Are Freedom and Equality Separable?
The argument on behalf on your freedom to act disreputably often goes like this. Who is to say drug use is wrong? What makes you better than the people in the adult film industry? People should have the freedom to do what they want unimpeded by bluenoses. These censors are simply elitists! In other words taking away, the freedom to do something denies the moral equality of the people who make that decision .
The argument on behalf on your equal claim to societies material and respect often goes like this. Without a basic set of material resources, the poor will lack the means to achieve your ends. Failing to respect different family structures will stigmatize people from picking what is right for them. Racial, gender, or sexual discrimination hamper the marginalized’s ability to succeed in commerce, to marry who they want, to achieve their dreams, etc.
Hopefully, these redundant analogies will have convinced you that justifying a political position on the basis of freedom is hard to distinguish from justifying it on the basis of equality. What’s going on here?
The modern world has two large normative frameworks (large meaning broadly subscribed to): one based on virtues and one based on liberalism. Many people will argue that they coincide in their practical answers (i.e. leaving individuals to make their own decisions is the system that will most often lead to proper action), but they are nonetheless conceptually distinct.
Under what I am calling the virtue theory people are good in so far as they achieve certain attributes. Classically, these virtues were are honesty, bravery, thrift, etc. But, anti-racism or devotion to effective altruism could merit someone in the same sense. People have worth in virtue of certain attributes they posses.
Liberalism wants people to have worth for just being people. But radically, they should posses equal worth. Their votes should count no matter how uninformed they may be. Their decisions should be respected no matter how obscene they may seem. The groups they belong to should be afforded equal dignity even if they have worse market incomes or records of criminal offense.
Freedom and equality are two ways of thinking about this undifferentiated consideration everyone is entitled to. Freedom respects everyone in choices they are making for themselves. Equality demands everyone have posses the material means and social esteem needed to live their lives as they see fit. As long as, you view people fundamentally as agents, creatures that matter because our of decisions. Freedom and equality will converge.
However, if you view people fundamentally as experiencers, freedom and equality diverge. The utilitarian desire to treat everyone’s happiness as equally important can run up against respecting people’s decisions. Modernity is only about a century and a half into reconceiving humans as product of biology rather than ensouled beings. As that biological view grows in confidence, expect freedom and equality to start diverging.