O'Donovan on Equality

I am re-reading Ways of Judgment in preparation for a Symposium on the book next week. As is his common practice, Oliver O'Donovan will respond to three papers on his own work. This is one of the great things he does, actually: he has responded several times in print to reviews of Desire of the Nations which actually provides a terrific resource for his readers.


Anyways, he says some great things about equality:


The value of human life is equal, because equally infinite, not susceptible of any exchange value. p. 44



There is a hideous bureaucratic element in contemporary thinking about equality which calculates everything, even human life, in dollar terms. The Ford car company notoriously factored in the cost of compensation law suits for wrongful death in their manufacturing of the Pinto (nicknamed 'the barbecue that seats four'...). Equality is not an aspect of justice, but in fact an element of the doctrine of creation. Thinking about equality as justice leads us to this terrible calculation of exchange rates. We never stop counting things...

The hero of his book is Hugo Grotius, whose suggestion for 'attributive justice' O'Donovan is enthusiastic about. Attributive justice is not a theory of justice as such... it is a determination to play each case on its merits. It

elaborates differences. It strengthens relations of affinity and bonds of loyalty, it promites talkent and makes wise appointments to office, it gives opportunities to those who can use them.

Attributive justices recognises the fitness of acting in a certain way on certain occassions. If that sounds vague, that is because it cannot be prescribed ahead of time! Equality plays a different role, a remedial one (we might say).