Despite being increasingly available to us all, retirement pensions remain unequally distributed: between rich and poor, young and old, men and women, and possibly different generations. As this topic receives little attention in moral and political philosophy, the articles in this thesis aim to deliver an original account of justice in retirement pensions along liberal egalitarian lines. The first part defends retirement pensions as a distribution of free time. It shows that including free time in the list of (...) goods that liberal egalitarians prioritise is plausible and avoids problems that would otherwise arise with other candidates, most notably leisure. Retirement as free time is an essential feature of liberal egalitarian societies by (re)distributing the means to pursue any life project, and especially valuable for the poor who work and contribute the longest. The second part makes a case for 'libertirement', a proposal to increase the freedom to enjoy free time across life, as a matter of justice between those who live long and those who die early. Specifically, I propose adding reverse pensions and sabbaticals on top of old-age retirement. Besides showing the importance of longevity for age-group justice, I also draw implications for distributing unconditional basic income and income taxes across life, which I suggest may offer alternative paths to libertirement. Finally, the third part discusses the cases of pension inequality between genders and generations, pushing us to refine our account further. I conclude that there is often a mismatch between liberal egalitarian justice and the design of retirement schemes. The solution is often but not always to reform these systems. Sometimes, we have reasons to revise our very own principles of justice. (shrink)

I argue that existing views in the political equality debate are inadequate. I propose an alternative approach to equality and argue its superiority to the competing approaches. I apply the approach to some issues in global justice relating to global poverty and to the inability of some countries to develop as they would like. In this connection I discuss institutions of international trade, sovereign debt and global reserves and I focus particularly on the WTO, IMF and World Bank.

Several philosophers argue for the ‘convergence thesis’ for positional goods: prioritarians, sufficientarians, and egalitarians may converge on favouring an equal (or not too unequal) distribution of goods that have positional aspects. I discuss some problems for this thesis when applied to two key goods for which it has been proposed: education and wealth. I show, however, that there is a variant of the thesis that avoids these problems. This version of the thesis is significant, (...) I demonstrate, because it applies to a person’s status as a citizen, which I suggest is the central concern of social or ‘relational’ egalitarianism. (shrink)

This article gives a detailed analysis of Nussbaum’s ‘capabilities approach’ and her claim that it is a genuinely Aristotelian contemporary po-litical philosophy. The paper examines how Nussbaum bases her ‘capabilities approach’ on human nature and questions her assertion that both Aristotle’s account of human nature and her own approach are not metaphysical. In order to analyze the normative dimension of Nussbaum’s ‘capabilities approach’, this article focuses on Aristotle’s doctrine of distributive justice and equality. It shows how Nussbaum adopts and modifies (...) this doctrine in an egalitarian way and demonstrates that her reading and appropriation of it is problematic. With reference to contemporary literature on Aristotle’s Politics, the article criticizes how Nussbaum assimilates Aristotle’s political philosophy into modern values and notions, laying out six primary reasons supporting the thesis that Nussbaum’s ‘capabilities approach’ cannot be regarded as an Aristotelian one. (shrink)

:In his famous book Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer articulates a thesis he calls the “Moral Equality of Soldiers,” namely, the principle that combatants have an equal right to kill other combatants in war, regardless of the justice of the cause for which they are fighting. The Moral Equality Thesis, as I shall call it, is an essential component of traditional Just War Theory, in that it provides the basis for distinguishing the jus in bello from (...) the jus ad bellum. It also plays a crucial role in identifying the nature of the difference between combatants and civilians. The Moral Equality Thesis has recently come under attack by scholars of Just War Theory, notably philosopher Jeff McMahan, on the grounds that killing for immoral purposes cannot be justified, and so it cannot be true that combatants all have an equal right to kill, regardless of the justice of their cause. In this essay, I defend the Moral Equality Thesis in its traditional formulation. Without it, I argue, the rule of law would not apply in war. The failure to recognize the equal right of combatants to kill in war, I suggest, creates an inconsistency between the rules of war and basic concepts in the law and morality of self-defense, an inconsistency that McMahan himself would think undesirable. I argue that McMahan’s argument applies more compellingly to armed conflict in asymmetrical warfare. Arguably, the Moral Equality Thesis does not apply in an armed conflict between combatants and unlawful combatants. In that context, the divergence from the law and morality of self-defense is less of a concern. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.KILLING IN WAR AND THE MORAL EQUALITY THESISVolume 32, Issue 2Claire Finkelstein DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000169Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. KILLING IN WAR AND THE MORAL EQUALITY THESISVolume 32, Issue 2Claire Finkelstein DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000169Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. KILLING IN WAR AND THE MORAL EQUALITY THESISVolume 32, Issue 2Claire Finkelstein DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000169Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

In this stimulating work of political philosophy, acclaimed philosopher G. A. Cohen sets out to rescue the egalitarian thesis that in a society in which distributive justice prevails, peopleâes material prospects are roughly equal. Arguing against the Rawlsian version of a just society, Cohen demonstrates that distributive justice does not tolerate deep inequality. In the course of providing a deep and sophisticated critique of Rawlsâes theory of justice, Cohen demonstrates that questions of distributive justice arise not only for (...) the state but also for people in their daily lives. The right rules for the macro scale of public institutions and policies also apply, with suitable adjustments, to the micro level of individual decision-making. Cohen also charges Rawlsâes constructivism with systematically conflating the concept of justice with other concepts. Within the Rawlsian architectonic, justice is not distinguished either from other values or from optimal rules of social regulation. The elimination of those conflations brings justice closer to equality. (shrink)

Egalitarians must address two questions: i. What should there be an equality of, which concerns the currency of the ‘equalisandum’; and ii. How should this thing be allocated to achieve the so-called equal distribution? A plausible initial composite answer to these two questions is that resources should be allocated in accordance with choice, because this way the resulting distribution of the said equalisandum will ‘track responsibility’ — responsibility will be tracked in the sense that only we will (...) be responsible for the resources that are available to us, since our allocation of resources will be a consequence of our own choices. But the effects of actual choices should not be preserved until the prior effects of luck in constitution and circumstance are first eliminated. For instance, people can choose badly because their choice-making capacity was compromised due to a lack of intelligence (i.e. due to constitutional bad luck), or because only bad options were open to them (i.e. due to circumstantial bad luck), and under such conditions we are not responsible for our choices. So perhaps a better composite answer to our two questions (from the perspective of tracking responsibility) might be that resources should be allocated so as to reflect people’s choices, but only once those choices have been corrected for the distorting effects of constitutional and circumstantial luck, and on this account choice preservation and luck elimination are two complementary aims of the egalitarian ideal. Nevertheless, it is one thing to say that luck’s effects should be eliminated, but quite another to figure out just how much resource redistribution would be required to achieve this outcome, and so it was precisely for this purpose that in 1981 Ronald Dworkin developed the ingenuous hypothetical insurance market argumentative device (HIMAD), which he then used in conjunction with the talent slavery (TS) argument, to arrive at an estimate of the amount of redistribution that would be required to reduce the extent of luck’s effects. However recently Daniel Markovits has cast doubt over Dworkin’s estimates of the amount of redistribution that would be required, by pointing out flaws with his understanding of how the hypothetical insurance market would function. Nevertheless, Markovits patched it up and he used this patched-up version of Dworkin’s HIMAD together with his own version of the TS argument to reach his own conservative estimate of how much redistribution there ought to be in an egalitarian society. Notably though, on Markovits’ account once the HIMAD is patched-up and properly understood, the TS argument will also allegedly show that the two aims of egalitarianism are not necessarily complementary, but rather that they can actually compete with one another. According to his own ‘equal-agent’ egalitarian theory, the aim of choice preservation is more important than the aim of luck elimination, and so he alleges that when the latter aim comes into conflict with the former aim then the latter will need to be sacrificed to ensure that people are not subordinated to one another as agents. I believe that Markovits’ critique of Dworkin is spot on, but I also think that his own positive thesis — and hence his conclusion about how much redistribution there ought to be in an egalitarian society — is flawed. Hence, this paper will begin in Section I by explaining how Dworkin uses the HIMAD and his TS argument to estimate the amount of redistribution that there ought to be in an egalitarian society — this section will be largely expository in content. Markovits’ critique of Dworkin will then be outlined in Section II, as will be his own positive thesis. My critique of Markovits, and my own positive thesis, will then make a fleeting appearance in Section III. Finally, I will conclude by rejecting both Dworkin’s and Markovits’ estimates of the amount of redistribution that there ought to be in an egalitarian society, and by reaffirming the responsibility-tracking egalitarian claim that choice preservation and luck elimination are complementary and not competing egalitarian aims. (shrink)

This thesis argues that a particular version of equal opportunity for welfare is the best way of meeting the joint demands of three liberal egalitarian ideals: distributional equality, responsibility, and respect for individuals’ differing reasonable judgements of their own good. It also examines which social choice rules best represent these demands. Finally, it defends the view that achieving equal opportunity for welfare should not only be a goal of formal public institutions, but that just citizens should also (...) sometimes be guided by it in their everyday life. The version of equal opportunity for welfare it defends differs from some well-known contemporary versions in the following ways. First, it rejects a definition of welfare as the degree of satisfaction of a person’s preferences, because, it argues, this conception of welfare cannot adequately deal with preference change. Instead, it suggests that we should adopt a conception of welfare based on a list of goods and conditions that are recognised as valuable from the perspective of a variety of different conceptions of the good. Second, it argues that individuals’ prima facie claim to an equally valuable share of the world’s resources—a claim which is based on their equal moral worth—is limited to situations in which giving one person a more valuable share means that someone else ends up with a less valuable share. It also argues that in situations where we can improve at least one person’s situation without worsening anyone else’s, we generally do not fail to respect each person’s equal moral worth by doing so, even if this leads to inequalities. Third, it defends a distinct view of responsibility, which justifies social arrangements that give people certain options with reference to the value that individuals can achieve (but don’t necessarily achieve) through their choices from these options. (shrink)

The debate concerning the legitimacy of awarding reparations for historical injustices focuses on the issue of finding a proper moral justification for granting reparations to the descendants of the victims of injustices which took place in the remote past. Regarding the case of Romanian communism as a more recent injustice, and analyzing the moral problems entailed by this historical lapse, within this paper I argue that overcoming such a legacy cannot be carried out, as in the case of historical injustices (...) situated more remotely in time, through the means of selective reparations, such as restitutions or compensations. For, even though they are justified from the perspective of rectificatory justice, selective reparations do not fulfill the requirements of social justice. Rather, I argue that the fall of the Romanian communist regime should have been followed by an equal distribution of all properties illegitimately seized by the state, to all adult Romanian citizens at that time, in order to attain the imperative of equal distribution of property among all citizens. The equal distribution thesis is the only way through which the Romanian society could have complied, at that moment of political and social renewal, with the requirements of justice. I also aim at explaining why other principles of justice, which either have or could have been implemented, cannot be properly justified. Finally, I analyze two main objections which could be invoked against my thesis, namely the economic efficiency objection and the legal realist objection. (shrink)

In this thesis, I attempt to reconcile two alternative approaches to justice: distributive and relational egalitarianism. When examining the two accounts, I claim that relational egalitarianism has distributive egalitarian implications. This implies an extensional overlap between the two accounts, namely a correspondence between the normative outcomes of relational and distributive egalitarianism. This work is addressed primarily to relational egalitarian scholars, as well as others who are convinced by the value of relational equality as a worthy moral and political ideal. (...) My aim is to prove that their goal implies embracing equality of distribution beyond relational equality. When making the case that relational egalitarians should take equality seriously, I claim that they should refrain from embracing distributive principles other than – or incompatible with – principles of distributive equality. This statement entails both a negative and a positive thesis. On the negative side, we should be critical toward the prominent tendency within the relational egalitarian debate, as influenced by the work of Elizabeth Anderson, to reject claims of distributive egalitarian justice in favour of sufficientarian claims of distribution. On the positive side, distributive equality is required by the logic of relational egalitarianism, although its normative significance exists independently of it. While presenting my statements, I provide support for the externalist understanding of relational equality as most recently advanced by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, through which the egalitarian character of someone’s relation depends on features external to their relation, such as on the distribution of the relevant currency among them. Whether or not individuals relate to one another as equals – I maintain – depends not merely on the internal feature of their relation, that is, on how they perceive or regard one another, but also, significantly, on how goods such as resources, welfare or opportunities are distributed among them. On my account, individuals are only equals when they recognize each other as equal in status and grant one another an equal share of the justice-relevant good. In defending my thesis, I critically engage with the literature on both distributive egalitarianism and relational egalitarianism. In particular, in the first part, I reconstruct the egalitarian debate and its approach to equality as either a relational or a distributive ideal. In the second part, I question such either/or relation by arguing that relational equality implies distributive equality, because arbitrary distributive inequality violates the deliberative constraint of relating as equals. I strengthen this claim by looking at the particular instantiation of distributive inequality in the field of education, and unveil its theoretical implications while supporting the project of reconciling distributive egalitarian and relational egalitarian approaches to justice. In my view, relational and distributive egalitarianism are compatible theories within one and the same egalitarian framework. Their normative outcomes are – at least in part – equivalent. (shrink)

There is also a section on Marx's hints concerning what a just distribution of property would be, in which a method is suggested for combining consumer choice in selecting what to produce with the use of a labor theory in planning production. ;The analysis of the labor theory is embedded in the context of the justifications commonly given for existing capitalist distributions of property. Part of this context is a critique of the argument from freedom, i.e. of positions which (...) justify entitlements by citing free agreements and freely given gifts. Part of the context is a critique of the anti-ideology argument, i.e. of positions which justify institutional arrangements on the ground that they function to encourage investment and production. ;This dissertation uses Aristotle's conception of distributive justice as a framework for analyzing Karl Marx's labor theory of value. The appeal to traditional principles of justice is found to be implicit in Marx's scientific arguments. Marxist texts, mainly Capital, are found to contain five kinds of arguments in favor of the labor theory of value. That the only attribute all commodities have in common is that they are products of labor. That labor determines price. That labor determines natural prices. That from a social point of view the value of a commodity ought to be considered equal to the portion of society's effort than went into it. That the concept of labor-value makes it possible to construct a theory which explains a wide range of economic phenomena. (shrink)

Many scholars have suggested that Aristotle’s famous aphorism ‘treat equals equally, unequals unequally’ is a formal, and thus impractical, theory of equality. This dissertation aims to criticise the popular view that Aristotle’s theory of equality is purely formal and to develop and defend an interpretation which will pay attention to the substantive elements. The first chapter argues that Aristotle provides us with a spectrum from formal to substantive equality. At the formal end, we have the abstract principles of formal fairness (...) and proportionality, while at the substantive end we can find information for the designation of the appropriate variable of comparison between people or treatments in various domains of social interaction. The second chapter argues for an account of commensurability based on Ph. VII.4. I claim that, in any comparison, the term ‘equal’ should be predicated synonymously of the people or treatment compared, while at the same time they should not admit to difference in species; such an account, I suggest, is also compatible with Aristotle’s theory of economic value in EN V.5. The third chapter presents the Aristotelian account of equality in distributions. I focus on Aristotle’s theory of political distribution in Pol. III, where he puts forward two distinct criteria: political capacity and contribution to the polis. I also examine Aristotle’s moderate suggestion for equalisation of property by the means of public property and taxation. The fourth chapter criticises the popular line that Aristotle holds an inconsistent theory of corrective justice, because in EN V.4 he suggests that people should be treated as equal before the law, while in the first lines of EN V.5 he allows for hierarchical considerations. I eliminate this apparent inconsistency by claiming that the former deals with the compensatory, while the latter with the punitive element of corrective justice. The fifth chapter explores the role of equality within the private domain, mainly in the household and in various types of friendship. I propose that Aristotle offers two types of superiority, one based on actuality and a second based on function, which are not mutually exclusive. To summarise, by examining Aristotle’s responses to various problems about equality and hierarchy I conclude that although he possesses the theoretical tools to argue for ‘inalienable’ metaphysical equality of human beings which will make equality an individual entitlement or right, based on his principle of individuation in Metaph. Z.8, he prefers not to utilise this thesis for political purposes. Instead, he reduces equality to justice (inequality is unjust, since it violates principle of formal fairness which is fundamental for justice) and a set of pragmatical considerations (e.g. concord and the optimal outcome for the polis). He prefers to argue that equality or hierarchy of people or treatments is related to, and defined by, the particular institution that we examine. (shrink)

Social inequality may obstruct the generation of knowledge, as the rich and powerful may bring about social acceptance of skewed views that suit their interests. Epistemic equality in the context of justification is a means of preventing such obstruction. Drawing on social epistemology and theories of equality and distributive justice, we provide an account of epistemic equality. We regard participation in, and influence over a knowledge-generating discourse in an epistemic community as a limited good that needs to be justly distributed (...) among putative members of the community. We argue that rather than trying to operationally formulate an exact criterion for distributing this good, epistemic equality may be realized by insisting on active participation of members of three groups in addition to credited experts: relevant disempowered groups, relevant uncredited experts, and relevant stakeholders. Meeting these conditions fulfills the political, moral, and epistemic aims of epistemic equality. (shrink)

Before, during, and after the global financial crisis of 2008, executive pay practices were widely debated and criticized. Economists, philosophers, as well as the man on the street all seem to have strong feelings towards how much, in what ways, and on what grounds executives are paid. This thesis asks whether it is possible to morally justify current executive pay practices and, if so, on what grounds they are justified. It questions those who find no quarrel with pay practices (...) due to their minimally moralized view of the market and – perhaps more importantly – it asks for a sophisticated critique from those who criticize current pay practices. The discussion on just pay is clearly one of distributive justice. One reason for why some people consider CEO pay practices to be (fairly) unproblematic while others find them objectionable stems from the availability of different understandings of, and principles for, just pay. We tend to associate justice in pay with such things as proper incentivization, being the outcome of a fair procedure, being deserved on the basis of effort or contribution, and/or satisfying the ideal of equality. Parts of this thesis are devoted to these different understandings and what they entail for the moral justification of CEO pay. Another reason for the conflicting views on CEO pay stems from how issues of justice go beyond the confines of economics and applied ethics, extending all the way into the domain of political philosophy. Parts of this thesis explore this connection, in particular how the concept of economic desert relates to the broader concept of moral desert. Lastly, I discuss the criticism that the superrich (including executives) are being paid too much and are in possession of too much wealth. The issue at hand here is how to morally justify the interventions that seem suitable to rectify the situation. (shrink)

This dissertation proposes a new reading and appraisal of an important theory of distributive justice, Ronald Dworkin's "Equality of Resources" . ER is traditional in holding that choices made by rational, ignorant and purely self-interested beings are relevant to distributive justice. ER is novel both in its use of such choices and in incorporating the idea that one's success is largely one's own responsibility into liberal egalitarianism. ;I argue that the tax-and-redistribution scheme Dworkin proposes to make actual distributions just is (...) flawed because he misconceives the role of choice. He errs in thinking that the conditions for person X to receive compensation depend on the choices of such beings, although he is right, I argue, insofar as the relevant choices include X's hypothetical choices. Dworkin errs in that ER implies that whether X meets these conditions can depend on X's irrational choices, although he is right that whether X meets these conditions can depend on some of X's actual choices. ER becomes flawed, I argue, when Dworkin derives a tax-and-redistribution scheme designed to achieve distributive justice in reality from the auction he proposes for making hypothetical distributions just. ;I then consider whether ER withstands stock objections and how plausible it is relative to rival Theories. Dworkin argues that ER, but not Rawls' Theory, meets the following condition for a Theory to be plausible: the distributions a Theory deems just must be sensitive to choices. I argue that Dworkin's argument is no longer plausible once we realize to which choice sensitivity principle he is himself committed. However, I argue, Seana Shiffrin's objection to ER fails because she misunderstands the role of choice in ER, although she is right insofar as there is a related, though superficial, objection. I also argue that ER is inconsistent and show how to resolve this inconsistency without leaving ER vulnerable to attack by G. A. Cohen's rival Theory. I trace ER's inconsistency and the failure of Dworkin's argument against Rawls' Theory to Dworkin's method of justification. (shrink)

How should the global set of social institutions distribute income and wealth among members of different states? I present a Theory of Global Justice which supports the Bounded Significance of State Borders: The states system must satisfy the Determinate Human Needs of all, and the distribution within each state must satisfy Rawls' Difference Principle. However, justice does not require a Global Difference Principle: income and wealth need not be distributed so as to maximize the income and wealth of the (...) globally worst off. ;The Theory of Global Justice illuminates the status of claims to equality within contractualism. There is no general presumption for equality of condition, and only contingent grounds for equality of certain goods. ;The claim to satisfaction of needs and the claim to equal income and wealth stem from two different sources: The Principle of Human Rights and The Principle of Equal Procedural Controls. The Principle of Equal Procedural Controls applies among citizens within state borders, but not among individuals in different states. ;Chapter 1 presents the central concepts of the Theory of Global Justice: states systems, contractualism and impact arguments. ;The Theory of Global Justice recognizes two kinds of interests as grounding claims on social institutions: Determinate Human Needs, and various controls over factors which affect our lives. Chapter 2 explains the notion of Determinate Human Needs. ;Chapter 3 argues for The Principle of Human Rights. The set of international institutions must seek to secure the satisfaction of the Determinate Human Needs of all. ;Chapter 4 presents the Principle of Equal Procedural Controls. Participants in important procedures can sometimes reasonably claim an equal share of procedural controls. ;The Principle of Equal Procedural Controls applies differently among compatriots and among foreigners. Chapter 5 claims that this principle requires equality of Social Primary Goods and the Difference Principle among citizens. ;Chapter 6 denies that the Principle of Equal Procedural Controls applies among individuals in different states in such a way as to support a Global Difference Principle. State borders thus legitimately affect individuals' grounds for claiming equal shares of procedural controls. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen’s book brings together and elaborates on articles that he has written on selfownership, on Marx’s theory of exploitation, and on the future of socialism. Although seven of the eleven chapters have been previously published (1977-1992), this is not merely a collection of articles. There is a superb introduction that gives an overview of how the chapters fit together and of their historical relation to each other. Most chapters have a new introduction and often a postscript or addendum that (...) connect them with other chapters. And the four new chapters (on justice and market transactions, exploitation in Marx, the concept of self-ownership, and the plausibility of the thesis of self-ownership) are important contributions that round out and bring closure to many of the central issues. As always with Cohen, the writing is crystal clear, and full of compelling examples, deep insights, and powerful arguments. Cohen has long been recognized as one of the most important exponents of analytic Marxism. His innovative, rigorous, and exciting interpretations of Marx’s theories of history and of exploitation have had a major impact on Marxist scholarship. Starting in the mid-1970s he has increasingly turned his attention to normative political philosophy. As Cohen describes it, he was awakened from his “dogmatic socialist slumbers” by Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain example in which people starting from a position of equality (or other favored patterned distribution) freely choose to pay to watch Wilt Chamberlain play, and the net result is inequality (or other unfavored pattern). During the subsequent twenty years, political 1 philosophy has benefited from his thinking about the nature and plausibility of the thesis of selfownership, and about the scope and demands of equality. In what follows I will focus solely on the material dealing with self-ownership, but first I shall mention some of the interesting material on Marxism and socialism that I will be ignoring. First, at various points Cohen discusses how something like a principle of self-ownership is latent in the standard Marxist condemnation of capitalist exploitation (e.g., the capitalist steals labor time from the laborer).. (shrink)

We present a vignette study conducted with a quota sample of the German population (n = 400). Subjects had to redistribute a good between two hypothetical persons who contributed equally to the available amount but differed in quantity needed and the reason for their neediness. On a within-subjects level, we tested for the effects of need, accountability, and resource availability on their third-party distribution decisions. Between subjects, we further varied the kinds of needs: The persons either needed the good (...) as a means to survive, to live a decent life, to participate in society, or to be autonomous. Despite equal productivity, the mean share allocated to the needier person was significantly higher than an equal share. However, this share turned out significantly smaller when the needier person was accountable for needing more than the other. Nonetheless, even if accountable, the needier person still got a share larger than their contribution would suggest. When there was a surplus of resources, the needier person got an even higher share than when resources were scarce. (shrink)

This essay examines the connection between socioeconomic mobility and equality, and argues for two conclusions: (a) Socioeconomic mobility is conceptually distinct from three common species of equality: (1) equality of opportunity, (2) equality of outcome, and (3) relational equality. -/- (b) However, socioeconomic mobility is connected — in different ways — to each species of equality, and, if we value one or more of these species of equality, these connections endow mobility with derivative normative significance.

Egalitarians think that equality in the distribution of goods somehow matters. But what exactly is egalitarianism? This article argues for a characterization based on novel principles essentially involving risk. The characterization is then used to resolve disputed questions about egalitarianism. These include: the way egalitarianism is concerned with patterns, in particular its relationship to strong separability; the relationship between egalitarianism and other distributive views, such as concerns with fairness and with giving priority to the worse off; and the relationship (...) between egalitarianism and evaluative measurement. But egalitarianism is subject to a particularly severe form of the levelling-down objection, and is claimed to be false. (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)

Is equality a distributive value or does it rather point to the quality of social relationships? This article criticizes the distributive character of luck egalitarian theories of justice and fleshes out the central characteristics of an alternative, relational approach to equality. It examines a central objection to distributive theories: that such theories cannot account for the significance of how institutions treat people (as opposed to the outcomes they bring about). I discuss two variants of this objection: first, that distributive theories (...) fail to account for the importance of how institutions cause good shortfalls and, second, that they fail to account for the normative attitude of social and political institutions expressed in different ways of treating people. The article argues that the causal variant of the objection has only very limited reach, and endorses the expressive variant: the attitudes expressed by institutions in their treatment of persons, such as contempt or neglect, generate potentially unjust social relationships and hierarchies. This should be the focus of a relational egalitarian approach to social justice. The article proceeds to explain how it is possible that artificial agents such as institutions have attitudes and how these attitudes are not reducible to those of the individuals that sustain them, and argues that distributive theories cannot be so modified as to account for such attitudes. It concludes by indicating several directions for the development of more worked-out conceptions of relational equality on this basis. (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)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction I Education, Capability and Equal Participation in Society II Capability Equality in Education: Elements of a Fundamental Educational Entitlement III Elements of a Fundamental Educational Entitlement for Students with Disabilities and Special Educational Needs IV Towards a Principled Framework for a Just Distribution of Educational Resources to Students with Disabilities and Special Educational Needs Notes References.

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.1 “Sen’s proposal is that distributive justice entails equalizing midfare levels across persons,” writes John Roemer.2 “Other things being equal,” one has to add by way of correction to Roemer’s formulation. Sen holds that we should be concerned with the extent of people’s capability or freedom to attain midfare as well as the midfare level actually reached. Sen holds that distributive values.. (shrink)

This paper considers the view that the basis of equality is the range property of being a moral person. This view, suggested by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice (1971), is commonly dismissed in the literature. By defending the view against the criticism levelled against it, I aim to show that this dismissal has been too quick. The critics have generally failed to fully appreciate the fact that Rawls's account is restricted to the domain of distributive justice. On (...) Rawls's view distributive justice is a matter of the fair terms of cooperation among the participants of a system of social cooperation. I argue that this understanding of distributive justice can provide a compelling rationale for considering moral personality as the basis of equality for this domain of morality. That moral persons are indeed equal is further supported by an intuitive argument concerning the irrelevance of morally arbitrary factors, giving us reasons to believe that varying capacities among moral persons does not result in an unequal moral status. The dismissal of Rawls's account of equality has thus been premature, and it remains an important view to consider. (shrink)

I begin my comment on Westphal’s study by exploring briefly his refutation of “the arbitrariness thesis,” and then focusing on the “conditio humanae,” i.e. the conditions of life as freedom realized in common life. As I understand it, coordination and cooperation among persons are required because employing freedom in the presence of others presupposes an act of recognition that acknowledges a priori the necessity of universal respect. The right to use and possess things within the institution of property is (...) an illustrative example of this necessity. Justice requires possession not in the form of some equal distribution but as a normative requirement that “everyone shall have property.” One must have property in order to enter the world of inter-subjectivity and become a person. This has important implications for determining how poverty is related to the validity of laws, which depends on the joint legislative will of all persons. (shrink)

In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the fast and equitable distribution of effective vaccines worldwide is one of the challenges faced by international institutions in charge, as global equity in vaccine supply has not yet been achieved. Our paper explains the current state of ethical research on equity in global COVID-19 vaccine allocation, focusing on the COVAX Facility established by the WHO, acting as the global vaccine distributor. The article presents a detailed analysis of the first year (...) of COVAX allocation in 2021 identifying problematic aspects of its allocation framework regarding the implementation of COVAX’s fundamental allocation principles. We argue that the COVAX Facility has developed a proper concept to deal with global vaccine allocation—but to address uncovered defaults, we introduce the ‘Prioritized Distribution of Equal Shares’ model—a both ethical and practically feasible alternative allocation framework to protect the value of human lives in both high- and low-income countries through fair and fast global vaccine distribution in health emergencies. Nonetheless, we argue that the COVAX Facility remains the main organization to provide equitable access to vaccines. Yet, the global community has to consider further aspects such as patent protection, vaccine production and the lack of power of global structures to address the inequities that have arisen. Since new wars and further crises have arisen, a shift in public global attention endangers the processing of COVID-19-related issues. That is why now more than ever extensive efforts to achieve vaccine equity are needed. (shrink)

In ethics and political philosophy, the concepts of equity, equality, need satisfaction, and justice are significant for the fulfilment of underlying requirements of human rights, and the attainment of peace in societies. Studies show these as potential frames for defining processes, distributing resources, sharing responsibilities, allocating rewards, demonstrating respect and dispensing with unequal treatments. Justice, as the ideal that impels us to impartially adjudicate between competent claims, is linked to equality. But as the moral force that propels actions for needs’ (...) satisfaction, it is linked to equity. Hence, equality and equity are two elements of the theory of justice: both are grounded on the principles of distributive justice. This ‘common grounding’ apparently obfuscates their distinctive features, and over time, has elicited their equiparation. This essay highlights the archetypal frames of the notions of equity and equality as indispensable principles of social justice. It identifies the skewed distribution of resources in Nigeria as arising from a legal framework that removes the power of personal/group autonomy from the people. The essay notes the misleading tendency in the insulated use of equality for justice, and accepts the primacy of distributive justice amongst rival pathways to national cohesive living. (shrink)

Distributive justice decision making tends to require a trade off between different valued outcomes. The present study tracked computer mouse cursor movements in a forced-choice paradigm to examine for tension between different parameters of distributive justice during the decision-making process. Participants chose between set meal distributions, to third parties, that maximised either equality (the evenness of the distribution) or efficiency (the total number of meals distributed). Across different formulations of these dilemmas, responding was consistent with the notion that individuals (...) tend to base decisions in part on the magnitude of these parameters. In addition, dilemmas associated with inconsistent responding across the sample tended to elicit the greatest spatial deviation of the cursor, potentially reflecting dilemma difficulty. One interpretation of these results is that individuals value equality and efficiency in such a way that moral dilemmas are resolved by comparing the perceived value of these qualitatively different parameters, consistent with a value pluralistic framework of decision making. A post-hoc analysis indicated that individuals also incorporated sufficiency concerns during distributive justice decision making. The results are discussed in relation to political philosophy. (shrink)

In this essay, I survey egalitarian and utilitarian approaches to the distribution of scarce life-saving medical resources. In my view, the major criterion for the distribution of scarce life-saving medical resources should be life expectancy: we should distribute life so as to maximize life-years. In Section II, I discuss the life-year maximization approach and situate it within utilitarian theory.

One of the most influential appeals in disputes concerning distributive justice is the appeal to the value of equality. However, the concept of equality is one of the vaguest concepts in social philosophy and philosophical discussions of equality are notorious for their ambiguity. The purpose of this paper is to formulate concisely and then to evaluate the adequacy of four egalitarian formulas and a four-step egalitarian position for achieving distributive justice.

Luck egalitarians equalize the outcome enjoyed by people who exemplify the same degree of distributive desert by removing the influence of luck. They also try to calibrate differential rewards according to the pattern of distributive desert. This entails that they have to decide upon, among other things, the rate of reward, i.e., a principled way of distributing rewards to groups exercising different degrees of the relevant desert. However, the problem of the choice of reward principle is a relatively and undeservedly (...) neglected issue among luck egalitarians. The main goal of this paper is to highlight the importance and difficulty of this problem, and to elaborate upon G. A. Cohen's community-oriented response to it. In the last section, I provide a taxonomy of distributive pluralism, contrasting Cohen’s view with other (not so genuine) pluralisms - especially with all-things-considered varieties - while trying to motivate readers to adopt the more robust form of pluralism. (shrink)

There is at present a divide in the geographical literature between those interested in distributive justice as a social value and those who seek to implement distributive plans on the basis of efficiency of resource use. The former are 'social geographers' interested in equity as a social value, and the latter are 'practical' economic and locational geographers. This divide mirrors one existing elsewhere in social science between Rawlsian liberalism and utilitarian planners. Here we argue that equality and efficiency are related (...) values that cannot be separated easily in the analysis of practical problems. Data on the distribution of transplantable human organs are considered in a practical consideration of this approach. The case-study suggests that inequality of distribution appears to effect adversely the general organ supply. Stated positively, the data suggest that, to the extent that equality of service is an objective, that goal may positively impact on organ supply. More generally, the conclusion argues for a conjoining of theoretical and practical geographical approaches where a scarce resource must be allocated across a dispersed population. (shrink)

Aristotle is critical of the political egalitarianism advocated by ancient participatory democracies on the grounds that serious inequalities exist among citizens. Nevertheless, when he constructs his own complete political ideal in his Politics, he advocates an egalitarianism that is even stronger and wider in scope than the democratic one; it goes beyond equal political shares, proposing equality in many other things, including resources and wealth. Such strong egalitarianism is motivated by the kind of complete political ideal he aims to (...) delineate—a city possessing the best constitution and all the other good-making characteristics of a polis. To ground such characteristics, Aristotle makes several ideal assumptions about the human and non-human resources necessary for a polis. Some of these assumptions secure the kind of equality in political capacities and virtue among the citizens Aristotle needs for justifying, by the application of his principle of distributive justice, numerically equal shares in political office, resources, and other goods or burdens. Ideal, albeit negative, assumptions about indispensable non-citizen groups enable Aristotle to specify the features of those necessary for securing some private and civic goods essential to his complete political ideal and to justify certain extreme inequalities within his polis. This paper explores the nature of these assumptions, the role they play in the distribution of goods and burdens, and some of the problems they give rise to within Aristotle’s complete political ideal. (shrink)

Although liberal political philosophers have long recognised the tension between equal opportunity and the family, most have assumed there is little society can do to mitigate it. Brighouse and Swift argue, by contrast, that an analysis of the value of the family reveals limits on the rights of parents to benefit their children and hence points to a way to reconcile the family with equal opportunity. Their solution for resolving the tension between equal opportunity and the family, (...) however, leads to some untenable conclusions. A better solution for promoting equal opportunity in the family is to level up the opportunities that less advantaged parents have to promote the development and wellbeing of their children so that they are on par with the opportunities of the most advantaged parents. Five strategies are outlined for achieving this goal. Once society has provided all parents with real opportunities to fulfil their fiduciary duties, Brighouse and Swift's argument for limited parental partiality can be applied without contradiction. The result is an alternate solution for mitigating the conflict between equal opportunity and the family in liberal political philosophy. (shrink)

In this article I shall examine how some recent work on equality has thrown light on the thorny issue of how equality relates to the recognition of difference. It has been argued that, whilst equal...

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)

Australian bills of rights are confined to the protection of civil and political rights. Economic, social and cultural rights were deliberately excluded from their coverage. This article draws on United Kingdom, Canadian and South African judgments with the aim of showing that the equality guarantees contained in these instruments can nevertheless be used as a vehicle for socio-economic claims. It further argues that there are sound moral and philosophical reasons that justify this approach.

The paper returns to the question whether equality in distribution is valuable in itself, or, if you like, whether it is intrinsically valuable. Its bulk is an examination of two familiar arguments against the intrinsic value of distributional equality: the levelling down objection and the objection that equality violates some person-affecting condition, in that its realisation does not improve the lot of people.

In my 2013 article ‘A Refutation of Skeptical Theism,’ I argued that observing seemingly unjustified evils always reduces the probability of God’s existence. When figuring the relevant probabilities, I used a basic probability calculus that simply distributes the probability of falsified hypotheses equally. In 2015, Timothy Perrine argued that, since Bayes Theorem doesn’t always equally distribute the probability of falsified hypotheses, my argument is undermined unless I can also show that my thesis follows on a Bayesian analysis. It is (...) the purpose of this paper to meet that burden. (shrink)