ABSTRACT
In "From Rationality to Equality," James Sterba—summarizing a body of work that now extends over many years—contends both that morality is "rationally required" of us and that morality demands a materially egalitarian social-democratic state. The attempt to derive morality from rationality is an ancient quest in the Western ethical tradition. In the classic moral theories, it has always been taken for granted that one's own interests have a legitimate, demarcated role. This is most clearly the case—indeed, for later critics problematically, too saliently, the case—for some of the virtue theories, or character ethics, of the ancient world. But in the act-centered theories of the modern period, the individual's interests are also included. If one distinguishes goal-based (consequentialist), rights-based, and duty-based theories, then in utilitarian consequentialism. An "objective" ranking that presupposes the equal valorization for the egoist of the egoist's interests and other people's interests is an anti-egoistic stipulation that begs the question from the start.
