In memory of Professor Louise Marcil, from the University of Montreal, who died prematurely in April 1995, this special issue of Dialogue is dedicated to Equality. In addition to presenting the various contributions, the Introduction traces the main strands of Louise Marcil's work on equality. The impressive corpus of her writings on the subject is characterized throughout by sensitivity to the historical and conceptual complexity of egalitarian theories and policies and by a depth of scholarship, the richness of which defies classification into traditional philosophical schools. Moreover, far from being merely abstract scholarship, this work was clearly intended to strengthen actual egalitarian social projects, to which Louise Marcil was passionately committed. The contributions to this special issue of Dialogue have been selected in large part to reflect the diversity and scholarly standards of Louise Marcil's approach to equality as well as its engaged spirit.

After a short personal testimony by Jean-Claude Guidon, from the University of Montreal, Charles Coutel presents Condorcet as an original thinker of democratic equality. Paule-Monique Vernes argues in favour of seeing Hegel as the first philosopher who, before Marx, engaged in an in-depth analysis of the contradictions of the Civil Society and denounced the inequalities stemming from liberalism. Roberto Miguelez discusses equality among participants as a formal condition for action coordination based on dialogue, which is crucial to the democratic model.

Brenda Baker addresses a current trend by governments to shift responsibility for social services to the family. Among the deficiencies in grounds for such policies, she argues, are that they reinforce gendered inequalities. In his article, Kai Nielsen stengthens pro-egalitarian dimensions of John Rawls's theories by articulating a more sophisticated criterion of “reasonableness” than is found in Rawls's work. Analogously, Maurice Rickard defends Ronald Dworkin's link between liberty and equality, but argues that Dworkin's justification for this is insufficient, requiring, instead, a defence in terms of personal autonomy.

I submit what, I believe, is a fairly new definition of the nation, one which I call the sociopolitical conception. I try to avoid as much as possible the traditional dichotomy between the exclusively civic and ethnic accounts, and try to explain my reasons for doing so. I also adopt as a general framework a certain conceptual pluralism which allows me to use many different concepts of the nation. After that, I proceed by formulating some constraints on any acceptable new definition. My own sociopolitical conception is then finally introduced. The sociopolitical nation is a political community, most often composed, sociologically, of a national majority, national minorities, and individuals with other national origins. The concept of national majority is crucial for the account and refers to the largest sample in the world of a given population sharing a common language, history, and culture. National minorities are defined as extensions of neighbouring nations, while individuals of other national origins are those members of ethnic minorities that have come from immigration. There would be no sociopolitical nation if there were no national majority, but this is compatible with a pluricultural and multi-ethnic view of the nation, since the political community may also include national minorities and individuals with a different origin. I end the article by showing that this definition meets the constraints that were initially introduced.

Rencontre étonnante que cet extrait poétique tiré de l'œuvre de Stefan George et qui apparaît dans le livre que Raymond Klibansky a récemment publié avec Georges Leroux. On peut y voir une des références favorites de «Klib», le cher professeur de Louise; on peut aussi imaginer, sans trop rêver, que ces mots ont été récités devant elle, engendrant du même mouvement une résonance aussi douloureuse qu'inattendue. En un raccourci saisissant, ces quelques vers intolérablement sagaces résument en effet, avec toutes ses aspérités, le chemin qui conduit de la religion à la Raison. Louise a minutieusement, douloureusement, parcouru cette distance. Elle a vécu, à sa manière, une révolution tranquille.

This paper intends to focus on Condorcet's approach to the Principle of Equality. Condorcet, in effect, strenuously strives to counter the risks of equalitarianism, such as élitism. According to him, it is in the interest of the Republic and of public instruction to favour the diversity of talents and the spreading of enlightenment, since, in the end, it will benefit all citizens.

This paper attempts to take a new look at the famous Lewis Carroll paradox about Achilles and the Tortoise. It examines in particular the connections between Lewis Carroll's regress argument for logical inferences and a similar regress for practical inferences. The Tortoise's point of view is espoused: no norm of reasoning or of conduct can in itself “make the mind move,” only the brute force of belief can. This conclusion is a Humean one. But it does not imply that we renounce altogether the normative force of such principles of reasoning as modus ponens. Connexions with the Wittgensteinian rule-following problem are indicated.

This paper examines Claude Tresmontant's attempt to provide a philosophical argument in favour of God's existence using the results of modern science. Like many contemporary theists, Tresmontant believes that discoveries in the field of astrophysics, rightly interpreted, lead to the postulation of a deity. This paper challenges the philosophical presuppositions of Tresmontant's argument and the thesis that current cosmological theories can be used to construct a valid proof of the existence of God.

This article aims to show that, in the course of his analysis of Bourgeois Civil Society, Hegel formulates a philosophical theory of British society as it had been already described by A. Smith, and thereby anticipates our present “dual” societies which can be characterized by luxury and poverty. The Bourgeois Civil Society is seen as a necessary economical stage in the progressive satisfaction of social needs, but also as an insufficient one insofar as the abstract parallel sophistication of the needs themselves generates a plebeian class as a residue of the civil society which cannot be eliminated through colonial expansion. In Hegel's view, politics should remain in control of economics.

Though Habermas explicitly rejected psychoanalysis as a model for a critical theory of society, it seems to have continued to shape his thought beyond the publication of Knowledge and Human Interests. The conceptual framework underlying his more recent social theory (Theory of Communicative Action,) would also be indebted to the psychoanalytical paradigm. This thesis is developed through the idea of the pathology of society, which represents the cornerstone of a specifically critical theory of society. In his demonstration, the author establishes a structural relationship between psychical and social organization, and between individual pathology and the diagnostic of modern societies.

According to Michael Dummett, Wittgenstein rejects in the Philosophical Investigations the “realist” approach of the Tractatiu, and replaces it with the idea that meaning is “use”; Wittgenstein, Dummett holds, draws the “metaphysical consequences” of this by subscribing to a form of non-realism. In this paper I defend a version of Dummett's point that the Tractarian semantics is replaced in the Investigations by the notion that meaning is use, but I criticize his contention that Wittgenstein, as a consequence, subscribes to some variety of metaphysical non-realism.

Language plays a crucial role in human forms of action coordination. This paper examines problems concerning the satisfaction of a major and complex condition of coordination of actions grounded in dialogue, i.e., equality of argumentative competence. It is, indeed, the satisfaction of this condition that defines the autonomy of the subjects participating in and committed to a dialogue situation. From a political point of view, this question can be examined as a problem of dialogical democracy. This paper proposes the autonomy of subjects as a major condition for the realization of such a political form.