every merit, but it would not even be desirable for people to focus primarily on obtaining the greatest possible merit. Any attempt to induce them to do so would necessarily result in their receiving different rewards for the same service. And what we can assess with some confidence is only the value of the result, not the various degrees of effort and care that different people had to expend in order to achieve it." (9)
Author: PhDr. Jarmila Jurová, PhD. Department of General and Applied Ethics Faculty of Arts, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra Literature Used Dewey, J.: Reconstruction of Liberalism. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2001. ISBN 80-7149-281-7. Hayek, F. A.: Law, Legislation and Liberty 2. The Mirage of Social Justice. Prague: Academia, 1991. ISBN 80-200-0309-6. Hayek, F. A.: Equality, Freedom and Merit. In: Kis, J. (ed.): Contemporary Political Philosophy. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1997, pp. 101-121. ISBN 80-86005-60-7. Swift, A.: Political Philosophy. Fundamental Questions of Modern Political Science. Prague: Portál, 2005. ISBN 80-7178-859-7.
(1) It was obvious that the results would not be the same, because individuals differ from one another and the government cannot influence all relevant circumstances. (2) Dewey, J.: Reconstruction of Liberalism, pp. 629 - 633. (3) Dewey, J.: Reconstruction of Liberalism, p. 631. (4) Swift, A.: Political Philosophy. Fundamental Questions of Modern Political Science, p. 94. (5) Hayek, F. A.: Equality, Freedom and Merit, p. 101. (6) Hayek, F. A.: Equality, Freedom and Merit, pp. 103 - 104. (7) Hayek, F. A.: Law, Legislation and Liberty 2. The Mirage of Social Justice, p. 83. (8) Hayek, F. A.: Equality, Freedom and Merit, p. 111. (9) Hayek, F. A.: Equality, Freedom and Merit, p. 114.