L’égalité est-elle nécessairement juste ?
(Translated to English) Is equality necessarily just?
Taken from this nice list of 1996-2025 Philo Bac prompts
To begin, we will consider equality to be that two identical inputs receive two identical outputs. Now, whether this equality is just, depends heavily on your definition of just: does justice mean that punishment is allocated mostly in proportion to the damage done, or that punishment is allocated mostly according to the actions taken. In the latter case, equality necessitates justice, but in the former case it does not. Let us consider two people driving down the road in heavy rain, making them unable to see clearly what is in front of them. Suppose that a farmer’s cow wanders on to the road in front of the first car, and is struck, and killed. In the latter definition, the just judgement would be to not punish the driver, as given the same information as the second driver they made the same judgement. This, however, leads to an issue when we consider the farmer’s perspective. Surely for the farmer, it matters little whether the driver did or did not intend to kill their cow, the core issue is that they had a cow and that cow is now dead as a result of the actions that the driver took. So, from the farmer’s perspective, this is not just. This is the core conflict:
Should justice prioritize the needs of the victim or the actions of the perpetrator?
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