Why philosophers hate that ‘equity’ meme - by Joseph Heath

If you want to annoy your favorite philosopher, one of the best ways to do it these days is to mention the “kids standing on boxes equity meme.” To call it the bane of our existence would be something of an overstatement, but it’s certainly not making anyone’s job easier. Most of us have seen this picture, but more importantly, every single one of our students has seen it. And not only have they seen it, they think that it’s a complete conversation-stopper. According to them, it provides a correct and uncontroversial definition of equity, and also constitutes a decisive refutation of equality as a moral ideal. The fact that philosophers still think there are issues worth debating in this area is therefore something that they find incredibly puzzling. Unfortunately for us, this little picture with the boxes represents the undoing of practically everything we have been trying to achieve in our debates over equality and social justice for the past half-century. (More evidence that when re

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• Eric Liu