Amartya Sen is a renowned economist who has also made important contributions to philosophical thinking about distributive justice. These contributions tend to take the form of criticism of inadequate positions and insistence on making distinctions that will promote clear thinking about the topic. Sen is not shy about making substantive normative claims, but thus far he has avoided commitment to a theory of justice, in the sense of a set of principles that specifies what facts are relevant for policy choice (...) and determines, given a full characterization of any situation in terms of these relevant facts, what ought to be done in that situation. Moreover, Sen has expressed skepticism about the existence of a fully adequate theory in this sense. According to Sen there is a plurality of moral considerations that bear on choice of action and policy and no particular reason to think that weights can be attached nonarbitrarily to each consideration to yield a theory. (shrink)

The popularity of rule-consequentialism among philosophers has waxed and waned. Waned, mostly; at least lately. The idea that the morality that ought to claim allegiance is the ideal code of rules whose acceptance by everybody would bring about best consequences became the object of careful analysis about half a century ago, in the writings of J. J. C. Smart, John Rawls, David Lyons, Richard Brandt, Richard Hare, and others.1 They considered utilitarian versions of rule consequentialism but discovered flaws (...) in the view that attach to the wider consequentialist doctrine. In the eyes of many, the flaws were decisive. Brad Hooker has produced brilliant work that unsettles this complacent consensus.2 Over a period of several years he has produced a sustained and powerful defense of a version of rule consequentialism that does not obviously succumb to the criticisms that have been thought to render this doctrine a nonstarter. He acknowledges intellectual debts to Richard Brandt. But Hooker avoid certain excrescences in Brandt’s efforts to conceive of morality as an ideal code of rules. Most notably, Hooker eschews Brandt’s misguided attempt to derive some version of rule utilitarianism from an underlying commitment to some form of contractualism. Moreover, Hooker has worked to articulate a version of rule consequentialism in sufficient detail that one can see how the different parts of the doctrine hang together and how the best version of the.. (shrink)

Richard J. Arneson Word count 6932 Most people believe that partiality toward those near and dear to us is morally required. Parents ought to favor their own children over other people’s children, and friends ought to favor each other over strangers. Partiality toward extended kin, fellow clan members, co-nationals, neighbors, members of one’s own community, and other affiliates is often affirmed, though it is controversial or at least unclear just what sorts of social relationship generate obligations of partiality.

Richard J. Arneson version 7/27/99 Is having a disability more like being a member of a racially stigmatized group or like lacking a talent? Both analogies might be apt. The Americans with Disabilities Act stresses the former analogy. The framing thought is that people with disabilities are objects of prejudice and prejudiced behaviors which wrongfully exclude them from participation in important social practices such as the labor market. Think for example of a blind person whose job applications are always (...) automatically rejected because she is blind and without any consideration of her aptitude for this or that specific job. Such a person suffers wrongful discrimination and is denied equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Richard J. Arneson From Choice to Chance: Genes and the Just Society1 intelligently addresses difficult issues at the intersection of medical ethics and the theory of justice. The authors, Dan Brock, Allen Buchanan, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler, repeatedly emphasize their opinion that advances in genetic technology force upon us entirely new ethical questions which previous moral theories lack the resources to resolve.2 The claims that new scientific discoveries render previous moral theories obsolete should be regarded with suspicion. The (...) reader’s suspicion should be further aroused when she notes another feature of the authors’ theorizing that neatly fits the claim that we stand at the dawn of a new world of ethical theorizing. The authors’ discussion from start to finish stays at a middle level. By this I mean that the authors in each chapter begin with a few moral principles taken to be plausible or possibly plausible and examine their implications for issues raised by new genetic technology.3 This is not an exercise in applied ethics, because the principles initially invoked are subjected to criticism and scrutiny. But in almost every significant case the results are inconclusive. The moral puzzles that are raised are left unsolved, with moral reasons pointing toward opposed conclusions and the.. (shrink)

If you came upon a small child drowning in a pond, you ought to save the child even at considerable cost and risk to yourself. In 1972 Peter Singer observed that inhabitants of affluent industrialized societies stand in exactly the same relationship to the millions of poor inhabitants of poor undeveloped societies that you would stand to the small child drowning in the example just given. Given that you ought to help the drowning child, by parity of reasoning we ought (...) to help the impoverished needy persons around the globe. To capture this intuition Singer proposed this principle of benevolence: If one can prevent some significant bad from occurring, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, one ought morally to do so.1 Premature death caused by preventable disease, injury, and poverty is uncontroversially a significant bad. Donations to charitable organizations such as Oxfam can prevent many of these deaths around the world, so Singer’s principle holds that we ought to donate (or take some action that is comparably efficient at saving lives). (shrink)

When the assertion that some agent is exploiting a person connotes that the exploitation is morally wrong, what is this wrong? Some maintain that exploitation need not involve unfair division of advantages, but instead is essentially domination for self-enrichment. This essay denies this claim and upholds the idea that exploitation claims concern unfair distribution. Some maintain that the hypothetical fully competitive market exchange price can serve, at least in some contexts, as the standard for assessing whether voluntary interaction is exploitative. (...) This essay denies that the idea of the fully competitive market price can serve in this role. Nor should we accept a pure luck egalitarian claim that would identify fair distribution with the outcome of ideally competitive markets proceeding from fair initial distribution. (shrink)

Should government be neutral "on the question of the good life, or of what gives value to life"?1 Some political theorists propose that governmental neutrality is a core commitment of any liberalism worth the name and a requirement of justice. For them, neutrality is the appropriate generalization of the ideal of religious tolerance. The state should be neutral in matters of religion, and neutral also in all controversies concerning the nature of the good or the ways in which it is (...) valuable and worthwhile to live. (shrink)

Motivation to Permissibility 780 III. The Deception Accounts of Wrongful Discrimination 783 IV. Discrimination from Animus and Prejudice 787 V. An Objection 789 VI. Innocent Discrimination 790 VII. Disparate Impact 793 VIII. Suspect Classifications 795..

This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from an off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Please visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.

The theory of justice pioneered by John Rawls explores a simple idea--that the concern of distributive justice is to compensate individuals for misfortune. Some people are blessed with good luck, some are cursed with bad luck, and it is the responsibility of society--all of us regarded collectively--to alter the distribution of goods and evils that arises from the jumble of lotteries that constitutes human life as we know it. Some are lucky to be born wealthy, or into a favorable socializing (...) environment, or with a tendency to be charming and intelligent and persevering and the like. These people are likely to be successful in the economic marketplace and to achieve success in other important ways over the course of their lives. On the other hand some people are, as we say, born to lose. Distributive justice stipulates that the lucky should transfer some or all of their gains due to luck to the unlucky. (shrink)

Gerald Gaus’s latest book achieves a remarkable, definitive development of the public reason project whose roots can be traced back to Locke and Kant and which had already attained its full expression in the later writing of John Rawls—or so we had thought! In fact Gaus takes a long step beyond Rawls.Gaus (2011). Page numbers enclosed in parentheses of the text refer to this book. For John Rawls on public reason, see especially his A Theory of Justice (1999); also Rawls (...) (1996). In my view we should have a raised eyebrows response to the public reason project, but this does not gainsay Gaus’s achievement in rigorously working out its implications. The book develops an account of the justified imposition of moral constraints and, following that, of justified political arrangements. These comments focus on the former.SummaryLike any genuinely original work, this one admits of quick summary. In everyday life, people make moral demands on each other, and claim a special authority in making. (shrink)

Does it make sense to hold that, if it is bad that some people are worse off than others, it is worse if those who are worse off come to be so through sheer bad luck that it is beyond their power to control? In her contribution to this symposium, Susan Hurley cautions against a closely related fallacy: from the fact that people have come to an unequal condition through unchosen bad luck, it does not follow that, if we aim (...) to undo the influence of unchosen luck, we ought to institute equality of condition. Forswearing the fallacy that Hurley analyses is compatible with answering the question affirmatively, and more generally with holding that principles of distributive justice should be sensitive to the distinction between chosen and unchosen bad luck. This essay explores how this might be done. (shrink)

..............................................................................................101 I. The Idea of a Noncombatant ........................................................104 II. The Moral Shield Protecting Noncombatants.............................106 A. Accommodation.......................................................................107 B. Guilty Past ...............................................................................107 C. Guilty Bystander Trying to Inflict Harm .................................109 D. Guilty Bystander Disposed to Inflict Harm .............................109 E. Guilty Bystander Exulting in Anticipated Evil ........................109 F. Fault Forfeits First Doctrine in Just Warfare ...........................110 III. Noncombatants as Wrongful Trespassers ...................................110 IV. The Noncombatant Status of Captured Soldiers ........................111 V. Guerrilla Combat ..........................................................................116 VI. Morally Innocent Unjust Combatants.........................................118 VII. Should Rights Reflect What (...) We Can Know? ............................121 VIII. Absolute and Moderate Construction of the Revised Right.. (shrink)

Exploitation is interacting with another in a way that takes unfair advantage of that person. Exploitation is thought to be morally wrong even when it would bring about the best attainable outcome, hence conflicts with the consequentialist morality that holds one ought always to do whatever would bring about the best outcome. This essay aims to reconcile norms against exploitation and act consequentialism. A puzzle about exploitation is raised and resolved.

What is the best standard of interpersonal comparison for a broadly egalitarian theory of social justice?1 A broadly egalitarian theory is one that holds that justice requires that institutions and individual actions should be arranged to improve, to some degree, the quality of life of those who are worse off than others, or very badly off, or both.2 I shall add the specification that to qualify as broadly egalitarian, the theory must in some circumstances require action to aid the worse (...) off or very badly off even when such action would not maximize the aggregate sum of utility, welfare, or well-being. Any such view needs a standard of interpersonal comparison that allows us to distinguish better off from worse off persons. Recently two types of standard have attracted adherents. One is the resource-oriented approach developed by John Rawls and others, and the other is the capability approach associated with the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.3 Rawls has affirmed that the proper measure is an index of primary social goods, flexible, multi-purpose resources such that any rational person wants more rather than fewer of them. (shrink)

The critique of utilitarianism forms a crucial subplot in the complex analysis of social justice that John Rawls develops in his first book, A Theory of Justice.1 The weaknesses of utilitarianism indicate the need for an alternative theory, and at many stages of the argument the test for the adequacy of the new theory that Rawls elaborates is whether it can be demonstrated to be superior to the utilitarian rival. The account of social justice shifts in the transition to Rawls’s (...) second great book, Political Liberalism. The account of what is wrong with utilitarianism undergoes revision as well. In this essay I examine both the initial critique of utilitarianism and its transformation in Rawls’s later writings. To anticipate my conclusion: Rawls’s proposal that we should maximin rather than maximize leads to an interesting standoff. The argument for maximin is not compelling, but straight additive maximization of the utilitarian sort is revealed to be merely one possible function among many, any of which (for all we know) correct morality might instruct us to maximize. Rawls further urges that utilitarianism goes astray in taking the maximandum, the thing to be maximized, to be utility rather than primary social goods. The argument for primary social goods is not compelling, but it does not follow that utility alone is to be maximized. The espousal of the ideal of legitimacy in Political Liberalism does not affect these conclusions, and the arguments.. (shrink)

The feminist critique of liberalism runs parallel to the Marxist critique of liberal equality and rights. In each case the objection is that a set of liberties and rights formally guaranteed for all does nothing to prevent unfair inequalities in substantive life prospects from burgeoning within this formally equal framework. Workers and capitalists are formally free to trade with each other on any mutually agreeable terms but the enormous disparities in ownership of property bring it about that workers are forced (...) to sell their labor power for subsistence wages. Men and women are formally free to contract with each other and deal with each other on any mutually agreeable terms but social norms, the threat advantage that accrues to men in virtue of their being on the average physically larger and stronger, the social inheritance by men of greater property and political power initially gained in brutally misogynist regimes, and so on conspire to leave women worse off than men on the average in life prospects. (shrink)

Imagine a democratic society in which all members are full citizens and citizens relate to each other as equals. Social arrangements bring it about, to the maximum possible extent, that all adults are full functioning members of society. The society is not marred by caste hierarchies, invidious status distinctions, or unequal power relations. No one is able to dominate others. Moreover, the urge to dominate over others does not loom large in social life. Each person's relations with others manifest the (...) belief, shared by all, that each person is fundamentally the equal of all others and that this equality calls for treating others with civility and mutual respect and forbearance. Each is viewed as having the right to live as she chooses, within broad constraints of morality. This individual entitlement to freedom establishes a strong presumption against paternalism, restricting a person's liberty against her will for her own good. Regarding distributive justice, the norm is that each should be enabled to have enough by way of resources and opportunities to sustain herself as a full functioning member of democratic society. (shrink)

In chapter four of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick raised interesting questions about whether or not it is ever morally acceptable to act against what are agreed to be an individual's natural moral rights. The pursuit of these questions opens up issues concerning the specific content of these individual rights. This essay explores Nozick's questions by posing examples and using our considered responses to them to specify the shape of individual rights. The exploration provisionally concludes that a conception of (...) individual moral rights quite different from Nozick's looks attractive and merits further development. Footnotesa I thank Ellen Frankel Paul for helpful, constructive, and substantive comments on a prior draft of this essay. It goes without saying that her comments outstripped my ability to respond. (shrink)

Mill holds that in some of these cases the restriction of liberty that is proposed is permissible according to the liberty principle. In other cases, the proposed restriction violates the liberty principle as Mill understands it. (Mill first formulates the "liberty principle" on p. 9.).

Governments compel their subjects to obey laws and duly empowered commands of public officials. Under what circumstances is this coercion by governments morally legitimate? In the contemporary world, many say a legitimate government must be democratic, and, with qualifications, I agree. (Let us say that in a democracy all nontransient adult residents are eligible to be citizens and each citizen if free to vote and run for office in free elections that determine who shall be lawmakers and top public officials.) (...) More controversially, I hold that what renders the democratic form of government for a nation morally legitimate (when it is) is that its operation over time produces better consequences for people than any feasible alternative mode of governance. (shrink)

Here is a picture of a society that one might suppose to be ideally just in its distributive practices: All members of the society are equally free to live in any way that they might choose, and institutions are arranged so that the equal freedom available to all is at the highest feasible level. What, if anything, is wrong with this picture? One might object against the insistence on equal freedom for all and propose that freedom should instead be maximinned, (...) or leximinned, or maximized, or distributed according to some alternative norm. In this essay I wish to set aside the choice of distributive norm. The question for this essay is whether freedom in any sense is the aspect of people's condition that is the right basis of interpersonal comparison for a theory of distributive justice. I approach this question by analyzing some rival conceptions of freedom. (shrink)

In Wuthering Heights a man and a woman fall in love and their passion for each other wreaks havoc on several lives, theirs included. Long after his beloved is dead, Heathcliff’s life revolves entirely around his love for her. Frustrated by events, his grand romantic passion expresses itself in destructive spasms of antisocial behavior. Catherine, the object of this passion, marries another man on a whim, but describes her feelings for him as like superficial foliage, whereas ‘her love for Heathcliff (...) resembles eternal rocks beneath.’ ‘I am Heathcliff,’ she declares, shortly before dying at the age of nineteen. (shrink)

The phrase “applied moral philosophy” might naturally be understood as the application of general moral principles to descriptions of particular situations in order to derive conclusions about what ought to be done in those situations, but given the lack of agreement on general principles, any such conclusions would be disputable. Other possibilities are that applied moral philosophy is ethical thought directed toward concrete rather than abstract moral issues, or toward practical moral problems that arise in actual social life rather than (...) toward imagined hypotheticals. According to the reflective equilibrium conception, we should seek to reach a set of moral beliefs that hang together coherently, the general beliefs explaining and justifying the more particular beliefs that seem acceptable after reflection. On this conception, a judgment at any level of generality can reasonably shape our all things considered responses to practical moral controversies, so no important line separates applied and nonapplied ethics. (shrink)

• Check that the text is complete and that all figures, tables and their legends are included. Also check the accuracy of special characters, equations, and electronic supplementary material if applicable. If necessary refer to the Edited manuscript.

Luck egalitarianism is a social justice doctrine that holds that it is morally bad and unfair if some people are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own. The doctrine has attracted criticisms. G. A. Cohen has defended luck egalitarianism without conceding ground to its critics by affirming that some inequalities that egalitarian justice principles do not condemn are nonetheless incompatible with an antimarket ideal of community that we should accept and—subject to feasibility constraints—implement. This essay (...) denies that luck egalitarianism as construed by Cohen is ethically defensible. For starters, equality of condition is not per se morally desirable. The criticism that luck egalitarianism is too harsh in the treatment it urges for those who are in peril as a result of their own fault or choice remains cogent when directed at Cohen’s reformulation. It remains possible that the inequalities Cohen finds to be per se undesirable are in fact instrumentally undesirable. (shrink)

According to Rawls, the principles of justice are principles that determine a fair resolution of conflicts of interest among persons in a society. “A set of principles is required for choosing among the various social arrangements which determine this division of advantages and for underwriting an agreement on the proper distributive shares” (p. 4). Different interpretations or conceptions of justice fill out this core concept; a theory of justice seeks a best conception. Justice takes priority over other normative claims—as Rawls (...) states, justice is the “first virtue of social institutions.” The principles of justice are principles to regulate what Rawls calls the “basic structure of society,” that is, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation” (p. 6). Why focus on the basic structure? “The basic structure is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound and present from the start. The intuitive idea here is that this structure contains various social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of life determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over others. These are especially deep inequalities. Not only are they pervasive, but they affect men’s initial chances in life; yet they cannot possibly be justified by an appeal to the notions of merit or desert. It is these inequalities, presumably inevitable in the basic structure of any society, to which the principles of social justice must in the first instance apply” (p. 7). (shrink)

Consequentialism broadly speaking is the idea that the moral rightness and wrongness of a thing (an act, a policy, an institution) is determined by the quality of its consequences. A prominent version is act consequentialism, which holds one morally always ought to do an act whose outcome is no worse than the outcome of any other act one might have done instead. This doctrine has little content—no commitment is involved as to how one should evaluate consequences—but is still highly controversial. (...) What is called common-sense morality or CSM—moral views it is supposed many people embrace—rejects consequentialism as both too demanding and too permissive. Too permissive, because CSM includes constraints, rules one should not break even if doing so would produce the best attainable outcome. Too demanding, because CSM includes options. The demands of CSM mostly involve refraining from harming others in certain ways, and provided one observes these constraints, one is morally at liberty to do whatever one chooses, whether or not that produces the best outcome. In most situations, according to CSM, morality allow one many options, alternative acts one is morally permitted to do. (shrink)

Religion is a trap and a snare for states in the modern world. People fervently believe in religious doctrines, which they take to be central for the guidance of their own lives and pivotal for determining morally appropriate and just laws and public policies. The religious beliefs of members of modern societies tend to be wildly diverse. They conflict with each other in ways that resist sensible compromise. Jesus is either the Son of God, the Savior whose teachings will lead (...) us to eternal salvation, or he is not. (shrink)

The principle of patriotism says that we are morally required to favor our own nation and its people. But there is an opposed moral perspective: cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitan regards herself as a citizen of the world and holds that national borders lack intrinsic, noninstrumental moral significance. The cosmopolitan view is that people are people, and our common humanity is the ground of our moral duties toward people. This paper examines some recent arguments for patriotism, and finds them all wanting. In (...) the absence of any good argument for patriotism, perhaps we should consider cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

What is "terrorism"? Under what circumstances, if any, is terrorism morally acceptable? This course examines theories of just war and just warfare. The theories aim to specify under what circumstances and in what ways--in the context of waging war-- it is morally acceptable to kill people. One question that arises here is whether or not there are types of killings and threatened killings that are always wrong, whatever the consequences. Another question that arises is what it is morally permissible to (...) do when one is threatened by morally wrongful violence, by terrorism, for example. The aim of the course is to encourage your own thought and reflection on these difficult moral questions. (shrink)

After a period of somewhat chaotic construction efforts, the dust is starting to settle on global justice theory. The alternative theoretical options are gaining clear shape. Mathias Risse's excellent On Global Justice is a work of judicious consolidation. He develops a nuanced and complex position that he calls “pluralist internationalism.” Its starting point is the claim that there are several different grounds of justice, that is, reasons for identifying a certain population of people and holding that they have claims of (...) justice against each other, the proper adjudication of which is settled by a certain type of principle. Different principles may apply to different groups of people identified in different ways. (shrink)

In this excellent book Arthur Ripstein develops a broadly Kantian interpretation of tort law and criminal law that is noteworthy for its spirited defense of core features of Anglo-American law and for its uncompromising dismissal of the so-called law and economics approach to these matters. A final chapter extends the analysis to the topic of distributive justice.

Mill holds that in some of these cases the restriction of liberty that is proposed is permissible according to the liberty principle. In other cases, the proposed restriction violates the liberty principle as Mill understands it. (Mill first formulates the "liberty principle" on p. 9.).

[Opening sentences:]What business does the government have in sticking its nose into people’s private affairs? What affairs could be more legitimately private than relationships involving sex and love? LOCKEAN LIBERTARIANISM These questions resonate with many individuals across a wide range of ideologies and beliefs. For many of us these questions will strike us as rhetorical questions to which the obvious answers are “none” and “none.” These responses reflect a Lockean libertarian strain in the social thinking of many intelligent and thoughtful (...) people. But of course matters are more complex, even as viewed from a Lockean libertarian perspective.1 Sex and love tend to bring about new children, and causing a child to exist is a social act with wide consequences for other people who could not be supposed to consent to bear these consequences. Libertarians will regard with equanimity the showering of externalities in the form of benefits that typically accompany the creation and upbringing of a responsible competent person who becomes a useful member of society. The libertarian will insist that the receipt of such benefits does not generate any reciprocal obligations to benefit those who benefit us in these unconsented to ways.—at least, not obligations that are legitimately enforceable and that justify forcible imposition on people’s liberty to lead their lives as they choose. But bringing children into the world can and often does impose net costs on people who do not consent to bear these costs. The introduction of one extra person may strain scarce resources... (shrink)

In 1980, Amartya Sen’s essay ‘Equality of What?’ stimulated a still ongoing discussion on the question: ‘Insofar as one holds that social justice demands rendering people’s condition more nearly equal, what aspects of people’s condition should be equalized?’ (Sen, 1982). In what respects should people be rendered more nearly the same? Prominent responses include resources, fundamental liberties, capabilities, advantages, welfare, and opportunities for welfare.1 There is a more general question in this neighbourhood that should be of interest. We might conceive (...) of social justice as requiring us to maximize some function of some aspect of people’s condition. The relevant aspect might be any of the candidates just listed or some hitherto unnoticed alternative. But it is not obvious in advance of argument that social justice requires equality of any sort. Perhaps the function we should be maximizing requires us to equalize, but it might be ‘maximize the average!’, ‘maximize the aggregate!’, ‘maximin!’, ‘equalize at the highest feasible level!’, ‘maximax!’, ‘prioritize!’, ‘maximize the number above sufficiency!’, or yet another alternative. The more general question about the nature of social justice requirements is ‘Whatever of what?’ There are two issues to resolve, not just one. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of justice frequently suppose that a legitimate state does not coerce people to comply with values or principles that they could reasonably reject. This ideal of legitimacy is thought to imply neutrality on the good: The State should not coerce people to comply with controversial conceptions of the good (which people could reasonably reject). As Ronald Dworkin puts the point, the government's policies should “be neutral on the question of the good life, or of what gives value to (...) life." Liberal neutrality is sometimes described as a generalization of policies of religious tolerance: Just as the state should be neutral with respect to religious questions, so too the state should be neutral with respect to questions about the good life.". (shrink)