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I. INTRODUCTION
Although equality and autonomy are widely considered by political theorists to be important
political ideals, to date, the two concepts have not sufficiently been studied together.
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In particular,
political theorists have paid little attention to how equality and autonomy enhance one another; rather,
equality and autonomy are generally viewed as conflicting values. That is to say, the assumption
prevails that since attaining the goal of equality involves state interference in the lives of the people
(such as redistributing money among the people) and since state interference is inimical to the
autonomy of the people because the state wholly or partially usurps the people’s ability to choose how
to live for themselves, achieving equality implies destroying autonomy; ergo, equality negates
autonomy.
Challenging this common understanding, the equality theories of contemporary theorists,
Ronald Dworkin, Richard Arneson, and Gerald Cohen, which are collectively known as “luck
egalitarianism,” provide a significant innovative approach to the relationship between equality and
autonomy. The luck egalitarians argue that not only is autonomy compatible with equality but that
autonomy should be a central concept in theorizing equality. In their respective equality theories, these
theorists demonstrate how promoting equality among people is consistent with insuring the autonomy
of people. For them, autonomy is described as a person’s capacity to have control over her actions and
to live by her own rules and principles. In particular, autonomy is characterized with a type of choice,
which I call autonomous choice, for which the chooser should take personal responsibility, that is,
bear the costs of results that ensue. On the accounts of the luck egalitarians, theory of equality thus
should accommodate the notions of autonomous choice and personal responsibility.
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Here I am interested in personal autonomy.
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Although Dworkin, Arneson, and Cohen do not explicitly define the idea of “autonomy,” I assume that their
concepts of choice and personal responsibility are basically consistent with the description of autonomy. I need,
however, to note that Dworkin describes choice using the notion of “freedom (liberty),” not the idea of autonomy.
In so doing, he tries to show that his equality theory does not conflict with the notion of liberty; the notion of
Convention