Opacity respect, bureaucracy and philanthropy: A response to Nathan
| Author | Ian Carter |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885118806086 |
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Commentaries |
Commentary EJPT
Opacity respect,
bureaucracy and
philanthropy: A
response to Nathan
Ian Carter
Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Pavia, Italy
Abstract
In ‘Bureaucratic respectful equality’, Christopher Nathan puts forward two challenges
for the author’s claim that basic equality can be grounded in a form of ‘opacity respect’
appropriately shown by the state towards citizens. According to the first challenge, this
account is less powerful than the author supposed, inasmuch it does not rule out any
equalizandum of distributive equality as long as that equality is pursued by individuals
rather than by the state. According to the second challenge, the account is, alterna-
tively, so powerful that it threatens absurdity, because it interprets individual egalitarian
action as being carried out on behalf of the state and therefore rules out many of the
normal, everyday assessments individuals make of each other’s capacities. The article
responds to each of these challenges in the light of a clarificatory distinction between
two kinds of ‘dualist’ interpretation of basic equality: a ‘state only’ account that requires
opacity respect only in relations between the state and citizens, and a ‘twofold’ account
that requires individuals to show opacity respect for others’ basic agential capacities
and the state to show opacity respect also for certain non-basic agential capacities.
Keywords
Basic equality, bureaucracy, distributive equality, opacity respect, philanthropy
Corresponding author:
Ian Carter, Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Pavia, Corso Strada Nuova 65, 27100
Pavia, Italy.
Email: ian.carter@unipv.it
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(4) 541–552
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885118806086
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