Professor Pierre Rosanvallon is one of France’s leading public intellectuals and author of ‘The Society of Equals’ and will give a lecture entitled "Rethinking equality in a new age of inequality" at 6PM on the Wednesday 10 June 2015.
‘Rethinking equality in a new age of inequality’
Statistics on rising inequalities are everywhere and there is a strong public concern about it: a vast majority of people feel that they live in an injust society. But such a generalized sense that inequalities have grown “too large” or even become “scandalous” coexists with tacit acceptance of many specific forms of inequality and with silent resistance to any practical steps to correct them. Widespread social discontent is thus associated with practical passivity in the face of generalized inequality.
The reason is that there is simultaneously a crisis of the very notion of equality. The dominance, in its various forms, of the concept of equality of opportunity provoked such a crisis: de facto inequalities are rejected, but a central mechanism that generates inequality in general is implicitly recognized. Equality of opportunity was considered as very problematic when Michael Young published The Rise of Meritocracy in 1958: it is today the core of a universally accepted social philosophy of justice.
The lecture will explore this crisis of the notion of equality as a key factor of the present incapacity to seriously challenge inequalities - and propose a new direction for understanding equality in a relational perspective, refreshing and developing the notion of “société des semblables” outlined by Tocqueville.
Professor Pierre Rosanvallon
Pierre Rosanvallon has held the chair of Early Modern and Modern Political History at the Collège de France since 2001. He is also Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales as well as President of the international intellectual workshop La République des idées.
As one of France’s leading public intellectuals, his work on political history and philosophy mainly focuses on the intellectual history of democracy in the longue durée.
Rosanvallon’s latest book The Society of Equals, Paris, 2013, aimed at perhaps modernising the concept of equality, combines historical analysis and political theory while analysing the origin of Enlightenment equalitarianism.
Online booking is essential as places are limited
Full price €5, Student/retired €3
Members of the Academy please email info@ria.ie to reserve your place