Freedom and equality are mutually contradictory demands, not harmonious ideals

Evidence

Equality, he said, demands submission to a general norm; freedom “strives toward the uncondi- tional.” “Legislators or revolutionaries,” he pointed out, “who promise at the same time equality and freedom are fantasts or charlatans.” Perhaps it was an instinctive intuition of this condi- tion which made for the addition, to freedom and equality, of a third requirement: fraternity. For the rejection of coercion as a means of resolving the contradiction between freedom and equality leaves as this means only emphatic altruism. Equality, after being destroyed by freedom, can be re-established only through the ethical renunciation to utilize natural gifts. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 2573

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Shapiro’s guardian/betrayer framework: fraternity-as-altruism is a trust mechanism that resolves what coercion cannot. Also links to Simmel’s triad — the third term (fraternity) resolves a dyadic contradiction. — connects to: Universalizing equality made freedom-as-non-domination seem unrealistic — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 263; Children are born to equality but not in it, gaining freedom only with reason. — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 66
• DEFINE: Defines the freedom-equality antinomy and the role of fraternity (altruism) as the only non-coercive resolution.
• QUESTION: Goethe’s characterization of the freedom-equality contradiction deserves tracing — where in the eighteenth century does this tension actually emerge?