Eqality in liberty and justice
- London Routledge 1989
- 224 p.
Provocative and wide-ranging, this revised and rewritten selection of published and unpublished papers by Professor Antony Flew provides much food for thought for both professional philosophers and students. Primarily about liberty and justice, the book also considers the concept of equality. The two key terms are understood in the most simple and straightforward way: liberties as legally secured absences of external constraints upon individual behaviour; and justice as a matter of everyone getting their, presumably often very different, deserts and entitlements. The cant expressions positive freedom' and 'social justice' are therefore seen as exercises in persuasive definition - attempts by dishonest disguising to promote quite different ideals.
Consisting of a set of approaches to the problem of the relations between the ideas of justice, liberty, and equality, the papers range from Socrates through Kant to present-day philosophy in focusing on the logical implications of liberty, the question of universal natural rights, the meanings of 'equality, and the 'mirage of social justice. They include a vigorous demolition of Rousseau's Social Contract and an important piece on Thrasymachus in the first book of Plato's Republic.