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| 20595 | You can't distribute goods from behind a veil, because their social meaning is unclear |
| Full Idea: Walzer says behind the veil of ignorance there would be no way to know how a particular good should be distributed, because we would not know the social meaning of the good in question. | |||
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 4 'Communitarian' | |||
| A reaction: Is Rawls actually proposing to decide details of distribution from behind the veil? There is just the maximin principle. What that means in practice would surely come once the society was under way. |
| 20592 | Complex equality restricts equalities from spilling over, like money influencing politics and law |
| Full Idea: Complex equality tries to keep advantages in one area (such as money) from translating into advantages in politics or before the law. | |||
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 3 'Complex' | |||
| A reaction: Put like that, Walzer's complex equality becomes very interesting, and pinpoints a major problem of our age, where discrepancies of wealth have become staggeringly large at the top end. |
| 20549 | Equality is complex, with different spheres of equality where different principles apply |
| Full Idea: Michael Walzer argues for 'complex equality', saying different goods belong to different distributive 'spheres', each with its own distributive principles. | |||
| From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Adam Swift - Political Philosophy (3rd ed) 3 'Egalitarian' | |||
| A reaction: Sounds interesting. Equality seems to make different demands when it concerns basic food for survival, or fine wines. You can spend your money freely, but hording in a crisis is frowned on. |