What Is Unfair about Unequal Brute Luck? An Intergenerational Puzzle

Philosophia 47 (4):1043-1051 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

According to Luck egalitarians, fairness requires us to bring it about that nobody is worse off than others where this results from brute bad luck, but not where they choose or deserve to be so. In this paper, I consider one type of brute bad luck that appears paradigmatic of what a Luck Egalitarian ought to be most concerned about, namely that suffered by people who are born to badly off parents and are less well off as a result. However, when we consider what is supposedly unfair about this kind of unequal brute luck, luck egalitarians face a dilemma. According to the standard account of luck egalitarianism, differential brute luck is unfair because of its effects on the distribution of goods. Yet, where some parents are worse off because they have chosen to be imprudent, it may be impossible to neutralize these effects without creating a distribution that seems at least as unfair. This, I argue, is problematic for luck egalitarianism. I, therefore, explore two alternative views that can avoid this problem. On the first of these, proposed by Shlomi Segall, the distributional effects of unequal brute luck are unfair only when they make a situation more unequal, but not when they make it more equal. On the second, it is the unequal brute luck itself, rather than its distributional effects, that is unfair. I conclude with some considerations in favour of this second view, while accepting that both are valid responses to the problem I describe.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Luck Egalitarianism.Carl Knight - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (10):924-934.
Choice and Luck in Recent Egalitarian Thought.Timothy Hinton - 2002 - Philosophical Papers 31 (2):145-167.
Benefiting from Injustice and Brute Luck.Carl Knight - 2013 - Social Theory and Practice 39 (4):581-598.
Egalitarian Justice and Expected Value.Carl Knight - 2013 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (5):1061-1073.
Brute luck equality and desert.Peter Vallentyne - 2003 - In Sabrina Olsaretti (ed.), Desert and Justice. Clarendon Press. pp. 169--185.
Distributive Luck.Carl Knight - 2012 - South African Journal of Philosophy 31 (2):541-559.
Luck Egalitarianism and Democratic Equality.Alexander Brown - 2005 - Ethical Perspectives 12 (3):293-340.
The Coherence of Luck Egalitarianism.Gideon Elford - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (3):617-626.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-01-21

Downloads
26 (#524,350)

6 months
3 (#445,838)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Simon Beard
Cambridge University

Citations of this work

A Dilemma for Luck Egalitarians.Ofer Malcai & Re’em Segev - forthcoming - Journal of Value Inquiry:1-21.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality.R. M. Dworkin - 2002 - Philosophical Quarterly 52 (208):377-389.
Inequality.Larry S. Temkin - 1986 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 15 (2):99-121.
Justice, luck, and knowledge.Susan L. Hurley - 2003 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Inequality.Larry Temkin - 1995 - Ethics 105 (3):663-665.

View all 12 references / Add more references