Calum Miller recently argued that a commitment to a very modest form of egalitarianism—equality between non-disabled human adults—implies fetal personhood. Miller claims that the most plausible basis for human equality is in being human—an attribute which fetuses have—therefore, abortion is likely to be morally wrong. In this paper, I offer a plausible defence for the view that equality between non-disabled human adults does not imply fetal personhood. I also offer a challenge for Miller’s view.

Mental-threshold egalitarianism, well-known examples of which include Jeff McMahan’s two-tiered account of the wrongness of killing and Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights, divides morally considerable beings into equals and unequals on the basis of their individual mental capacities. In this paper, I argue that the line that separates equals from unequals is unavoidably arbitrary and implausibly associates an insignificant difference in empirical reality with a momentous difference in moral status. In response to these objections, McMahan has proposed (...) the introduction of an intermediate moral status. I argue that this move ultimately fails to address the problem. I conclude that, if we are not prepared to give up moral equality, our full and equal moral status must be grounded in a binary property that is not a threshold property. I tentatively suggest that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is such a property, and a plausible candidate. (shrink)

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen tackles all the major questions concerning luck egalitarianism, providing deep, penetrating and original discussion of recent academic discourses on distributive justice as well as responses to some of the main objections in the literature. It offers a new answer to the “Why equality?” and “Equality of what?” questions, and provides a robust luck egalitarian response to the recent criticisms of luck egalitarianism by social relations egalitarians. This systematic, theoretical introduction illustrates the broader picture of distributive justice (...) and enables the reader to understand the core intuitions underlying, or conflicting with, luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

Relational egalitarians argue that democratic institutions are justified by appeal to relational equality. According to the skeptical challenge, equality of political power is not required for relational equality, and the relational egalitarian case for democracy fails. I defend the relational egalitarian justification of democracy. I develop an analysis of social status and show that inequalities of power will not entail inequalities of status. I then show that inequalities of power will robustly cause inequalities of status and argue (...) that this vindicates the relational egalitarian case for democracy, because such theories have a much more pragmatic standard of success for the justification of democracy than conceptual necessity. I consider the objection that if inequalities of power robustly cause inequalities of status, then relational egalitarians should also oppose democratic institutions, because officials such as legislators or judges will have more power than citizens. In reply, I argue that relational egalitarians are only opposed to inequalities of status that mark a failure of recognition respect, and that inequalities of status that follow from democratically licensed inequalities of power will not mark such a failure. I conclude that the skeptical challenge is unsuccessful, and that the relational egalitarian justification of democracy is sound. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relational critique of distributive conceptions of justice, according to which the proper focus of egalitarian justice is the egalitarian nature of social relations rather than the equal distribution of certain goods. It maintains that the relational critique constitutes a fundamental challenge to distributive egalitarianism only if it rejects the “core distributive thesis” that holds that the distribution of some nonrelational goods has relation-independent significance for justice. It argues that several relational proposals are compatible with that (...) thesis, and therefore constitute extensions or revisions of the distributive conception rather than alternatives to it, and that those relational views that reject the core distributive thesis are the least plausible ones. Finally, the chapter shows that relational views are often ambiguous regarding the nature of the significance of egalitarian relations, i.e. whether it consists in their contribution to well-being, or in being the fitting response to equal moral status. (shrink)

Equality as a bare concept refers to two or more distinct things or people being the same in some dimension. Different forms of equality are distinguished by the dimension that is held to be the same. Within political theory, three main forms of equality can be distinguished: moral equality, political equality, and substantive equality. “Moral equality” refers to each individual having the same inherent dignity as a human being, and therefore being worthy of respect. “Political equality,” by contrast, refers to (...) each individual having the same basic rights of involvement in political processes, e.g., by voting or running for office. Modern political theories generally accept that each individual has moral and political equality. The distinguishing feature of egalitarianism is its interpretation of this equal status as requiring substantive equality, i.e., that each individual be placed in the same social or economic conditions. Egalitarianism is an inherently normative view, and more specifically, a view about distributive justice—that is, about the appropriate distribution of benefits and burdens. The account of these benefits and burdens varies from one egalitarian theory to another. For instance, some egalitarians believe that levels of benefit should be measured in terms of resources, others in terms of well-being, and still others in terms of basic capabilities. Egalitarians also disagree on whether benefits should be distributed equally or whether equality of substantive condition in some other sense (i.e., equal opportunity or equal social standing) might be sufficient. Accordingly, each egalitarian theory has its own account of equality. These theories as a whole contrast with non-egalitarian theories, such as right libertarianism or conservativism, which deny that people’s condition should be made equal in any substantive sense. In practical terms, egalitarianism is strongly associated with the political left, but different brands of egalitarianism are associated with different brands of left-wing politics, from traditional socialism or social democracy to a less distribution-focused politics of identity. This article provides an overview of egalitarianism, primarily focusing on its development in contemporary political theory. (shrink)

People’s health is hugely affected by where they live, their occupational status and their socio-economic position. It has been widely argued that the presence of such social determinants in health provides good reasons to reject luck egalitarianism as a theory of distributive justice in health. The literature provides different reasons why this responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice should not be applied to health. The critiques submit that the social circumstances undermine or remove people’s responsibility for their health; responsibility (...) sensitive health policies would adversely affect those who are worst off and; the luck egalitarian approach to health distracts from the important task of rectifying socio-economic influences on people's health and provides individualistic solutions to collective problems. But for each of these variants of the critique luck egalitarianism provides suitable answers. The literature on social determinants is no detriment to the project of applying luck egalitarianism to health. (shrink)

This paper identifies a challenge for liberal relational egalitarians—namely, how to respond to the prospect of emergent inequalities of power, status, and influence arising unintentionally through the free exercise of fundamental individual liberties over time. I argue that these emergent social inequalities can be produced through patterns of nonmalicious choices, that they can in fact impede the full realization of relational equality, and that it is possible they cannot be eliminated entirely without abandoning fundamental liberal commitments to leave individuals (...) substantial discretion in their personal lives. In such cases, I argue that liberal egalitarians should accept fair relational equality—a demanding but nevertheless imperfect form of relational equality. (shrink)

This dissertation identifies and responds to a problem for liberal relational egalitarians. There is a prima facie worry about the compatibility of liberalism and relational egalitarianism, concerning the requirements of equality in informal social life. Liberalism at least involves a commitment to leaving individuals substantial discretion to pursue their own conceptions of the good. Relational equality is best understood as a kind of deliberative practice about social institutions and practices. Patterns of otherwise innocuous social choices (e.g., where to live, (...) whom to befriend or marry) can create emergent, severe differentials in power, status, and influence, and when they do they can threaten relational equality. If relational equality required individuals to subordinate personal choices to egalitarian considerations, it would run into conflict with liberal commitments. In response, I defend the value of accepting an imperfect realization of relational equality. What I call fair relational equality demands that members of society treat some informal social norms and practices as part of the basic structure of society, in need of justification. Three practices are required to meet that demand. First, the relational-egalitarian society must develop institutional strategies to preempt or mitigate tendencies toward emergent inequality as they are identified. Second, members of society must engage in broad social deliberation about the norms and expectations of informal social interaction. Third, they must be willing to reform social practices where doing so does not impinge on important personal projects and values. (shrink)

In his important new book National responsibility and global justice, David Miller presents a systematic challenge to existing theories of global justice. In particular, he argues that cosmopolitan egalitarianism must be rejected. Such views, Miller maintains, would place unacceptable burdens on the most productive political communities, undermine national self-determination, and disincentivize political communities from taking responsibility for their fate. They are also impracticable and quite unrealistic, at least under present conditions. Miller offers an alternative account that conceives global justice (...) in terms of a minimum set of basic rights that belong to human beings everywhere. Primary responsibility for securing such rights for an individual lies with his or her state, but in so far as these rights go unprotected, responsibilities for fulfilling them may fall on outsiders. While less ambitious that cosmopolitan egalitarian justice, Miller argues that his own view would nevertheless enable us to articulate what is most morally objectionable about our current world. In this article it is argued that none of Miller's critiques of cosmopolitan egalitarianism is effective, and that while certainly preferable to the status quo, a world governed by Miller's principles is not an attractive ideal. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon’s work on the value of equality provides the resources for developing a powerful and distinctive contractualist egalitarian view. This view acknowledges a range of egalitarian concerns, of a diverse nature, and points us towards a picture of the place of equality in the normative landscape that is richer and more complex than some other alternative views. I describe the outlines of this contractualist egalitarian view, addressing questions regarding its strength and scope. I then discuss the relationship of (...) equality to other values, such as fairness and community, and examine the contrast between contractualist egalitarian and luck egalitarian views. I conclude with a sketch of some of the practical implications that might follow from further pursuit of Scanlon’s insights on the value of equality, in the hope that this may suggest an interesting direction of travel for further work. (shrink)

This paper argues that land and resource rights are often essential in overcoming colonial inequality and devaluation of indigenous populations and cultures. It thereby criticizes global welfare egalitarians that promote the abolition of national sovereignty over resources in the name of increased equality. The paper discusses two ways in which land and resource rights contribute to decolonization and the eradication of the associated inequality. First, it proposes that land and resource rights have acquired a status-conferring function for colonized peoples (...) so that possession of full personhood and relational equality is partially expressed through the possession of land and resource rights. Second, it suggests that successful internal decolonization depends on access to and control over land and resources, especially for indigenous peoples. (shrink)

This essay critically examines the idea that "identity " or "difference " might be proper objects of principles of respect. The author suggests that this idea makes sense only at the cost of the egalitarianism to which its adherents usually subscribe. The essay also shows that liberal interpretations of respect can evade this problem and reaches this conclusion on the basis of an analysis of the concept of respect and its connections with notions of status.

Rawlsian theory notoriously claims that basic principles of justice apply to the design of a society’s basic structure. G. A. Cohen found it disturbingly convenient to treat fundamental principles as merely political rather than personal—that is, as applying exclusively to questions of institutional design and saying nothing about how to live. Instead, to Cohen, a sincere champion of egalitarian principles would, as they say, “walk the talk.”.

In any normal population, health is unequally distributed across different age groups. Are such age-based health inequalities unjust? A divide has recently developed within egalitarian theories of...

In A Matter of Principle, Ronald Dworkin discusses the role a political morality should play in decisions about when the law should be obeyed and enforced, and even what law is. Noticing that liberalism was once a quasi-consensus theory in Great Britain and the United States – and, therefore, a natural candidate to that role in those countries – Dworkin argues that the loss of that status is due to an alleged failure of liberal political theorists to identify a (...) kind of egalitarianism as the constitutive principle on which liberalism is based. My aim in this paper is to advance arguments against such an influential claim that a certain egalitarianism would be the constitutive principle of political liberalism. (shrink)

According to a diverse and widely popular family of moral theories, there is a class of individuals – typically humans or persons – who have the very same, full moral status. Individuals not falling into that class count for less, or not at all, morally speaking. In this article, I identify two problems for such theories, the mapping problem and the problem of misgrounded value, and argue that they are serious enough to be decisive. I will then propose an (...) alternative account of full and equal moral status that avoids those problems. In grounding full moral status in phenomenal consciousness, it preserves the idea that you and I are equal, but at the same time radically expands the community of moral equals. I conclude by discussing some practical implications of my proposal. (shrink)

In contemporary debates about justice, political philosophers take themselves to be engaged with a subject that’s narrower than the whole of morality. Many contemporary liberals, notably John Rawls, understand this narrowness in terms of context specificity. On their view, justice is the part of morality that applies to the context of a society’s institutions, but only has indirect application to the context of citizens’ personal lives. In contrast, many value pluralists, notably G.A. Cohen, understand justice’s narrowness in terms of singularity (...) against a plural background. On their view, justice is one fundamental value amongst a plurality of fundamental values. The purpose of my thesis is to establish that the pluralist conception of justice’s narrowness is theoretically significant and true. To establish its theoretical significance, I argue that proper attention to the ways in which different understandings of narrowness inform the work of contemporary egalitarians explains a considerable amount of disagreement between them concerning the content and scope of distributive justice. On the one hand, I’ll argue that if we understand justice’s narrowness in the manner Cohen and other pluralists do, i.e., understand a conception of justice to be a conception of a particular fundamental value, then both luck-egalitarianism and the claim that justice extends to the personal context are compelling. On the other hand, I’ll argue that if we understand justice’s narrowness in a contextual manner, i.e., understand justice to comprise one or more all-things-considered principles adopted for the institutional context, then both luck-egalitarianism and the claim that justice extends to the personal context prove implausible. To establish the truth of the pluralist conception of narrowness, I argue first, that the contextual understanding is only plausible if fairness should be understood procedurally instead of substantively; and second, that substantive fairness cannot be eliminated, as specifying the content of procedural fairness requires a substantive criterion. The upshot is that justice’s narrowness is best understood in terms of singularity against a plural background, rather than in terms of context specificity. (shrink)

What kind of equality should we value and why? Current debate centres around whether distributive equality is valuable. However, it is not the only (potentially) morally significant form of equality. David Miller and T. M. Scanlon have emphasised the importance of social equality—a strongly egalitarian notion distinct from distributive equality, and which cannot be reduced to a concern for overall welfare or the welfare of the worst-off. However, as debate tends to focus on distribution, social equality has been neglected and (...) we do not have a clear understanding of what it is and why it might be valuable. This paper aims to address this gap. (shrink)

This article discusses the removal of voting rights from those convicted of crimes. I focus on two recent defences of penal disenfranchisement: firstly, I question one justification of the view that voting rights are conditional on the fulfilment of certain responsibilities that offenders fail to meet. Secondly, I criticise an expressivist justification of disenfranchisement based on the idea that it is uniquely suited to express dissociation from serious wrongdoing. While embracing the expressivist perspective of the latter line of argument, I (...) argue that disenfranchisement also expresses attitudes that are incompatible with the commitment to equality. Disenfranchisement conveys the judgment that offenders are not fit to participate in the democratic process. In doing so, it violates the duty of the state to treat all its citizens with equal respect and undermines offenders’ equal status. Moreover, this policy fosters objectionable inequalities of esteem: other members of the community are very likely to internalise the judgment that offenders are second‐class citizens and to regard them as inferior, which in turn undermines their status in society. (shrink)

This article discusses the removal of voting rights from those convicted of crimes. I focus on two recent defences of penal disenfranchisement: firstly, I question one justification of the view that voting rights are conditional on the fulfilment of certain responsibilities that offenders fail to meet. Secondly, I criticise an expressivist justification of disenfranchisement based on the idea that it is uniquely suited to express dissociation from serious wrongdoing. While embracing the expressivist perspective of the latter line of argument, I (...) argue that disenfranchisement also expresses attitudes that are incompatible with the commitment to equality. Disenfranchisement conveys the judgment that offenders are not fit to participate in the democratic process. In doing so, it violates the duty of the state to treat all its citizens with equal respect and undermines offenders’ equal status. Moreover, this policy fosters objectionable inequalities of esteem: other members of the community are very likely to internalise the judgment that offenders are second‐class citizens and to regard them as inferior, which in turn undermines their status in society. (shrink)

This book is the first in-depth attempt to provide a moral assessment of the heart of the modern human rights enterprise: the system of international legal human rights.

Although egalitarianism has been the dominant orthodoxy in Anglophone social and political philosophy for many decades, there have been surprisingly few attempts to account for the axiom on which it rests, namely that human moral worth does not come in degrees. This article begins by rehearsing and evaluating two families of approaches to the grounding problem. The first favours accounts that seek to preserve consistency with metaphysical naturalism, while the second relies on more philosophically contentious claims about the metaphysical (...) status of the human person. I then outline reasons for supposing that none of these accounts of basic equality offers a convincing theoretical foundation for egalitarianism. I conclude by sketching permutations of a theological account before arguing that one of these variations satisfies many of the explanatory criteria that a successful solution requires. (shrink)

I argue that the often-heard claim that all serious present-day political philosophers subscribe to the principle of equal respect and concern or to the doctrine of equal moral status or are in some other fundamental sense egalitarians is wrong. Also wrong is the further claim that the usual methods currently used in political philosophy presuppose basic equality. I further argue that liberal egalitarianism itself is wrong. There is no universal duty “of equal respect and concern” towards every person, (...) for one does not owe one’s nice sister and a serial rapist equal respect and concern. There is also no duty of the state to respect all citizens equally, for a state need not be equally concerned about murderous criminals on the one hand and their innocent victims on the other. The potential maneuver of saving liberal egalitarianism by claiming that people have equal rights is unsuccessful. Human beings clearly do not have equal rights, nor are they born with equal rights; and merely having an equality of some rights, for example of “basic” or human ones, would not suffice for egalitarianism. Appeals to “recognition respect” and related concepts are also to no avail. Trying to go back still a step further and to claim that certain rights inequalities or justified discriminatory rules are themselves “grounded” in equal respect and concern at some deeper, norm-generating level (like, for example, the original position or a discourse-ethical principle of justification) is also futile. Finally, I argue that the “This is not what we mean”-strategy of escaping the above arguments reduces egalitarianism to triviality and empty rhetoric. Liberal egalitarianism should be abandoned. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarianism is commonly criticized for being insufficiently sensitive to status inequalities and the effects of misrecognition. I examine this criticism as it applies to Ronald Dworkin’s ‘equality of resources’ and argue that, in fact, liberal egalitarians possess the resources to deal effectively with recognition-type issues. More precisely, while conceding that the distributive principles required to realize equality of resources must apply against a particular institutional background, I point out, following Dworkin, that among the principles guiding this background (...) is a ‘principle of independence,’ and that this principle, properly interpreted, requires government to protect people against the disadvantageous effects of wrongful prejudicial discrimination. Moreover, I give an account of wrongful prejudice which is grounded in a particular interpretation of the abstract egalitarian principle Dworkin requires for a government to be legitimate and which goes a long way toward acknowledging status inequalities. Finally, I suggest other resources within the theory for responding to residual problems of recognition not addressed by the principle of independence. (shrink)

This paper argues for Serious Distributive Egalitarianism – the view that some material inequalities are seriously objectionable as such; not merely, say, because such inequalities tend to generate inequalities in status. Social justice requires equality, I argue, because basic social institutions produce important goods and are produced in turn by the relevantly equal contributions of all those that comply with them. E.g., basic social institutions make it much easier to produce cooperatively than it would be in their absence; (...) therefore, these institutions produce, among other things, opportunities to participate in particular productive enterprises. But basic social institutions are themselves produced, in large part, by the compliance of those subject to them; these subjects, therefore, contribute to the production of the goods that basic institutions produce. This gives (at least) every compliant subject of basic social institutions a claim on these goods. And, I argue that, though some do contribute more to the maintenance of basic institutions than others, those who contribute more are too responsible for the fact that others contribute less to point to the consequences of this difference as a reason they should get greater returns. I conclude that all subjects of basic social institutions have equally forceful and forcefully equal claims on the goods these institutions produce; claims that render inequalities in the Distribution of these goods Seriously objectionable as such. (shrink)

Are there distinctively political values? Certain egalitarians seem to think that equality is one such value. Scheffler 's contribution to the symposium seeks to articulate a division of moral labour between norms of personal morality and the principles of justice that regulate social institutions, and using this suggests that the egalitarian critique of Rawls can be deflected. In this paper, instead, I question the status of equality as an intrinsic value. I argue that an egalitarianism which focuses on (...) the status of equality as valuable in itself embraces a theory of value with the worst elements of utilitarianism while leaving behind any of the intuitive appeal that utilitarianism has. In its place I press that we need a political conception of egalitarianism which stresses the role of equality as a political ideal without presupposing any values with which we engage beyond those found in the norms of personal morality. (shrink)

Biocentric egalitarianism is the view that all living things share an equal fundamental moral status qua living things. In light of the well-known problems with past philosophical attempts to argue for this position, this paper proposes a way biocentric egalitarian claims might be understood and possibly vindicated. Relying on frameworks developed in recent discussions of the “basis of equality” in human-centered ethics, the paper argues that thinking of egalitarian claims as justified by (rather than as justifying) social ideals (...) provides the best way of understanding the basis of biocentric egalitarian claims in environmental ethics. The paper first reviews arguments for biocentric egalitarianism and their central flaws and proceeds to survey different models for justifying egalitarian claims among humans. The paper argues the Social Ideal approach to justification is the one most likely to be helpful to biocentric egalitarians. (shrink)

There are few moral convictions that enjoy the same intuitive plausibility and level of acceptance both within and across nations, cultures, and traditions as the conviction that, normally, it is morally wrong to kill people. Attempts to provide a philosophical explanation of why that is so broadly fall into three groups: Consequentialists argue that killing is morally wrong, when it is wrong, because of the harm it inflicts on society in general, or the victim in particular, whereas personhood and human (...) dignity accounts see the wrongness of killing people in its typically involving a failure to show due respect for the victim and his or her intrinsic moral worth. I argue that none of these attempts to explain the wrongness of killing is successful. Consequentialism generates too many moral reasons to kill, cannot account for deeply felt and widely shared intuitions about the comparative wrongness of killing, and gives the wrong kind of explanation of the wrongness of killing. Personhood and human dignity accounts each draw a line that is arbitrary and entirely unremarkable in terms of empirical reality, and hence ill-suited to carry the moral weight of the difference in moral status between the individuals below and above it. Paying close attention to the different ways in which existing accounts fail to convince, I identify a number of conditions that any plausible account of the wrongness of killing must meet. I then go on to propose an account that does. I suggest that the reason that typically makes killing normal human adults wrong equally applies to atypical human beings and a wide range of non-human animals, and hence challenge the idea that killing a non-human animal is normally easier to justify than killing a human being. This idea has persisted in Western philosophy from Aristotle to the present, and even progressive moral thinkers and animal advocates such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan are committed to it. I conclude by discussing some important practical implications of my account. (shrink)

Why is American punishment so cruel? While in continental Europe great efforts are made to guarantee that prisoners are treated humanely, in America sentences have gotten longer and rehabilitation programs have fallen by the wayside. Western Europe attempts to prepare its criminals for life after prison, whereas many American prisons today leave their inhabitants reduced and debased. In the last quarter of a century, Europe has worked to ensure that the baser human inclination toward vengeance is not reflected by state (...) policy, yet America has shown a systemic drive toward ever increasing levels of harshness in its criminal policies. Why is America so short on mercy? In this deeply researched, comparative work, James Q. Whitman reaches back to the 17th and 18th centuries to trace how and why American and European practices came to diverge. Eschewing the usual historical imprisonment narratives, Whitman focuses instead on intriguing differences in the development of punishment in the age of Western democracy. European traditions of social hierarchy and state power, so consciously rejected by the American colonies, nevertheless supported a more merciful and dignified treatment of offenders. The hierarchical class system on the continent kept alive a tradition of less-degrading "high-status" punishments that eventually became applied across the board in Europe. The distinctly American, draconian regime, on the other hand, grows, Whitman argues, out of America's longstanding distrust of state power and its peculiar, broad-brush sense of egalitarianism. Low-status punishments were evenly meted out to all offenders, regardless of class or standing. America's unrelentingly harsh treatment of trangressors--this "equal opportunity degradation"-- is, in a very real sense, the dark side of the nation's much vaunted individualism. A sobering look at the growing rift between the United States and Europe, Harsh Justice exposes the deep cultural roots of America's degrading punishment practices. (shrink)

Basic income policies have recently enjoyed a great deal of discussion, but they are not a natural fit with views of distributive or social justice endorsed by many moral and political philosophers. This essay develops and defends a new view of social justice, called relational sufficientarianism, which is more compatible with a universal basic income. Relational sufficientarianism holds that persons in a just society must have sufficient social status, but not necessarily equal social status. It argues that this (...) view offers a more plausible account of just social relations than relational egalitarianism, a better account of the threshold for sufficiency than distributive sufficientarianism, and can serve as a more suitable theoretical backing for a universal basic income than either of these other views, or distributive egalitarianism. (shrink)

In the final parts of Piketty’s Capital and Ideology, he presents his vision for a just and more equal society. This vision marks an alternative to contemporary societies, and differs radically both from the planned Soviet economies and from social democratic welfare states. In his sketch of this vision, Piketty provides a principled account of how such a society would look and how it would modify the current status of private property through co-managed enterprises and the creation of temporary (...) ownership models. He also sets out two principles for when inequalities are just. The first principle permits inequalities that are beneficial to the worst-off, while the second permits inequalities that reflect differences in people’s choices and ambitions. This article identifies a tension between Piketty’s two inequality-permitting principles. It also argues that the procedural limits on how decisions are made within the enterprises of participatory socialism might create inequalities not permitted by the guiding distributive principles of participatory socialism. This tension points to the need for either further changes in firm structure and ownership, an even more progressive taxation scheme, or an egalitarian ethos reflected in citizens’ choices in their everyday lives under participatory socialism. (shrink)

Este artículo mostrará que las versiones estrictas del Igualitarismo Democrático y del Igualitarismo de la Suerte son implausibles ya que defienden una visión monista del objeto de la justicia igualitaria. Por el contrario, sus versiones moderadas son aceptables ya que admiten la composición plural del objeto de justicia igualitaria. Esta comprensión plural exige, sin embargo, el establecimiento de prioridades normativas ya que las exigencias de cada valor entran típicamente en conflicto. Aquí, se ofrecerán tres argumentos para defender la prioridad del (...) Igualitarismo Democrático sobre el Igualitarismo de la Suerte: uno instrumental, otro relacionado con el significado expresivo de las políticas públicas estatales y un último que justifica la división del trabajo moral igualitarista. (shrink)

In terms of income and wealth (and a variety of other measures), citizens of the United States are significantly less equal than their peers in Canada and Europe. In addition, American society is becoming increasingly less equal. Some theorists argue that this inequality is inefficient. Others claim that is unjust. Many Americans, however, are less concerned with the potential inefficiency and injustice of growing inequality. Distinguishing as Milton Friedman does between equality of result and equality of opportunity, many claim that (...) American inequality is greater because our social and political institutions hold individuals responsible for their decisions. There is nothing unjust about holding individuals responsible for their choices or preferences. This political philosophy builds from the popular idea that, in the words of Dennis Prager of the Heritage Foundation, “American individualism and the Judeo-Christian notion of personal accountability gave us the extraordinary nation that we built here.” At least since the publication of the Republican Party’s Contract with America, every prominent Republican (and many Democrats) has affirmed the importance of personal responsibility. The idea of personal responsibility plays a central role in debates over how to structure U.S. society. For these reasons, this paper considers a group of theories that Elizabeth Anderson labels “luck egalitarian.” These theories remain the most influential philosophical attempts to incorporate personal responsibility into a theory of justice. This essay takes as its staring point Anderson’s widely discussed criticisms for these theorists, and considers several of the best and most sustained responses to these criticisms (and related claims by Samuel Scheffler, Jonathan Wolff, and others). The goal is not to provide a summary of different luck egalitarian accounts of justice, a task others have performed admirably (Knight 2009, Knight and Stemplowska 2011). Furthermore, this paper will not attempt to decide which luck egalitarian theory best withstands these criticisms. Instead, this paper makes a philosophically and empirically informed case regarding how policy makers ought to utilize a principle that plays a prominent role in current American public policy debates: the role of personal responsibility. In order to make this case, I must weave normative and empirical analysis, and consider the ways in which social position in the status quo United States does not trace personal responsibility. From this analysis, I suggest three policy priorities for those interested in redeeming the oft-celebrated claim about American society: that an individual is responsible for her social position. This work promises to be of interest to any theorist or policy maker concerned with the practical implications of recent work in the moral and political philosophy of personal responsibility, or, really, anyone interested in making American society comparatively just. (shrink)

Why does equality matter, as a social and political value, and what does it require? Relational egalitarians argue that it does not require that people receive equal distributive shares of some good, but that they relate as equals. Christian Schemmel here provides the first comprehensive development of a liberal conception of relational equality, one which understands relations of non-domination and egalitarian norms of social status as stringent demands of social justice. He first argues that expressing respect for the freedom (...) and equality of individuals in social cooperation requires stringent protections against domination. Taking this as a starting point, he then develops a substantive, liberal conception of non-domination and argues that non-domination is a particularly important, but not the only, concern of social justice. From there, Schemmel develops an account of the wrongness of inegalitarian norms of social status which shows how status-induced foreclosure of important social opportunities is a social injustice in its own right, over and above the role of status inequality in enabling domination, and the threats it poses to individuals' self-respect. Finally, Schemmel articulates the core requirements of liberal relational egalitarianism for political, economic, and health justice: these amount to demands for far-reaching forms of equality in all three domains, which can rarely, if ever, be overridden by competing concerns. With expert rigor and creativity, Justice and Egalitarian Relations brings together scholarship in a variety of related topics, from social justice and liberalism to distributive and relational equality, social equality, neo-republicanism, and non-denomination. (shrink)

In this article, the author describes sweeping changes in the gender system and offers explanations for why change has been uneven. Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have had little incentive to take on female activities or jobs. The gender egalitarianism that gained traction was the notion that women should have access to upward mobility and to all areas of schooling and jobs. But (...) persistent gender essentialism means that most people follow gender-typical paths except when upward mobility is impossible otherwise. Middle-class women entered managerial and professional jobs more than working-class women integrated blue-collar jobs because the latter were able to move up while choosing a “female” occupation; many mothers of middle-class women were already in the highest-status female occupations. The author also notes a number of gender-egalitarian trends that have stalled. (shrink)

This paper proposes a model of human uniqueness based on an unusual distinction between two contrasted kinds of political competition and political status: (1) antagonistic competition, in quest of dominance (antagonistic status), a zero-sum, self-limiting game whose stake—who takes what, when, how—summarizes a classical definition of politics (Lasswell 1936), and (2) synergistic competition, in quest of merit (synergistic status), a positive-sum, self-reinforcing game whose stake becomes “who brings what to a team’s common good.” In this view, Rawls’s (...) (1971) famous virtual “veil of ignorance” mainly conceals politics’ antagonistic stakes so as to devise the principles of a just, egalitarian society, yet without providing any means to enforce these ideals (Sen 2009). Instead, this paper proposes that human uniqueness flourished under a real “adapted veil of ignorance” concealing the steady inflation of synergistic politics which resulted from early humans’ sturdy egalitarianism. This proposition divides into four parts: (1) early humans first stumbled on a purely cultural means to enforce a unique kind of within-team antagonistic equality—dyadic balanced deterrence thanks to handheld weapons (Chapais 2008); (2) this cultural innovation is thus closely tied to humans’ darkest side, but it also launched the cumulative evolution of humans’ brightest qualities—egalitarian team synergy and solidarity, together with the associated synergistic intelligence, culture, and communications; (3) runaway synergistic competition for differential merit among antagonistically equal obligate teammates is the single politically selective mechanism behind the cumulative evolution of all these brighter qualities, but numerous factors to be clarified here conceal this mighty evolutionary driver; (4) this veil of ignorance persists today, which explains why humans’ unique prosocial capacities are still not clearly understood by science. The purpose of this paper is to start lifting this now-ill-adapted veil of ignorance, thus uncovering the tight functional relations between egalitarian team solidarity and the evolution of human uniqueness. (shrink)

Equal Justice explores the role of the idea of equality in liberal theories of justice. The title indicates the book’s two-part thesis: first, I claim that justice is the central moral category in the socio-political domain; second, I argue for a specific conceptual and normative connection between the ideas of justice and equality. This pertains to the age-old question concerning the normative significance of equality in a theory of justice. The book develops an independent, systematic, and comprehensive theory of equality (...) and egalitarianism. The principal question is about the importance of equality in a theory of justice. More precisely, we should pose questions in four contracting circles: 1. Is justice the supreme value guiding our setup of the basic structure of society, or are there other, equally important values, such as recognition, care, communal belonging? 2. If justice is the highest guiding principle, which competing ideals—especially equality and freedom—ought to have precedence in a policy oriented toward justice? What status does the ideal of equality have in that framework? 3. If equality is a basic ideal of just policy, how should it be practically realized? What sort of equality (equal opportunity, equality of welfare, resource equality) should be demanded? 4. What patterned distribution of which specific goods does the ideal of equality demand? Which principles of distribution can be justified according to our justice ideal? To conclude and summarize: 5. What is the essential core of an egalitarian theory of justice, as opposed to an inegalitarian theory? These five questions structure the work’s order of argumentation. Part A elaborates the conceptual foundations and basic moral principles of justice and equality. Chapter I sets out to install justice as the central moral category in the socio-political domain. At the beginning of the first chapter, the conceptual foundations of justice are clarified. While not eliminating the classical distinctions between different forms of justice, I argue that the distributive paradigm is of primary importance. The primacy of justice in the socio-political domain is developed out of a confrontation with alternative positions, those which maintain either that justice generally, or distributive justice in particular, are subsidiary virtues. At the end of Chapter I, the first of the questions mentioned above is answered in a way that establishes justice as the guiding normative concept for the foundation and evaluation of any social order. To clarify the role of equality in a theory of justice, Chapter II separates the idea of equality into four different principles. They are organized in a way that begins with the most general and uncontroversial principle of equality, and progresses towards increasingly detailed and contested principles. There are two theses that articulate and defend the significance of equality for justice: First there is a conceptual connection between justice and equality, in that principles of formal and proportional equality are necessary in order to explicate the concept of justice. These two principles establish an unbreakable bond between justice and equality. Justice can only be explained—or so I argue—by reference to these and other (normative) principles of equality. The second thesis posits a normative relationship between justice and equality, which is disclosed by three substantive principles of equality: moral equality, the presumption of equality, and the principle of responsibility. I argue that the normative core of an egalitarian theory of justice is expressed by the latter two principles, which are themselves based on the first principle, that of moral equality. When we view one another as persons, what form of equality or equal treatment is normatively demanded? I argue that the answer to this question is given by the procedural principle of the presumption of equality: regardless of their apparent differences, all persons deserve strictly equal treatment, unless certain kinds of differences have whatever particular relevance would justify, on generally acceptable grounds, unequal treatment or unequal distribution. The justification of the presumption of equality is central to this work and has considerable importance. If the presumption principle’s validity can be justified by enlisting the principle of general justification, then the primacy of equality, and the essential argument for an egalitarian theory of justice, is established. This would likewise provide a procedure for the construction of a material theory of justice. The second question is answered thereby at the end of Chapter II: Equality should have primacy over competing ideals within a justice-oriented policy. The presumption of equality establishes this primacy and, at the same time, offers an appropriate metric and guideline for the construction of a material theory of distributive justice. The presumption of equality in Part B offers an elegant procedure for the development of a theory of distributive justice. Chapter III clearly sets out the necessary prerequisites that a theory of distribution must satisfy in order to determine a liberal-egalitarian distributional framework. We need to specify in which situation the distribution takes place; which goods are and are not to be distributed; in which respect the presumptive equality is to be produced; and by and to whom, and for what period, the relevant goods are to be distributed. The distribution is based on resources understood as general-purpose means. It is necessary to divide goods into different categories, since the justification for unequal treatment in one domain will not carry over into another. This makes presumptive equality necessarily complex. To that end, four spheres of justice are distinguished: (1) the political sphere, which involves allocating rights through the distribution of civil liberties; (2) the democratic sphere, in which political power and the rights of political participation are regulated; (3) the economic sphere, in which income and property are distributed; (4) the social sphere, in which social positions and opportunities are distributed. This framework of distributive justice answers the third of our guiding questions, about the nature of equality, in terms of equality of resources. Chapters IV and V set out the egalitarian distributive criteria for each sphere. I argue that the generally accepted, fundamental rights of classical liberalism are more effectively reconstructed by reference to the equal resource distribution presumptively required in those spheres. Chapter IV shows that when it comes to the first two spheres, those involving basic rights and freedoms and entitlement political participation, there can be no justified exceptions to the equal distribution of the relevant goods. That section argues, contrary to what we commonly find in theories of freedom or popular sovereignty, that the value of freedom and self-determination as the political basis of autonomy is best realized through the presumption of equal distribution. Chapter V deals with the other two spheres, those of economic goods and social positions, and argues for justified exceptions to equal distribution. In the economic sphere we find one principal reason favouring unequal distribution of resources, and three restrictions and compensations limiting that inequality. The basic exception to equal economic distribution arises from the unequal consequences of personal responsibility. From a suitably egalitarian standpoint, the principle of responsibility is the normative principle that determines which reasons justify economic inequality. Here the basic idea is that unequal shares of social goods are fair if they result from the choices and deliberate actions of the relevant parties. That individuals have to bear the costs of their own choices is a condition of autonomy. However, benefits or disadvantages arising from arbitrary and unmerited differences in social circumstances or natural endowments is unfair. The unequal consequences of independent decision-making and action must therefore be limited by compensating first for preferences, secondly for disadvantages, and thirdly by redistributing wealth in aid of the worse-off. I situations of emergency, compensating for disadvantages has priority over all other claims, owing to the urgency of the situation. Social inequalities go beyond the permissible limit if it is possible to improve the long-term social or economic situation of the worse-off by redistributing wealth to them. These exceptions lead to a complex system of free economic action within a framework of compensatory tax and transfer mechanisms. Finally, in the social sphere, the distribution of social positions, offices and opportunities must be structured to ensure that equally talented and motivated citizens have roughly equal chances of obtaining those offices or positions, irrespective of their economic or social class backgrounds. This compromise is permissible for reasons of freedom and prudence, and it makes a certain measure of inequality acceptable. The fourth of our guiding questions is answered accordingly. There are five principles of justice for the basic structure of society, and five legal principles that govern the special distribution of goods in the respective spheres—all are ranked according to their most defensible grounds of priority, ensuring that everyone is accorded equal justice. Chapter VI recapitulates the initial question of equality’s value. The conception of equal justice developed in this work postulates five principles of equality and five principles of law; these constitute an egalitarian framework because they support and promote social justice. Equality has value with respect to them, but is not given any independent, intrinsic value. That is why I call the account developed here a form of constitutive egalitarianism: justice is realized through the realization of equality, itself accomplished by applying the five postulates of equality and five distributive principles of law. This is an egalitarianism on two levels. The first level is involves the claim that morality or justice is conceptually connected with equality. The second level gives equality a substantial weight in what is conceptually validated at the first level, namely the presumption of equality, and constructs an appropriate interpretation and conception of distributive justice through principles of distribution for the individual spheres. The weight and importance of equality is shown by the distributive criteria applied to those spheres. This answers our final guiding question about the nature of an egalitarian theory. (shrink)

There is an apparent problem in identifying a basis for equality. This problem vanishes if what I call the ‘intuited response’ is successful. According to this response, there is no further explanation of the significance of the feature in virtue of which an individual matters, beyond the bare fact that it is the feature in virtue of which an individual matters. I argue against this claim, and conclude that if the problem of identifying a basis for equality is to be (...) resolved, it is necessary to defend a substantive account of the independent significance of some feature. (shrink)

The questions of what represents space-time in GR, the status of gravitational energy, the substantivalist-relationalist issue, and the exceptional status of gravity are interrelated. If space-time has energy-momentum, then space-time is substantival. Two extant ways to avoid the substantivalist conclusion deny that the energy-bearing metric is part of space-time or deny that gravitational energy exists. Feynman linked doubts about gravitational energy to GR-exceptionalism, as do Curiel and Duerr; particle physics egalitarianism encourages realism about gravitational energy. In that (...) spirit, this essay proposes a third possible view about space-time, one involving a particle physics-inspired non-perturbative split that characterizes space-time with a constant background _matrix_, a sort of vacuum value, thus avoiding the inference from gravitational _energy to substantivalism. On this proposal, space-time is, where eta=diag is a spatio-temporally constant numerical signature matrix, a matrix already used in GR with spinors. The gravitational potential, to which any gravitational energy can be ascribed, is g_{\mu\nu}- eta, an _affine_ geometric object with a tensorial Lie derivative and a vanishing covariant derivative. This non-perturbative split permits strong fields, arbitrary coordinates, and arbitrary topology, and hence is pure GR by almost any standard. This razor-thin background, unlike more familiar backgrounds, involves no extra gauge freedom and so lacks their obscurities and carpet lump-moving. After a discussion of Curiel's GR exceptionalist denial of the localizability of gravitational energy and his rejection of energy conservation, the two traditional objections to pseudotensors, coordinate dependence and nonuniqueness, are explored. Both objections are inconclusive and getting weaker. A literal interpretation involving infinitely many energies corresponding by Noether's first theorem to the infinite symmetries of the _action_ largely answers Schroedinger's false-negative coordinate dependence problem. Bauer's false-positive objection has multiple answers. Non-uniqueness might be handled by Nester et al.'s finding physical meaning in multiplicity in relation to boundary conditions, by an optimal candidate, or by Bergmann's identifying the non-uniqueness and coordinate dependence ambiguities as one. (shrink)

Much of the literature on "ceteris paribus" laws is based on a misguided egalitarianism about the sciences. For example, it is commonly held that the special sciences are riddled with ceteris paribus laws; from this many commentators conclude that if the special sciences are not to be accorded a second class status, it must be ceteris paribus all the way down to fundamental physics. We argue that the (purported) laws of fundamental physics are not hedged by ceteris paribus (...) clauses and provisos. Furthermore, we show that not only is there no persuasive analysis of the truth conditions for ceteris paribus laws, there is not even an acceptable account of how they are to be saved from triviality or how they are to be melded with standard scientific methodology. Our way out of this unsatisfactory situation to reject the widespread notion that the achievements and the scientific status of the special sciences must be understood in terms of ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

[ Samuel Scheffler] Some egalitarian liberals have proposed a division of moral labour between social institutions and individual agents, but the division-of-labour metaphor has been understood in different ways. This paper aims to disentangle some of these different understandings, with an eye to clarifying the appeal of the egalitarian-liberal project and the challenges that it faces. The idea of a division of moral labour is best understood as the expression of a strategy for accommodating diverse values. It is not an (...) apology for economic self-interest or a device for justifying personal acquisitiveness. /// [Véronique Munoz-Dardé] Are there distinctively political values? Certain egalitarians seem to think that equality is one such value. Scheffler's contribution to the symposium seeks to articulate a division of moral labour between norms of personal morality and the principles of justice that regulate social institutions, and using this suggests that the egalitarian critique of Rawls can be deflected. In this paper, instead, I question the status of equality as an intrinsic value. I argue that an egalitarianism which focuses on the status of equality as valuable in itself embraces a theory of value with the worst elements of utilitarianism while leaving behind any of the intuitive appeal that utilitarianism has. In its place I press that we need a political conception of egalitarianism which stresses the role we engage beyond those found in the norms of personal morality. (shrink)

[Samuel Scheffler] Some egalitarian liberals have proposed a division of moral labour between social institutions and individual agents, but the division-of-labour metaphor has been understood in different ways. This paper aims to disentangle some of these different understandings, with an eye to clarifying the appeal of the egalitarian-liberal project and the challenges that it faces. The idea of a division of moral labour is best understood as the expression of a strategy for accommodating diverse values. It is not an apology (...) for economic self-interest or a device for justifying personal acquisitiveness. /// [Véronique Munoz-Dardé] Are there distinctively political values? Certain egalitarians seem to think that equality is one such value. Scheffler's contribution to the symposium seeks to articulate a division of moral labour between norms of personal morality and the principles of justice that regulate social institutions, and using this suggests that the egalitarian critique of Rawls can be deflected. In this paper, instead, I question the status of equality as an intrinsic value. I argue that an egalitarianism which focuses on the status of equality as valuable in itself embraces a theory of value with the worst elements of utilitarianism while leaving behind any of the intuitive appeal that utilitarianism has. In its place I press that we need a political conception of egalitarianism which stresses the role we engage beyond those found in the norms of personal morality. (shrink)

Relational views of equality put forward a social and political ideal of equality that aims at being a better interpretation of what social justice requires than the prevailing distributive conceptions of equality, especially luck egalitarian views. Yet it is unclear what social justice as relational equality demands in distributive terms; Elizabeth Anderson's view seems to vacate a large part of the terrain of distributive justice in favor of a minimalist, sufficiency view. Against that, this paper argues that relational equality, properly (...) understood, requires setting stringent limits to distributive inequality, for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons. First, the relational egalitarian conception of society as a cooperative enterprise among equals gives rise to a presumption of equality in socially produced goods (and bads); inequalities in these goods have to be justified by justice-relevant reasons. Second, relational egalitarianism also delivers instrumental reasons to limit inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunities, because such inequalities may generate both opportunities for domination and inegalitarian status norms that threaten the social bases of self-respect of the worse off. (shrink)