Much contemporary egalitarian theorizing is broadly divided between luck egalitarians, such as G. A. Cohen, Richard Arneson, and John Roemer, and relational egalitarians, such as John Rawls, Samuel Scheffler, Josh Cohen, and me. The two camps disagree about how to conceive of equality: as an equal distribution of non-relational goods among individuals, or as a kind of social relation between persons - an equality of authority, status, or standing.This disagreement generates a second, about when unequal distributions of non-relational goods are (...) unjust. Luck egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it is accidental: when it is caused by morally arbitrary factors such as circumstances of birth. Relational egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it disadvantages people: when it reflects, embodies, or causes inequality of authority, status, or standing. (shrink)

This article develops the argument that the state must provide parental subsidies if, and to the extent that, individuals would, under certain specified hypothetical conditions, purchase ‘insurance cover’ that would provide the funds they need for adequate childrearing. I argue that most citizens would sign up to an insurance scheme, in which they receive a guarantee of a means-tested parental subsidy in return for an obligation to pay a progressive income tax to fund the scheme. This argument from insurance bolsters (...) the weaker case that proponents of parental subsidies might offer were they to rely exclusively on arguments from fair play and efficiency. (shrink)

Many of the foremost defenders of distributive egalitarianism hold that its scope should be limited to co-citizens. But this bracketing of distributive equality exclusively to citizens turns out to be very difficult to defend. Pressure is placed on it, for instance, when we recognize its vulnerability to ?extension arguments? which attempt to cast the net of egalitarian concern more widely. The paper rehearses those arguments and also examines some ? ultimately unsuccessful ? responses which ?citizenship egalitarians? might make. If it (...) does turn out that citizenship egalitarianism cannot be defended, then two options are open to its adherents: to modify that position substantially in order to embrace at least some global egalitarian components, or to argue for a reorganization of citizenship regimes in such a way that citizenship might properly track the subjects of egalitarian justice. Both are radical options. Finally, the paper then briefly considers one way in which an attenuated form of citizenship egalitarianism might still be defended. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate actions that the United States took against Costa Rica during the 1980s in order to argue that current discussions about global justice and its foundations are flawed in three ways. First, it misidentifies the parties of global justice as individual citizens. Second, it conceptualizes global justice as exclusively a distributive justice concern and, as a result, it misidentifies what constitutes a global injustice as being the adverse fate of individuals who live in a poor nation. (...) Finally, the current debate provides no guidance in what must be considered to identify the specific obligations one nation may have to another nation. Given these three problems, I maintain that we conceptualize global injustice as an issue of social justice rather than one exclusively of distributive justice. This will require identifying nations as the parties to global justice, at least in certain cases, and realizing that our goal is to remedy oppressive global structures of power. Utilizing the social justice I propose will put us on the road toward achieving justice across the Americas. (shrink)

In this article I review Jonathan Wolff and Avner de‐Shalit’s recent book Disadvantage (2007), highlighting its many contributions to egalitarian theory and practice. These contributions build to the authors’ central prescription: that policy‐makers work to create a society of equals by reducing the tendency for disadvantages to cluster around certain individuals or groups. From there, I discuss the idea of declustering disadvantage in an American context, and consider its implications for the politically salient ideal of equality of opportunity. The purpose (...) of this discussion is not to posit Wolff and de‐Shalit’s theory of disadvantage as a theory of justice as equal opportunity. Instead, I illustrate their approach by reference to an influential theory of justice, whose proponents include those taken to affirm the authors’ consensual starting point. (shrink)

The question of when it is permissible to inflict risks on others without their consent is one that we all face in our everyday lives, but which is often brought to our attention in contexts of technological innovation and scientific uncertainty. Xenotransplantation, the transplantation of organs or tissues from animals to humans, has the potential to save or improve the lives of many patients but gives rise to the possibility of infectious agents being transferred from donor animals into the human (...) population. As well as being an important ethical issue in its own right it therefore provides a useful vehicle for exploring the more general question of how to balance the benefits of a practice against the risks to third parties. This paper focuses on the Rawlsian, justice-based analysis of the risks of xenotransplantation proposed by Robert Veatch. It argues that Veatch is right to take considerations of distributive justice into account, but that his particular approach is flawed. It is hoped that consideration of Veatch’s arguments, and of the underlying assumptions will suggest better ways of executing a justice-based approach. (shrink)

In Simon Wiesenthal's book The Sunflower: On the Possibility and Limits of Forgiveness, Wiesenthal tells the story of a dying German soldier who was guilty of horrendous evil against Jewish men, women, and children, but who desperately wanted forgiveness from and reconciliation with at least one Jew before his death. Wiesenthal, then a prisoner in a camp, was brought to hear the German soldier's story and his pleas for forgiveness. As Wiesenthal understands his own reaction to the German soldier, he (...) did not grant the dying soldier the forgiveness the man longed for. In The Sunflower, Wiesenthal presents reflections on this story by numerous thinkers. Their responses are noteworthy for the highly divergent intuitions they express. In this paper, I consider the conflicting views about forgiveness on the part of the respondents in The Sunflower.I argue that those respondents who are convinced that forgiveness should be denied the dying German soldier are mistaken. Nonetheless, I also argue in support of the attitude that rejects reconciliation with the dying German soldier. I try to show that, in some cases of grave evil, repentance and making amends are not sufficient for the removal of guilt, and that reconciliation may be morally impermissible, whatever the case as regards forgiveness. (shrink)

While libertarians affirm personal responsibility as a central moral and political value, libertarian theorists write relatively little about the theory and practice of this value. Focusing on the work of F. A. Hayek and David Schmidtz, this article identifies the core of a libertarian approach to personal responsibility and demonstrates the ways in which this approach entails a radical revision of the ethics and American politics of personal responsibility. Then, I highlight several central implications of this analysis in the American (...) political and economic status quo. First, this analysis makes a mockery of so-called libertarian/conservative ‘fusionism’, such that libertarian personal responsibility cannot partner with meritocratic conservative thought to provide a plural grounding for rejecting progressive or redistributive economic policy. Next, preferred libertarian policies threaten the status, esteem and social bases of self-respect of citizens who are worse-off through little or no fault of their own. Finally, these policies undermine the ethics of personal responsibility that Americans from across the ideological spectrum value and many conservatives and libertarians celebrate. In the American status quo, those who value personal responsibility must reserve a central place for policies that mitigate opportunity and distributive inequalities. (shrink)

Two of the most important theories in contemporary liberal egalitarianism are Ronald Dworkin’s equality of resources and Amartya Sen’s capability approach. Recently Dworkin has claimed that Sen’s capability approach does not provide a genuine alternative to equality of resources. In this article, we provide both an internal and an external critique of Dworkin’s claim. In the first part of the article we develop an internal critique by providing a detailed analysis of Dworkin’s claim. Andrew Williams has contested Dworkin’s claim, but (...) he has failed to convince Dworkin of his objections. We analyze this debate, and offer an argument that, we hope, settles this dispute. In the second part of the article we argue that an analysis beyond the current parameters of the liberal-egalitarian debate points to three significant differences between Dworkin’s and Sen’s egalitarian theories: the degree to which they rely on an ideal-theoretical approach; their ability to judge social structures that are intertwined with people’s social endowments; and their endorsement of a well-defined criterion to demarcate morally relevant from morally irrelevant inequalities. This broader analysis not only reinforces our conclusion that Dworkin’s equality of resources and Sen’s capability approach are genuinely distinct, but it also suggests some more general insights that may be relevant for a better understanding of contemporary egalitarian thinking. (shrink)

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

I shall draw on my experience of being an ICU patient to make some practical, ethical, and philosophical points about the care of the critically ill. The recurring theme in this paper is ICU psychosis. I suggest that discharged patients ought to be educated about it; I discuss the obstacles in the way of accurately measuring it; I argue that we must rethink autonomy in light of it; and I suggest that the self disintegrates in the face of it.

I defend a certain claim about rationing in the context of HIV/AIDS, namely, the 'priority thesis' that the state of a developing country with a high rate of HIV should provide highly active anti-retroviral treatment (HAART) to those who would die without it, even if doing so would require not treating most other life-threatening diseases. More specifically, I defend the priority thesis in a negative way, by refuting two influential and important arguments against it inspired by the Kantian principle of (...) respect for persons. The 'equality argument' more or less maintains that prioritizing treatment for HIV/AIDS would objectionably treat those who suffer from it as more important than those who do not. The 'responsibility argument' says, roughly, that to ration life-saving treatment by prioritizing those with HIV would wrongly fail to hold people responsible for their actions, since most people infected with HIV could have avoided the foreseeable harm of infection. While it appears that a Kantian must think that one of these two arguments is sound, I maintain that, in fact, respect for persons grounds neither the equality nor responsibility argument against prioritizing HAART and hence at least permits doing so. If this negative defence of the priority thesis succeeds, then conceptual space is opened up for the possibility that respect for persons requires prioritizing HAART, which argument I sketch in the conclusion as something to articulate and defend in future work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Individual responsibility is now very much on the political agenda. Even those who believe that its importance has been exaggerated by the political right — either because the appropriate conditions for assigning responsibility to individuals are rarely satisfied or because not enough is done to protect individuals from the more harmful consequences of their past choices and gambles — accept that individual responsibility is at least one of the values against which a society and its institutions ought to be (...) evaluated. One might be forgiven for assuming, then, that we know exactly why individual responsibility is important. The truth is otherwise. Surprisingly little philosophical work has been undertaken to analyse and separate out the different rationales that might be in play. Several possible reasons are examined here including: utility, the social bases of self‐respect, autonomy, human flourishing and fairness. However, once we adopt a pluralistic view of the value of individual responsibility we open up the possibility of value conflict, which conflict can make it harder to arrive at definitive prescriptions about which social policies best advance our concerns for individual responsibility. It is nevertheless possible to draw at least some conclusions about which policies we should favour. One important conclusion is that sometimes it is better not to hold individuals responsible for their past choices by denying them aid now, so that they might be better able to assume individual responsibility at a later date. (shrink)

Morally contoured empathy is a form of reasonable partiality essential to the healthy care of dependents. It is critical as an epistemic aid in determining proper moral responsiveness; it is also, within certain richly normative roles and relationships, itself a crucial constitutive mode of moral connection. Yet the achievement of empathy is no easy feat. Patterns of incuriosity imperil connection, impeding empathic engagement; inappropriate empathic engagement, on the other hand, can result in self-effacement. Impartial moral principles and constraints offer at (...) best meager protection against these perils, and hence serve poorly in securing morally contoured empathy. More nuanced and practical guidance should be sought in normatively substantive conceptions of our roles and relationships and their defining moral stakes. These, joined with more abstract moral tools, can facilitate rich, narratively textured interpretations of moralitys demands. While the content of our normative conceptions must be continually debated, engaging in this debate is vital to the achievement of proper empathy, and thus to effective, respectful, morally healthy care of dependents. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s position on the limits of legitimate economic inequality as presented in his Second Discourse. It argues that, although Rousseau’s position is egalitarian in that it places severe limits on permissible inequalities, he values economic equality instrumentally, not for its own sake but only as a means for promoting freedom and for securing the social conditions that make recognition, a central component of human well-being, available to all. The paper articulates the conception of freedom at work (...) in Rousseau’s view, showing both how his conception differs from Philip Pettit’s and how John Rawls’s conception of justice could be enriched by according greater importance to Rousseau’s concerns about economically caused forms of domination. (shrink)

abstract This paper considers the question of whether unemployed individuals have a duty of fairness to accept retraining as a condition of receiving unemployment benefit. It is argued, in response to Stuart White, that, although there are some circumstances where individuals do have such a moral duty, for an egalitarian it is never the case that there is sufficient reason for enforcing such a duty by means of the law.

The ideal of educational equality is fundamentally grounded in the egalitarian principle that social and institutional arrangements should be designed to give equal consideration to all. However, beyond this broad stipulation, the precise content of the ideal of educational equality is more difficult to determine. In this article, I aim to contribute to the debate on equality in education by dealing with the current, contentious issue of provision for students with disabilities and special educational needs. Thus, the paper addresses the (...) question of what constitutes a just provision for these students, and it provides an answer in terms of the capability approach, as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

Judicial obligation to enforce the law is typically regarded as both unproblematic and important: unproblematic because there is little reason to doubt that judges have a general, if prima facie, obligation to enforce law, and important because the obligation gives judges significant reason to limit their concern in adjudication to applying the law. I challenge both of these assumptions and argue that norms of political legitimacy, which may be extra-legal, are irretrievably at the basis of responsible judicial reasoning.

The ideal of educational equality is fundamentally grounded in the egalitarian principle that social and institutional arrangements should be designed to give equal consideration to all. However, beyond this broad stipulation, the precise content of the ideal of educational equality is more difficult to determine. In this article, I aim to contribute to the debate on equality in education by dealing with the current, contentious issue of provision for students with disabilities and special educational needs. Thus, the paper addresses the (...) question of what constitutes a just provision for these students, and it provides an answer in terms of the capability approach, as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)