Savulescu and Cameron supported selectively locking down the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic on two grounds: first, that preserving total lockdown would entail levelling down and, second, that levelling down is wrong. Their first assumption has been thoroughly addressed, but more can be said about their wider antiegalitarian point that levelling down is simply wrong. Egalitarians are not defenceless against the levelling-down objection. Even though some consider it the most serious challenge to supporters of equality, egalitarianism possesses sound reasons to (...) assert, not only that something valuable is preserved when we level down, but also that preserving it may be, in certain circumstances, preferable to pursuing other fundamental moral goals. Although troublesome from a well-being maximising standpoint, levelling down ensures that healthcare policy reflects a commitment with the idea that people are equal in moral worth. That commitment is important enough to trump certain improvements in individual well-being. In the case of pandemic lockdowns, not all the interests protected by free movement are as fundamental as to pursue them at the cost of equality. Savulescu and Cameron’s framework is so reliant on the view that levelling down is wrong that it fails to account for the valuable loss that having the elderly suffer alone represents. (shrink)

Estrategia Minerva Podcast, una iniciativa para divulgar la filosofía.

La libre movilidad internacional es una meta política clásica del igualitarismo cosmopolita. Sin embargo, en la actualidad, el impacto de las fronteras en las oportunidades de las personas a nivel global no deriva solo de sus mecanismos de exclusión, sino también de su permeabilidad a ciertas formas de migración. Este artículo analiza las implicaciones de la emigración cualificada para la justicia productiva y defiende que, en determinadas circunstancias, los igualitaristas cosmopolitas deberían apoyar restricciones a la libertad de movimiento para articular (...) una defensa de ese derecho básico que sea más coherente con el conjunto de sus compromisos normativos. (shrink)

Este artículo reseña: Juan de Dios BARES PARTAL y Faustino ONCINA COVES (eds.), Utopías y ucronías. Una aproximación histórico-conceptual, Edicions Bellaterra, Barcelona, 2020, 405 pp.