Equality

Ethics

Volumn 106, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 274-296

  McKerlie, Dennis ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0013220692     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233618     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. The ceteris paribus clause could be activated in two different ways. One possibility is that the badness of the inequality is outweighed by the positive value of some other feature of the outcome - for example, an increase in the overall well-being of people in general - so that the outcome is on balance good. On the other hand, some egalitarians think that the presence of certain other factors can simply cancel the badness of the inequality. For example, they might believe that inequalities that match people's desert, or inequalities that result from the free choices of the people concerned, are not bad at all.
2. The distinction between the teleological equality view and the deontological equality view is discussed in Derek Parfit's "On Giving Priority to the Worse Off" (unpublished manuscript) and in Larry Temkin's book Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 11.
3. This brief description of the deontological equality view leaves many questions about it unanswered. I am not using 'deontological' in the same way as John Rawls, for whom any moral view that treats a distribution of good things across different people as being itself good counts as deontological (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971], pp. 25, 30). The view that I have described should also be distinguished from a view that says that only inequality caused by individuals, or social institutions, is bad or objectionable. That view seems to be a restricted version of the teleological concern for equality. I have not tried to explain what it means to treat people equally. But I think that treating people equally requires that my actions should have equal effects for the better or for the worse on the people that they influence, not that my actions must be designed to create an overall equality between the people concerned in terms of welfare or quality of life.
4. The problem of balancing equality against other values is worse for the deontological equality view. If inequality is merely bad, it is easy to understand how its badness might be outweighed by the goodness of other things - e.g., by the positive value of gains in welfare for better-off people. But the deontological view objects to inequality because it represents unfair treatment. It is harder to see how gains for better-off people could justify treating other people unfairly in order to achieve those gains.
5. Philosophical egalitarians usually propose very strong versions of egalitarianism. The strength of an egalitarian view depends on two things: the content of its egalitarian principle (e.g., a principle that calls for strict equality is stronger than a principle that only tells us to eliminate extreme inequalities), and how it weighs the egalitarian principle against other principles (a view that gives strict priority to equality is stronger than a view which sometimes allows utilitarian reasons to outweigh equality). Egalitarians also typically agree that moral theories should fit the considered moral judgments of ordinary people. This is true, in different ways, of Rawls, Dworkin, and Nagel. Perhaps they have not done enough to show that their strong egalitarian theories satisfy this condition.
6. Rawls, sec. 12. Thomas Nagel discusses egalitarianism with special reference to inequality resulting from these factors in What Does It All Mean? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), chap. 8,
7. and Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), chap. 10.
8. Brian Barry, Theories of Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), chap. 27;
9. Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), chap. 2, sec. 2.
10. Most effectively by Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic, 1974), pp. 213-27.
11. Nozick uses the example to criticize Rawls (Nozick, pp. 185-86). He thinks it is implausible to hold both that there is no claim to equality in this example and that a claim to equality is created when social cooperation is introduced. Egalitarians who agree with Rawls about the two cases might decide that the deontological principle of equality provides a better explanation of their view than the claim that cooperation is a necessary condition for the application of egalitarian principles.
12. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, p. 107.
13. Nozick, p. 223.
14. If the deontological principle of equality is like other deontological principles the issue of whether the agent intended to produce inequality, or merely forsaw that it would result, might also be important.
15. Rawls, p. 72.
16. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 100-101.
17. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, Ibid., pp. 106-7. Nagel distinguishes this idea from the "pure priority view" that he describes in chap. 7.
18. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, Ibid., pp. 84, 99-102, 107-8. Rawls also seems to assimilate societies that actively distribute goods on the basis of natural differences between people ("aristocratic and caste societies") and societies that merely allow these differences to influence distribution (Rawls, p. 102).
19. In his discussion Nagel also points out that a laissez-faire economic system cannot be justified on the ground that noninterference on the part of the state is "natural" (Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 100-101). But this does not help us to understand how the deontological concern for equality can be applied to the state's noninterference.
20. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, Ibid., p. 101.
21. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 175-85.
22. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 166-68.
23. My argument assumes that Nagel accepts something like the deontological principle of equality that I have described, and then tries to solve the problem about merely permitted inequality by arguing that a strong doctrine of negative responsibility applies to the state although it does not apply to individuals. If Nagel is using a different basic principle my criticism would not apply. For example, he might value equality in the teleological way and also believe that it is only inequality that is caused by, or could have been prevented by, social institutions that should count as bad. But this suggestion would have difficulty accounting for the importance to Nagel of the special way in which negative responsibility is supposed to apply to the social and economic framework.
24. This is only true of the kind of deontological view that I have discussed: a view that does not claim that inequality is bad in itself, and thinks that the moral concern with equality involves an agent-relative reason not to cause or bring about inequality. It is possible that even a deontological view of this kind will tell one agent to respond in some way to the inequality wrongfully caused by others, even if it does not claim that inequality is a bad thing in itself. But this possibility will not help to defend Nagel's position. His view is not that the state should act to reduce inequality because that inequality was wrongfully caused by individuals; rather he thinks that the state has a negative responsibility for permitting inequality even if the individual actions that produced the inequality did not themselves violate the deontological principle.
25. Hastings Rashdall (The Theory of Good and Evil, vol. 1 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1907], pp. 266-67) points out that equality is a distribution of what is good between different people. Equality is not the good of any one person or of people collectively. Rashdall thinks that a distribution is too abstract to count as being good itself. Larry Temkin (Temkin, chap. 9) emphasizes the importance of this objection to equality. He calls the view about the good that motivates the objection "the slogan," and he makes a serious and sustained attempt to undermine it. I will comment on some of the ideas in his answer to the objection.
26. The strongest challenge to the teleological principle of equality does not come from the metaethical view that 'good' in "equality is (a) good" must mean "good for someone." It comes from the first-order ethical view that the only things that can have intrinsic value are things which make the lives of people better. We might agree that an improvement in the quality of a person's life is good, not merely good for the person in question. The difficult question is whether, when we understand what equality is, we think that it too has this kind of value.
27. Parfit, "On Giving Priority to the Worse Off."
28. Parfit discusses ideas that would give the issue about leveling down priority over the question about the value of equality ("On Giving Priority to the Worse Off"). People who feel uncertain about the value of equality might nevertheless confidently judge that leveling down is wrong, all things considered. According to some views about the role of considered judgments in supporting moral theories, this judgment can legitimately be used to draw a conclusion about the principle of equality: the principle should be rejected unless the combined view can avoid leveling down. However, I think it is possible that they are certain that leveling down is wrong because, at some level, they are taking it for granted that equality is not important for its own sake. If this is the explanation of their considered judgment, it would not justify drawing a conclusion against the principle of equality.
29. As I have already suggested, I think Rawls's difference principle is best understood as a version of the priority view that gives absolute priority to the interests of the very-worst-off social and economic class. The egalitarian view that Nagel explains in Equality and Partiality, chap. 7, is also a version of the priority view.
30. This revision of the principle of equality is not equivalent to Rawls's difference principle. The difference principle gives a special role to the very-worst-off group: inequality is objectionable if it disadvantages them. The revised principle of equality does not single that group out for special treatment. It tells us to minimize objectionable inequality, where an inequality is objectionable if it disadvantages those who are worse off under the inequality. Groups other than the very-worst-off group might be disadvantaged by an inequality. So minimizing objectionable inequality will not always maximize the prospects of the very worst off. Even if we decide that inequality is only objectionable if it disadvantages the very-worst-off group, the principle of minimizing objectionable inequality is still not the same as the difference principle. The difference principle tells us to increase inequality when this would benefit the worst off. The revised principle of equality would not count this inequality as objectionable, but it does not require us to produce the inequality.
31. When Nagel discusses a version of the deontological equality view he suggests that it might sometimes tell us to level down (Nagel, Equality and Partiality, p. 107).
32. This is Temkin's view. He does not think it is crucial for the plausibility of egalitarianism to show that the combined view would never recommend leveling down, all things considered.
33. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 419-22.
34. Temkin points out that the objection against equality can be isolated from these examples by restricting the objection to cases where the identities of people are not affected by our choices (Temkin, pp. 255-56). I think there is another problem with using the examples to defend equality: the most general and persuasive version of the objection can accommodate the examples.
35. Ibid., chap. 9, secs. 6-9.
36. There is another way of using a theory of the good to answer the objection against equality. It might be claimed that equality does make people's lives better - that the relation of equality holding between my life and someone else's life counts as a good added to my life, in the way that the relation of truth holding between one of my beliefs and the facts might make my life better. Temkin considers the possibility of defending equality by appealing to an Objective List Theory of what is in a person's self-interest, with equality as one of the items on the list, although he does not himself endorse this defense (Temkin, pp. 273-75). I think that it is more persuasive to make this claim about equality if we distinguish between self-interest and the value contained in a life and say that equality makes a person's life better even though it does not contribute to that person's self-interest. Nevertheless, I think the claim is unconvincing. My own life is not made worse by the mere existence of another person whose happiness is greater than my own. John Broome does think that inequality makes lives worse (John Broome, Weighing Goods [Oxford: Blackwell, 1991], chap. 12). He suggests that this is so because inequality involves unjust treatment, and being treated unjustly itself counts as a harm for the person who is treated unjustly (Broome, pp. 181-82, 192-99). In the cases being considered (where the inequality does not harm the people who are worse off in other ways, apart from the existence of the inequality itself) it seems to me more reasonable to say that the treatment is unjust despite the fact that it does not harm anyone or make anyone's life worse.
37. Temkin, pp. 275-76.
38. Ross's discussion is helpful (W. D. Ross, Foundations of Ethics [Oxford: Clarendon, 1939], pp. 285-89), although he considers the value of a distribution in accordance with merit, not an equal distribution. Ross thinks that such a distribution is a good. Because it involves a relation between people he calls it a situational good. Situational goods are distinguished from personal goods - personal goods are activities and experiences that would be included in the goods of people. Ross thinks that the goodness of a distribution in accordance with merit explains our duty to produce it, and not the other way around. He argues that we would value this distribution even if it were produced by nature and not by human agency. I think that defenders of the teleological principle of equality should explain it in the way that Ross explains his distributive principle.
39. Temkin proposes this way of understanding equality. He specifies principles of equality in terms of the complaints that individuals might have against inequality (Temkin, chap. 2). He says that the ultimate concern of egalitarians is satisfying moral claims held by individuals, where those claims are concerned with how those fare with respect to other individuals (Temkin, p. 200).
40. A different example will show why it seems helpful to talk about individual claims. Suppose that I have made a promise to a particular person, and I now see that keeping my promise will hurt that person's interests. I might nevertheless believe that there is a moral reason for me to keep my promise. The moral reason is not related to the person's self-interest, or to making that person's life better in some other way. Nevertheless, it is not an impersonal moral reason. Keeping the promise satisfies a moral claim held by that individual, even if it does not further that person's good.
41. Despite Temkin's use of the language of individual complaints, I am not sure that he would agree that the asymmetry I have described is an important feature in our judgments about inequality or that individual claims can provide some significant further explanation of why inequality is wrong. He discusses (Temkin, pp. 45-46) the view that since equality itself is symmetrical we could attribute a complaint against inequality to the people who are better off under the inequality, or to us when we think about the inequality and find it objectionable, as well as to the people who are worse off under the inequality. Used in this extended way the language of complaints seems to be just a way of signaling that an inequality is objectionable. Claims understood in this way would not explain why the inequality is objectionable, and they would not be able to account for the asymmetry. John Broome also appeals to the moral claims of individuals in discussing the value of equality (Broome, pp. 192-200). Broome thinks that individual claims can help us to understand how inequality itself can count as a harm to individuals. I think it is better to use individual moral claims to explain how inequality can be wrong even though it does not harm individuals.
42. The explanation of equality in terms of claims has another advantage. In the case of many moral claims, we think that it is possible for the person with the claim to resign it or not to insist on it. If inequality is objectionable because it violates a claim of the people who are worse off, it will not be objectionable if they choose to relinquish their claim. And we might suspect that this would happen when achieving equality would make everyone worse off. So there might be another reason why the principle of equality would not lead to leveling down.