| Equality, one of the most ancient concepts that are unique to human, makes up an essential component of justice. It also forms an important political value in modern society."What is Equality? What is Justice? What kind of society can be considered as a fair society?"In exploring those core questions, liberalist political philosophy advocated by Rawls, Nozick and etc., attempts to find a fair principle that runs through all domains on the purpose of constructing an equal and orderly society. Since human society never ceases to develop, the high division of labor makes productive forces move a big step forward and the social assets increase tremendously, which in turn leads to an extending inequality in human society. The problems concerning equality and justice in all social fields begin to rise unprecedentedly and the single principle of justice and the concept of simple equality cannot solve the increasingly complicated social justice problem. Therefore, the academic circles'introspection on equality theory is indispensable. Walzer, representative of communitarianism, opposes to the idea of solving the problem of justice and equality in a single way. Instead, he proposes a theory of complex equality basing on the pluralist theory of justice, which actually is a challenge to the principle of single distribution in simple equality theory. As the economic and political globalization tends to be more obvious and all the countries in the world including China are developing towards pluralism, it is of great significance in solving the social justice problem in contemporary China by reasonable and logical comprehension and evaluation on complex equality theory.Chapter One starts with sorting out the justice principle and equality concept advocated by liberalist representatives of Rawls and Nozick. Next, the author reviews the communitarianist representative Walzer's introspection on the single principle in traditional theory of justice and simple equality. Later, the author makes an assessment and comprehension of complex equality. The results always go to the simple equality with the single principle as its base, no matter approaching either from Rawls'orderly two principles of justice, or Nozick's justice of holding principle. However, justice exists in distribution of social goods in all societies and there should be different distribution principles for different goods. The final equality achieved can be regarded as"an equality that admits inequality". In other words, the final equality, on the whole, is the one that is achievable, but not the perfect equality conceived by simple equality.Chapter Two focuses on explaining rationality and practicability of complex equality in view of pluralism justice after the discussion of practical and theoretical bases of complex equality. Complex equality actually bases on pluralism of modern society and the pluralist nature of goods also contributes to the objective environment for complex equality to exist. Complex equality takes the pluralist theory of justice as its theoretical base and there are more than one distribution principles of complex equality. However, none of those principles can surpass all domains and goods.Chapter Three first elaborates on the chief features of contemporary China for the convenience of proving the fitness between complex equality and contemporary China. In contemporary China, the powers that control social development take on a pluralist state and a pluralist trend. Therefore, pluralism is the principal feature in contemporary China. To sum up, complex equality fits better with contemporary China, not only because of its own theoretical and practical bases, but also because of the fact that it is more applicable in view of China's national conditions. In a society with complex equality, we can make the following three conclusions. Firstly, people can realize that there is no single principle of justice that fits all domains. Moreover, people can admit and accept the relativity of social justice and treat properly the phenomenon of unequal distribution in China. At last, people can make great efforts to decrease instead of increase inequality through transforming distribution in various fields, which eventually leads to a harmonious and stable society. |
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