Equality and Partiality

by Thomas Nagel

Overview

Derived from Thomas Nagel's Locke Lectures, Equality and Partiality proposes a nonutopian account of political legitimacy, based on the need to accommodate both personal and impersonal motives in any credible moral theory, and therefore in any political theory with a moral foundation. Within each individual, Nagel believes, there is a division between two standpoints, the personal and the impersonal. Without the impersonal standpoint, there would be no morality, only the clash, compromise, and occasional convergence of individual perspectives. It is because a human being does not occupy only his own point of view that each of us is susceptible to the claims of others through private and public morality. Political systems, to be legitimate, must achieve an integration of these two standpoints within the individual. These ideas are applied to specific problems such as social and economic inequality, toleration, international justice, and the public support of culture. Nagel points to the problem of balancing equality and partiality as the most important issue with which political theorists are now faced.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195069679
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/08/1991
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	8.61(w) x 5.85(h) x 0.81(d)
Lexile:	1500L (what's this?)

About the Author

New York University

Table of Contents

1	Introduction	3
2	Two Standpoints	10
3	The Problem of Utopianism	21
4	Legitimacy and Unanimity	33
5	Kant's Test	41
6	The Moral Division of Labor	53
7	Egalitarianism	63
8	Problems of Convergence	75
9	Problems of Structure	85
10	Equality and Motivation	96
11	Options	120
12	Inequality	130
13	Rights	139
14	Toleration	154
15	Limits: The World	169
	Bibliography	181
	Index	185

Editorial Reviews

"There is much in this short and illuminating book to stimulate serious thought about a wide range of issues in contemporary political theory. Nagel's style is deceptively simple, masking an unusual depth and complexity of view....For those who have read widely in the recent literature of political philosophy, it is a rare treat."—American Political Science Review

"A clear, sometimes subtle and elegant book."—Society

"Thomas Nagel is just about the most interesting philosopher of our day. Without descending to rhetorical tricks, he conveys a wonderful sense of the urgency of the issues he writes about....[Nagel's] deftness of touch and delicacy of intellectual imagination are exactly what the subject demands."—Times Literary Supplement

"[Nagel] is focused on the right issues, and his discussion of them is both lucid and illuminating. The book is certainly required reading for those working in the area of political philosophy."—The Review of Politics

"On all these subjects [Nagel discusses] we get tough-minded, honest, insightful, imaginative thought expressed in lucid prose, fully accessible to the nonprofessional, and clearly relevant to the most important political issues of our time. In a more rational world this book would have the best-seller status that Allen Bloom's had."—Philosophical Review

From the Publisher