You Tube Theology

Contemporary French philosophical accounts of equality divide into two groups according to how they propose to jump the gap between descriptive equality (the claim that people are, or are declared to be, equal in some way) and normative equality (the claim that, on that basis, people should be treated equally in some respect). One broad approach, different variants of which are espoused by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, bases the demand for equality on a particular human capacity ('thought' and 'intelligence' respectively), but this approach risks excluding those who, for reasons of disability or age, do not possess the capacity in question. Jean-Luc Nancy proposes a second approach, in which the demand for equal treatment does not appeal to the possession of any particular human capacity but seeks to justify itself in terms of a singular plural ontology: we are equal in our incommensurability, in having nothing in common. This paper argues that both approaches, despite their differences, share one fundamental problem that leaves them unable, without further modification, adequately to jump the gap between the fact of equality and the demand that, on the basis of that fact, people must be treated equally in some respect. Both positions are locked into this failure by trying to think the leap from the descriptive to the normative according to a strict logic of justification, but such a logic is not inevitable. This paper, taking its lead in part from Nancy's L'Adoration (2010), explores the possibility of an equality that appeals not only to justice but also to love, not setting them in opposition but arguing for their necessary inseparability in any adequate account of equality. This new approach, it will be argued, spans the gulf between descriptive and normative equality that poses such grave problems for both previous positions.