The French version is: Liberty, Equality, Friendship (in French: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité). Two out of three is ... one third bad. Fairness implies all appropriate concern for equality, delimited to those very specific cases where equality is an appropriate condition on means (as with equal rights). But equality does not imply fairness, and if equality is treated as an end in itself it is equivilant to envy, which is as bad as liberty and friendship are good.
An analysis of the moral error of equalitarianism can be found in Libertarianism vs. Equalitarianism in the Non-Ideal Theory volume of Moral Science.
Date Last Modified: 8/27/99
Copyright Alec Rawls © 1998