Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That (...) gives citizens their just deserts. In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don't think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists. (shrink)

Pluralist egalitarians think that luck and relational egalitarianism each articulates a component in a pluralist account of egalitarian justice. However, this ecumenical view appears problematic in the light of Elizabeth Anderson's claim that the divide arises because two incompatible views of justification are in play, which in turn generates derivative disagreements – e.g. about the proper currency of egalitarian justice. In support of pluralist egalitarianism I argue that two of Anderson's derivative disagreements are not rooted in the disagreement over justification (...) she identifies, and that the disagreement over justification cuts across standard disagreements between luck and relational egalitarian justice. (shrink)

Wer Politikwissenschaft studiert, lernt, was gute empirische Arbeiten ausmacht. Wie sieht es aber in der Politischen Theorie aus? Wie kann man systematisch ergründen, was gerecht ist oder welche Entscheidungen Politiker:innen treffen sollten? Wie erweitert die Positive Politische Theorie den Horizont empirischer Erklärungen? Was macht eine überzeugende Interpretation historischer Texte aus – und was können Studierende in einer Hausarbeit zu den großen Klassikern noch sagen? Dieses Lehrbuch vermittelt das Handwerkszeug, um Probleme in der Positiven wie Normativen Politischen Theorie und Ideengeschichte eigenständig (...) anzugehen – anwendungsorientiert und leicht verständlich, verknüpft mit Argumentationstheorie und Grundlagen des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens. (shrink)

In recent years, a distinction between two concepts of equality has been much discussed: 'distributive’ equality involves people having equal amounts of a good such as welfare or resources, and ‘social’ or ‘relational’ equality involves the absence of social hierarchy and the presence of equal social relations. This contrast is commonly thought to have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between equality and justice. But the nature and significance of the distinction is far from clear. I examine several (...) accounts of this issue and argue none are entirely satisfactory. In turn, I offer an alternative proposal. Relational equality, on my account, involves a concern with each person having an equal 'civic status'. I characterize this concern and show it has distinctive and normatively significant positional and temporal aspects. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarianism, justice requires equal relations. In this paper, I ask the question: can equal relations be unjust according to relational egalitarianism? I argue that while on some conceptions of relational egalitarianism, equal relations cannot be unjust, there are conceptions in which equal relations can be unjust. Surprisingly, whether equal relations can be unjust cuts across the distinction between responsibility-sensitive and non-responsibility-sensitive conceptions of relational egalitarianism. I then show what follows if one accepts a conception in which equal (...) relations can be unjust, including why it provides a reason to grant some people less political power than others. (shrink)

According to the relational egalitarian theory of justice, justice requires that people relate as equals. To relate as equals, many relational egalitarians argue, people must (i) regard each other as equals, and (ii) treat each other as equals. In this paper, we argue that, under conditions of background injustice, such relational egalitarians should endorse affirmative action in the ways in which (dis)esteem is attributed to people as part of the regard-requirement for relating as equals.

We set out longtermist political philosophy as a research field by exploring the case for, and the implications of, ‘institutional longtermism’: the view that, when evaluating institutions, we should give significant weight to their very long-term effects. We begin by arguing that the standard case for longtermism may be more robust when applied to institutions than to individual actions or policies, both because institutions have large, broad, and long-term effects, and because institutional longtermism can plausibly sidestep various objections to individual (...) longtermism. We then address points of contact between longtermism and some central values of mainstream political philosophy, focusing on justice, equality, freedom, legitimacy, and democracy. While each value initially seems to conflict with institutional longtermism, we find that these conflicts are less clear-cut upon closer inspection, and that some political values might even provide independent support for institutional longtermism. We end with a grab bag of related questions that we lack space to explore here. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are good reasons to limit the scope of luck egalitarianism to co‐existing people. First, I outline reasons to be sceptical about how “luck” works intergenerationally and therefore the very grounding of luck egalitarianism between non‐overlapping generations. Second, I argue that what Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen calls the “core luck egalitarian claim” allows significant intergenerational inequality which is a problem for those who object to such inequality. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the intuition that it might be required (...) to leave future generations better off than we are, even if it would come at no cost to ourselves. Finally, I argue that following another, broader, version of luck egalitarianism would require us to level down future generations and possibly even ourselves, which is a problem for those persuaded by the levelling‐down objection. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism says that moral equals should relate as equals. We explore how moral unequals should relate.

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)

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)

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 paper explores the role individual responsibility plays in contemporary political theory. It argues that the standard luck egalitarian view—the view according to which distributive justice is ensured by holding people accountable for their exercise of responsibility in the distribution of benefits and burdens—obscures the more fundamental value of being responsible. The paper, then, introduces an account of ‘self-creative responsibility’ as an alternative to the standard view and shows how central elements on which this account is founded has been prominently (...) defended in the history of Western political thought but are comparatively neglected in contemporary political theory. Relying on this account, the paper argues that society should hold persons responsible when, and only when, doing so enables them to lead responsible lives, and only on the condition that doing so does not infringe other persons’ equivalently valuable ability to lead responsible lives. The account of self-creative responsibility, the paper concludes, plausibly captures the intuitive attraction of holding responsible while respecting the value of being responsible. (shrink)

This paper develops a general approach to how society should compensate for losses that individuals incur due to public health interventions aimed at controlling the spread of infectious diseases. The paper falls in three parts. The first part provides an initial introduction to the issues and briefly outlines five different kinds of public health interventions that will be used as test cases. They are all directed at individuals and aimed at controlling the spread of infectious diseases (1) isolation, (2) quarantine, (...) (3) recommended voluntary social distancing, (4) changes in health care provision for asymptomatic carriers of multi-resistant microorganisms, and (5) vaccination. The interventions will be briefly described including the various risks, burdens and harms individuals who are subject to these interventions may incur. The second part briefly surveys current compensation mechanisms as far as any exist and argue that even where they exist they are clearly insufficient and do not provide adequate compensation. The third part will then develop a general framework for compensation for losses incurred due to public health interventions in the infectious disease context. This is the major analytical and constructive part of the paper. It first analyses pragmatic and ethical arguments supporting the existence of an obligation on the part of the state to compensate for such losses, and then considers whether this obligation can be defeated by (1) resource considerations, or (2) issues relating to personal responsibility. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to explore people’s attitudes toward responsibility in the allocation of public health care resources. Special attention is paid to conceptualizations of responsibility involving blame and sanctions. A representative sample of the Norwegian population was asked about various responsibility mechanisms that have been proposed in the theoretical literature on health care and personal responsibility, from denial of treatment to a tax on unhealthy consumer goods. Survey experiments were employed to study treatment effects, such as whether (...) fairness considerations affect attitudes about responsibility. We find that, overall, a substantial minority of the respondents find it fair to let the health care system sanction people—in one way or another—for voluntary behaviors that increase the risk of becoming ill. Quite surprisingly, we find that people are more prone to report that they should themselves be held responsible for unhealthy lifestyles than others. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, it is unjust if some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own. The most common criticism of luck egalitarianism is the ‘harshness objection’, which states that luck egalitarianism allows for too harsh consequences, as it fails to provide justification for why those responsible for their bad fate can be entitled to society's assistance. It has largely gone unnoticed that the harshness objection is open to a number of very different interpretations. (...) We present four different interpretations of the harshness objection in which the problem pertains to counterintuitive implications, badness of outcome, disproportionality, or inconsistency, respectively. We analyse and discuss appropriate luck egalitarian replies. Disentangling these different versions clarifies what is at the heart of this dispute and reveals the point of the harshness objection. We conclude that only the inconsistency version involves a durable problem for luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

This paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform it only if she abides by certain duties of care. Those who argue that engaging in such an activity can render an agent liable to defensive harm (...) ground this liability in the luck egalitarian thought that we may justly hold individuals responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices. Against this, I argue that a luck egalitarian commitment to holding people responsible cannot, by itself, ground liability to defensive harm. It can help ground such liability only against the backdrop of a distributively just society, and only if further considerations speak morally in favour of attaching certain well-defined costs to individuals’ risk-imposing choices. I conclude by suggesting that if an account of liability applies robustly across distributively just and unjust contexts alike, then what grounds an agent’s liability is plausibly not her responsibility for threatening objectively unjustified harm, but her culpability for doing so. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that luck egalitarianism captures “desert-like” intuitions about justice. Some even think that luck egalitariansm distributes goods in accordance with desert. In this paper, we argue that this is wrong. Desertism conflicts with luck egalitarianism in three important contexts, and, in these contexts, desertism renders the proper moral judgment. First, compared to desertism, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too stingy: it fails to justly compensate people for their socially valuable contributions—when those contributions arose from “option luck”. Second, luck egalitarianism (...) is sometimes too restrictive: it fails to justly compensate people who make a social contribution when that contribution arose from “brute luck”. Third, luck egalitarianism is too limited in scope: it cannot diagnose economic injustice arising independently of comparative levels of justice. The lesson of this paper is that luck egalitarians should consider supplementing their theory with desert considerations. Or, even better, consider desertism as a superior alternative to their theory. (shrink)

I outline and defend two egalitarian theories, which yield distinctive and, I argue, complementary answers to why health-related inequalities matter: a brute luck egalitarian view, according to which inequalities due to unchosen, differential luck are bad because unfair, and a social egalitarian view, according to which inequalities are bad when and because they undermine people’s status as equal citizens. These views identify different objects of egalitarian concern: the brute luck egalitarian view directs attention to health-related well-being, while social egalitarianism focuses (...) on health-related capabilities that are central to a person’s status as a citizen. I argue that both views are correct and should jointly guide priority-setting in health. (shrink)

Relational egalitarians sometimes argue that a degree of distributive equality is necessary for social equality to obtain among members of society. In this paper, we consider how such arguments fare when extended to the intergenerational case. In particular, we examine whether relational reasons for distributive equality apply between non-overlapping generations. We claim that they do not. We begin by arguing that the most common reasons relational egalitarians offer in favour of distributive equality between contemporaries do not give us reasons to (...) object to distributive inequality between non-overlapping generations. This argument by itself however will not fully suffice to show that there are no relational reasons to care about intergenerational distributive equality, given the nature of relational equality and its requirements in the intergenerational case are likely to be qualitatively different than in the contemporary case. Therefore, we also make the positive argument that for the intergenerational case to satisfy the requirements demanded by the ideal of relational equality it suffices that future persons’ interests are meaningfully incorporated and protected in the decision-making of preceding generations, and there is no basis for a concern with distributive equality. While some have argued that the one-way and asymmetrical causal influence between non-overlapping generations means concerns of social equality are inapplicable in the intergenerational case, we argue that the ongoing nature of this influence makes concerns of social equality appropriate. If successful, the upshot of the argument is that it can be coherent to maintain a commitment to relational equality between non-overlapping generations, all while remaining agnostic about distributive equality between them. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarians, equality is not primarily about the distribution of some good but about people relating to one another as equals. However, compared with other theorists in political philosophy – including other egalitarians – relational egalitarians have said relatively little on what role personal responsibility should play in their theories. For example, is equality compatible with responsibility? Should economic distributions be responsibility-sensitive? This article fills this gap. I develop a relational egalitarian framework for personal responsibility and show that (...) relational equality commits us to responsibility. I develop two sets of arguments. First, I draw on relational theories of moral responsibility – particularly Strawsonian views – to show that valuable egalitarian relationships require responsibility. Second, I show why relational equality sometimes requires that economic distributions be sensitive to responsibility and choice. I also defend a seemingly paradoxical result: being committed to responsibility, relational egalitarianism not only justifies some distributive inequalities but some relational inequalities too. Overall, relational egalitarianism gives a nuanced and coherent answer as to why and how responsibility matters from within egalitarianism. That it does should be an important argument in its favour. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds and limits in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of their role within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around threshold views in distributive justice. In this thesis, I develop an account of the conceptual structure of such views. Such an account helps understand and characterize threshold views, can subsume what may seem to be different debates about such views under one conceptual header, and can be (...) used to further examine and develop patterns of justice that draw on thresholds. In light of this account, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism which sheds new light on the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and on the common objections to sufficientarianism. Moreover, I examine and defend limitarianism, which is the view that people should not have more than a certain amount of wealth. In particular, I argue in favour of limitarianism as a midlevel principle for guiding institutional design and individual actions and, furthermore, as a specification of what a just allocation of wealth requires under epistemic constraints. (shrink)

A partir de las críticas que el igualitarismo fraternal lanzó contra el igualitarismo de la suerte, G. A. Cohen propuso un compromiso a través del denominado modelo de campamento. Puesto que dicho trade-off no quedó formalizado, en este artículo se intenta aportar algunos elementos en tal dirección. En concreto, se argumenta: a) que Cohen tiende un primer puente hacia el igualitarismo fraternal al distinguir los aspectos de equidad y legitimidad en una concepción de lo justo, conjuntamente con la afirmación de (...) que la suerte en las opciones nunca preserva la justicia; b) que los principios igualitario y comunitario, que Cohen postula como deseables para el socialismo, operan sobre la base de la distinción equidad-legitimidad, de modo que las desigualdades generadas por elecciones genuinas y mala suerte en las opciones son justas en tanto resultan legítimas pero no son justas en términos de equidad y, en consecuencia, las desigualdades que rasgan el tejido social son causalmente fundamentales mientras que el principio comunitario es normativamente fundamental; y c) que los elementos comunitarios que impulsan el compromiso de Cohen ya están presentes en sus nociones de igualdad voluntaria, ethos igualitario, lectura estricta del Principio de Diferencia rawlsiano y comunidad justificatoria. (shrink)

Some healthcare systems are said to be grounded in solidarity because healthcare is funded as a form of mutual support. This article argues that health care systems that are grounded in solidarity have the right to penalise some users who are responsible for their poor health. This derives from the fact that solidary systems involve both rights and obligations and, in some cases, those who avoidably incur health burdens violate obligations of solidarity. Penalties warranted include direct patient contribution to costs, (...) and lower priority treatment, but not typically full exclusion from the healthcare system. We also note two important restrictions on this argument. First, failures of solidary obligations can only be assumed under conditions that are conducive to sufficiently autonomous choice, which occur when patients are given ‘Golden Opportunities’ to improve their health. Second, because poor health does not occur in a social vacuum, an insistence on solidarity as part of healthcare is legitimate only if all members of society are held to similar standards of solidarity. We cannot insist upon, and penalise failures of, solidarity only for those who are unwell, and who cannot afford to evade the terms of public health. (shrink)

This article brings together two debates in contemporary political philosophy: on the one hand, the dispute between the distributive and relational approaches to equality and, on the other hand, the field of intergenerational equality. I offer an original contribution to the second domain and by doing so, I inform the first. The aim of this article is thus twofold: (1) shedding some light on an under-researched and yet crucial question – ‘which inequalities between generations matter?’ and (2) contributing to a (...) far-reaching debate that touches upon the nature of egalitarianism. After showing that there are two key problems that fall within the scope of intergenerational equality – questions of justice between age groups and questions of equality between birth cohorts – I argue that, contrary to what the default distributive view (complete lives egalitarianism) states, some inequalities between age groups matter independently of their diachronic impact, and so partly for relational reasons. I argue that, even if we are distributive egalitarians, we must endorse the relational egalitarian conception to successfully make sense of some inequalities between age groups. I infer from this both that the putative view that the ‘relational’ conception of equality can be redescribed as distributive must be rejected and that the distributive view requires supplementation (but not necessarily displacement) by the relational view. (shrink)

The idea of using responsibility in the allocation of healthcare resources has been criticized for, among other things, too readily abandoning people who are responsible for being very badly off. One response to this problem is that while responsibility can play a role in resource allocation, it cannot do so if it will leave those who are responsible below a “sufficiency” threshold. This paper considers first whether a view can be both distinctively sufficientarian and allow responsibility to play a role (...) even for those who will be left with very poor health. It then draws several further distinctions that may affect the application of responsibility at this level. We conclude that a more plausible version of the sufficientarian view is to allow a role for responsibility where failure to do so will leave someone else who is not responsible below the sufficiency threshold. However, we suggest that individuals must exhibit “sufficient responsibility” in order for this to apply, involving both a sufficient level of control and an avoidable failure to respond adequately to reasons for action. (shrink)

This article carves out a new path between the two dominant wings of contemporary egalitarianism. The luck egalitarian emphasis on choice and personal responsibility is misplaced because individuals differ so deeply, and arbitrarily, in their choice-making capacities. Allowing inequalities to result from ‘choice’ is akin to allowing inequalities to stem from the possession of any other morally arbitrary factor – such as skin colour or gender. The move towards relational egalitarianism has been a case of two-steps forward, one-step back. While (...) the shift away from the focus on choice is salutary, the concurrent rejection of luck is problematic, given the prevalence and importance of luck-based discrepancies in opportunities to lead a good life. A new conceptual framework is presented: good life egalitarianism. The guiding idea is that given the unavoidable arbitrariness of human capacities, the foundation for a good life should be assured for people regardless of the actual choices that they make. The essential goods necessary for leading a good life – such as the opportunities to self-determine and to enjoy non-dominating social relationships – should be guaranteed to all. (shrink)

Hierarchy is a difficulty for theories of equality, and especially those that define equality in relational or social terms. In ideal egalitarian circumstances it seems that hierarchies should not exist. However, a liberal egalitarian defence of some types of hierarchies is common. Hierarchies of esteem have no further consequences than praise or admiration for valued individual features. Hierarchies of status, with differential reward, can, it is often argued, also be justified when they serve a justified social purpose and meet conditions (...) of genuine equality of opportunity. However, group hierarchies remain problematic, and evidence suggests that they are pervasive in human societies above a subsistence level of production. It has also been argued that group hierarchies are impossible to eliminate, and enormous cost is associated with attempting, and failing, to remove them. However, the perspective of ‘real-world’ political philosophy suggests measures to mitigate group hierarchy, starting with those that are either the easiest to address, the most damaging, or the most consequential. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians contend that, while each person starts out with a claim to an equal quantity of advantage, she can forfeit this claim by making certain choices. The appeal of luck egalitarianism is that it seems to satisfy what this paper calls the moral tyranny constraint. According to this constraint, any acceptable theory of justice must preclude the possibility of an agent unilaterally, discretionarily, and foreseeably leaving others with less advantage under conditions of full compliance with the theory. This paper (...) argues that claim forfeiture is built into luck egalitarianism specifically to preclude such moral tyranny. However, it contends that the dominant interpretation of luck egalitarianism fails to fully satisfy the moral tyranny constraint. It offers an alternative interpretation that both eliminates the possibility of moral tyranny and rescues the position from two other prominent objections that have been directed against luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

Resumen: En este ensayo desarrollo una crítica al modelo de justicia multicultural de Will Kymlicka, con el propósito de establecer las bases para el desarrollo de un multiculturalismo crítico. El argumento se ordena de la siguiente forma. En la primera sección analizo la teoría de los derechos especiales de Kymlicka e identifico el valor liberal central al que estos responden, la autonomía individual. En la segunda sección examino el fundamento igualitarista de la suerte de su teoría de los derechos especiales. (...) En la tercera sección elaboro una crítica general a la justicia multicultural liberal desarrollando un argumento para politizar los reclamos de los pueblos indígenas para el acceso a su cultura. Argumento que el trato justo de las minorías indígenas requiere reconocer su autodeterminación política.: In this essay I develop a critique of Will Kymlicka’s model of multicultural justice, with the purpose of laying down the foundations for a critical multiculturalism. The argument is ordered in the following way. In the first section I analyse Kymlicka’s theory of special rights and identify the central liberal value to which they respond: individual autonomy. In the second section I examine the luck egalitarian foundations of Kymlicka’s theory of special rights. In the third section, I elaborate a general critique to liberal multicultural justice, developing an argument to politicize the claims of indigenous peoples to access to their culture. Basically I argue that the just treatment of indigenous minorities requires recognizing their political self-determination. (shrink)

This article argues that it is possible to act paternalistically towards future people, as long as the following requirements are met: the act/choice is not such that it will prevent the future person from coming into existence; the action/choice is such that it can be taken by the future person herself without significant disadvantage to her; and the act/choice is not such that there is significant uncertainty at the time of choice about the preferences of the future person. I argue (...) that the possibility of acting paternalistically towards future people is of practical as well as theoretical importance. This is true since some of the policies we might choose to pursue on behalf of future people are paternalistic, in particular constitutional policies implemented because we do not trust future people to choose wisely. I end the paper by pointing out why it is valuable to approach intergenerational issues through both the paternalistic prism and the prism of theories of justice. (shrink)

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...

This article discusses various arguments for and against treating equality as a fundamental norm in law and political philosophy, combining prior arguments to the effect that equality is essentially an empty idea with arguments that treat it as a non‐empty but mistaken value that should be rejected. After concluding that most of the arguments for treating equality as a fundamental value fall victim to one or both of these arguments, it considers more closely arguments made by philosophers such as Ronald (...) Dworkin and Thomas Nagel that base a duty of promoting equality on the fact that governments impose a legal order on persons without their consent. It concludes that these arguments are mistaken: if the legal order imposed by government is justified then imposing it is not wrongful and generates no duty of equal treatment, while if that order is not justified no requirement of equality of treatment would cure the lack of justification. It concludes that equality should not be a value in law or political theory, but in some cases other considerations may justify particular rules that are sometimes mistakenly thought to be based on equality. (shrink)

This paper argues that the philosophy of explanation can help inform core debates in value theory. Specifically, it argues that there is a consistent parallelism between the properties of explanation and the properties of justification such that one can reasonably infer that any property of explanation has a counterpart property of justification. Thus, by appealing to facts about the nature of explanation, one can derive various conclusions about the justifications offered by normative theorists. The paper illustrates this point by considering (...) a debate within political philosophy over whether inequality requires justification in a way that equality does not. Egalitarians typically presume an affirmative answer to this question. However, libertarian critics note that this justificatory asymmetry cannot be simply assumed without argument. This paper argues that, by appealing to the explanation-justification parallelism, one can resolve this debate in favor of the egalitarians, as there are two properties of explanation, the justificatory analogs of which vindicate the egalitarian presumption. (shrink)