Equal opportunity is the subject of a problematic consensus: it appears to be the only form of acceptable equality, despite the many real inequalities that accompany it. It is to rethink the foundations that P. Savidan devoted.
The cohesion of a society requires that the individuals who compose it recognize and accept the principles of justice that order it. In modern democratic societies, social justice is organized around the principle of equal opportunities, which seems to be accepted by all. However, such a principle, far from strengthening collective identity, carries a threat of decoras it allows real inequalities.
The reflection of Patrick Savidan, philosopher, president of the observatory of inequalities taking this tension as a starting point. Social justice is a component of collective identity, and not only a moral duty. Now, if equal opportunities, based on the recognition of the individual deserved, triumphs, it is “ because it seems to give us equality In freedom (P. 21). But the egalitarianism thus understood has no egalitarian only the name: it cannot prevent the continual digging of new inequalities, as if it were only an ideal forever inaccessible. Is this tension insurmountable ? It is necessary to respond in the negative: it is possible and necessary to envisage a reform of equal opportunities, which gives fully sense to egalitarianism. This is the thesis that P. Savidan wants to support: we must invent a reformism which integrates the requirements of solidarity with a more global reflection on equal opportunities, in order to make it a principle sustainable social justice. Sustainable in a theoretical sense And Practical: equal opportunities must be the basis of true egalitarianism, which is achievable under the conditions of modernity.
Thinking such an egalitarianism requires answering four major questions (which constitute the four moments of P. Savidan’s reflection): 1) In what terms is the question of social justice in modernity ? 2) What are the modern values to which a justice project must agree ? 3) How to understand social justice based on equal opportunities and merit ? 4) What are the limits of such a conception and how to reform it in order to achieve sustainable egalitarianism ?
1) Reading Tocqueville makes it possible to answer the first question. There Democracy in America describes the democratic circumstances of justice. Tocqueville has seen that the love of equality was at the heart of the democratic social imagination, which aspires to an ever greater equalization of the conditions. He also showed that this egalitarianism was accompanied by an individualism which, far from being a privatist withdrawal on oneself, however makes state interventions more difficult to reduce inequalities. The question is complex: to stop the movement that pushes to equalize is to risk seeing hierarchies and new forms of domination reconstruct ; But going towards a real equalization of the conditions, is it not to open the way to a despotic state power, which will largely encroach on individual choices ? Democratic society was born from this tension, which we see that it determines the expectations and conditions of social justice.
2) However, the values that triumph over modernity lead to the idea that equal opportunities is the only acceptable principle of redistribution. Two major ideas define them. First, the idea that social order is not fixed by nature in a hierarchy forever frozen. Men make in modernity the experience of their similarity, and merit therefore appears to be the only way to justify inequalities.
Then, the idea that men are free because they are owners of themselves and that they are not indebted to the society of their person. This design is what CB Macpherson calls possessive individualism. In such a context, it is individual preference that is highlighted. It is logically accompanied by the refusal of any political paternalism and the desire that nothing comes to hinder the will to coincide with oneself, to perfectly fulfill the resources of its interiority. It is also for this reason that the work is sacred: it allows autarky, even more it allows to be realized.
3) It is these values, which constitute our democratic modernity, that the principle of equal opportunities corresponds. P. Savidan underlines that such a principle makes it possible to index social justice on the concept of ability : What is right, in this perspective is that one is paid according to its merit. He shows how such an idea of social justice settled in modern culture, and how she disqualified strict egalitarianism in favor of an ideal ofequitysupposed to take into account the differences between individuals and situations. If egalitarianism is rejected, it is because it is deemed incompatible with the modern ideal of freedom and responsibility. This means that capacity social justice imputs inequalities with individuals and not to society.
But what to do with initial inequalities, which are a threat for the idea of choice and more broadly for the ideal that represents a social justice capacitarian ? Different responses have been given to such a problem. Thus, meritocratic republicanism, according to P. Savidan, was built in the certainty that the initial situation of individuals had to be taken into account. This is what we read in the work of Condorcet, who thought that public education could serve social justice by making the capacities more equal. However, asking the school to be the main lever of social justice, is both to exaggerate its ability to modify social relationships and to undermine the requirements of distributive justice.
It is such a observation which animated the social democracy, which has set out to reduce the inequalities of conditions by public intervention. But, notes P. Savidan, she focused on the neutralization of “ perverse effects of social stratification (P. 187), without seeing that all inequalities do not proceed from social belonging.
Liberal democracy, finally, seems to consider that equalization goes through the only fight against discrimination. Significant are the policies ofAffirmative Action in favor of disadvantaged groups of the population, as they have been implemented in the United States (and of which Alain Renaut is today the defender in his latest work, Equality and discrimination. An essay of applied philosophyParis, Seuil, 2007). Only, as P. Savidan points out, “ the policies ofAffirmative Action seek to solve a problem of civil justice, and not yet a problem of justice social (P. 193).
4) These conceptions have in common to be based on a capacity conception of equal opportunities. It is essentially for this reason, according to P. Savidan, that they can find themselves in default in their distributive justice project. Equal opportunity emphasizes social mobility and the possibility offered to everyone to rise according to their merit. But this is to promote a competitive society where the ascent of some results in the downgrading of others: “ Funny society, it will be said, that that which encourages the form of solidarity for everyone for generalized oneself, which encourages individuals to arm against each other, while inviting them to agree (P. 241).
Should we then give up equal opportunities ? No, because it agrees with our values. It must therefore be rethought, in order to develop a conception postcapacitarian. For this, P. Savidan judges that it is fundamental to understand otherwise the relationships between individual and society, following for that the reflection of John Rawls on social justice. Because Rawls strives to highlight a less individual design of merit. What is right, according to him, is to define equal opportunities taking into account the insertion of individuals in a social context which allows them to exploit their capacities. Possessive individualism neglects this dimension: he does not see that “ Various productions have meaning and value only by a social system and a set of rules which do not depend exclusively on the individual in question (P. 268). This redefinition of equal opportunities invites you to rethink solidarity, by distinguishing it from assistance: we have a debt, as the solidarism of Léon Bourgeois, with regard to society, which bases our obligation with other individuals. Thus, the normative ideal of social justice must today be, according to P. Savidan, a postcapacitarian and solidarist equality.
Can such a change in perspective suffice for this equalization of the conditions required by social justice ? Reading P. Savidan’s work, stimulating, does not fully raise this uncertainty. Certainly, it is indisputable that the theoretically conception sustainable equal opportunities makes it possible to get out of false debates, because “ It provides essential clarification elements (P. 303), in particular by showing the limits of possessive individualism. However, of which levers do we have in such a framework to act on real social inequalities ? P. Savid right rightly underlines the doubts that surround a “ Democracy of owners In order to ensure, in the eyes of Rawls, a social dissemination of ownership of the means of production. How to ensure that capital is not transmitted from generation to generation ? We can modify the laws of succession, and encourage the owners to bequeath their heritage to a large number of individuals, but can we really think that such a measure will reduce inequalities, especially with the most disadvantaged ? To read the objections surrounding the democracy of the owners and that P. Savidan evokes without lifting them, one cannot help thinking that if the equal postcapacitarian opportunities critical undeniable, she does not really draw perspectives policies. Theoretically sustainable, it could prove to be that the implementation of this revisited conception of justice is revealed in practice difficult, even improbable.
Go further:
The site of the observatory of inequalities) endeavors to make an inventory in matters of social justice.
There will be a number of articles by Patrick Savidan on contemporary rationalites