社群主义的平等：按对群体认同的贡献分配

Communitarian equality: to each according to their contribution to the group identity

若一个社会内部的平等建立在要求保留政治意义上的“我们”认同(identity)之上,那么这个社会是否公平?当平等与每个个体在维护群体认同稳定方面所作出的贡献挂钩时,这样的平等将会发生什么情况?对于那些在认同方面最能满足政治社群期望的人来说,优先考虑平等是否合理?这些问题绝非纯粹的理论,而是围绕非常具体的问题在公众辩论当中出现的。在法国和欧洲其他地方所呼吁的针对社会福利分配和就业的“国民优先”,以及以“美国优先!”为名所提倡的措施,均表明满足国家社群认同的愿望在多大程度上影响了平等原则。无论是训导人们公开承认欧洲是“基督教发源地”,还是在支持“脱欧”中断言的保护“英国特性”(Britishness)的必要性,抑或是对中东和非洲很多地区移民与难民的到来所产生的敌对反应,都进一步生动说明了以下恐惧在不断增强:被视为将“我们”统一在一起、组成政治共同体的认同的构成要素将会消失。

Rooted in a contemporary political reality marked by anxieties over identity within culturally dominant groups, this study seeks to interrogate what happens to equality, a principle of justice generally placed at the forefront in liberal democracies, when it becomes subordinate to the preservation of the majority identity. Communitarian conceptions of equality and justice are examined through analysis of the critiques of political liberalism– and notably the writings of John Rawls –advanced by Alasdair Mac Intyre, Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor in the 1980 s and 90 s. This article shows how the"constitutive"role these writers attribute to the sense of community belonging, their emphasis on"indebtedness" to the community, and the value they give to "desert", tend to subordinate equality to an enterprise of"identity securing"by national majorities. The article highlights problems and dilemmas concerning the respect for fundamental rights and pluralism, which can be generated by an adherence to communitarian equality in the move from theory to practice.