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Equality and Partiality$
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Thomas Nagel

Print publication date: 1995

Print ISBN-13: 9780195098396

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003

DOI: 10.1093/0195098390.001.0001

Equality and Motivation

Chapter:
(p. 96 ) 10 Equality and Motivation
Source:
Equality and Partiality
Author(s):

Thomas Nagel (Contributor Webpage)

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/0195098390.003.0010

While institutions must play an important role in creating social and economic equality, they cannot sustain it unless they come to express what enough people feel. Nagel explores what transformations of motive might make possible the realization of a more egalitarian social ideal. There is no natural way to divide the creation of advantages by talent into the legitimate and the illegitimate, along lines that could correspond to a psychologically plausible division between personal and impersonal motivation. All that can be done is to reduce the magnitude of the inequalities in life chances within which the effort will determine the result.

Keywords:   equality, fairness, impartiality, motivation, partiality

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