What is the point of equality?

Ethics

Volumn 109, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 287-337

  Anderson, Elizabeth S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0032647108     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233897     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. Ronald Dworkin, "What Is Equality? II. Equality of Resources," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981): 283-345, p. 285.
2. Philippe Van Parijs, "Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income," Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991): 101-31.
3. Richard Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," in Equality: Selected Readings, ed. Louis Pojman and Robert Westmorland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 231.
4. G. A. Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," Ethics 99 (1989): 906-44, pp. 922-23, 930-31.
5. Phillipe Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), p. 127.
6. Thomas Nagel, "The Policy of Preference," in his Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 91-105.
7. Richard Arneson, "Rawls, Responsibility, and Distributive Justice," in Justice, Political Liberalism, and Utilitarianism: Themes from Harsanyi, ed. Maurice Salles and John A. Weymark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press).
8. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 100-104.
9. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 71; Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); John Roemer, "A Pragmatic Theory of Responsibility for the Egalitarian Planner," in his Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 179-80.
10. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 71; Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); John Roemer, "A Pragmatic Theory of Responsibility for the Egalitarian Planner," in his Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 179-80.
11. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 71; Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); John Roemer, "A Pragmatic Theory of Responsibility for the Egalitarian Planner," in his Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 179-80.
12. Friedrich August von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 87.
13. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 227.
14. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic, 1974), p. 229.
15. G. A. Cohen, "Incentives, Inequality, and Community," in Equal Freedom, ed. Stephen Darwall (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 335; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 5.
16. G. A. Cohen, "Incentives, Inequality, and Community," in Equal Freedom, ed. Stephen Darwall (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 335; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 5.
17. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 230; Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," pp. 311-12; Rakowski, p. 2; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 25.
18. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 230; Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," pp. 311-12; Rakowski, p. 2; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 25.
19. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 230; Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," pp. 311-12; Rakowski, p. 2; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 25.
20. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 230; Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," pp. 311-12; Rakowski, p. 2; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 25.
21. P. T. Bauer, Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
22. Lawrence Mead, Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Free Press, 1986).
23. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 235.
24. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 293.
25. Cohen is the only prominent luck egalitarian to regard society's reliance on capitalist markets as an unfortunate if, in the foreseeable future, necessary compromise with justice, rather than as a vital instrument of just allocation. See Cohen, "Incentives, Inequality, and Community," p. 395. John Roemer, Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), supports a complex version of market socialism on distributive grounds, but these grounds do not appear sufficient to demonstrate the superiority of market socialism to, say, Van Parijs's version of capitalism.
26. Cohen is the only prominent luck egalitarian to regard society's reliance on capitalist markets as an unfortunate if, in the foreseeable future, necessary compromise with justice, rather than as a vital instrument of just allocation. See Cohen, "Incentives, Inequality, and Community," p. 395. John Roemer, Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), supports a complex version of market socialism on distributive grounds, but these grounds do not appear sufficient to demonstrate the superiority of market socialism to, say, Van Parijs's version of capitalism.
27. See Hayek.
28. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources."
29. Rakowski, pp. 80-81.
30. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 239; Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 295; Rakowski, p. 76.
31. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 239; Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 295; Rakowski, p. 76.
32. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 239; Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 295; Rakowski, p. 76.
33. Ronald Dworkin, "What Is Equality? I. Equality of Welfare," Philosophy and Public-Affairs 10 (1981): 228-40.
34. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 237.
35. Ibid., pp. 230-31; Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," pp. 522-23.
36. Ibid., pp. 230-31; Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," pp. 522-23.
37. Richard Arneson, "Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare," Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1990): 158-94, pp. 185-87, 190-91.
38. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," pp. 285-89.
39. Ibid., 285-89; Rakowski, p. 69; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 51.
40. Ibid., 285-89; Rakowski, p. 69; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 51.
41. Ibid., 285-89; Rakowski, p. 69; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 51.
42. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 272-73.
43. Rakowski, pp. 74-75.
44. Arneson, "Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare," p. 187.
45. Rakowski, p. 79.
46. Rakowski allows that, in areas that suffer from no more than average risk of natural disaster, "any losses resulting from whatever risk was a necessary concomitant to the ownership of property essential to live a moderately satisfying life" would be fully compensable, "as instances of bad brute luck." But once private insurance becomes available, brute luck converts to option luck and uninsured parties are on their own again (p. 80).
47. Ibid., p. 79.
48. Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic, 1989), pp. 134-69.
49. Rakowski, p. 109.
50. Ibid., p. 153.
51. Van Parijs, "Why Surfers Should Be Fed," p. 131.
52. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 76.
53. Brian M. Barry, "Equality, Yes, Basic Income, No," in Arguing for Basic Income, ed. Philippe Van Parijs (New York: Verso, 1992), p. 138.
54. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare."
55. John Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 270.
56. Rakowski, p. 47.
57. Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice, p. 270.
58. Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," p. 908.
59. John Roemer, "The Morality and Efficiency of Market Socialism," Ethics 102 (1992): 448-64.
60. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," p. 239.
61. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 47; Richard Arneson, "Is Socialism Dead? A Comment on Market Socialism and Basic Income Capitalism," Ethics 102 (1992): 485-511, p. 510.
62. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 47; Richard Arneson, "Is Socialism Dead? A Comment on Market Socialism and Basic Income Capitalism," Ethics 102 (1992): 485-511, p. 510.
63. Amy Gutmann made these points in her public comments on an earlier version of this article, delivered at the thirty-first annual Philosophy Colloquium at Chapel Hill, N.C.
64. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 68.
65. Arneson, "Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare"; Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," pp. 930-31.
66. Arneson, "Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare"; Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," pp. 930-31.
67. Rakowski, p. 99.
68. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 70.
69. Ibid.
70. Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 115-21.
71. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 77.
72. Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," pp. 917-18.
73. Thomas Pogge, "Three Problems with Contractarian-Consequentialist Ways of Assessing Social Institutions," in The Just Society, ed. Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 247-48.
74. Nagel, "The Policy of Preference," p. 105.
75. This is a concern with what attitudes the theory expresses, not with the consequences of expressing those attitudes. Self-respecting citizens would reject a society based on principles that treat them as inferiors, even if the principles are kept secret. Government house utilitarianism is thus no solution. Nor is it a satisfactory defense of equality of fortune to recommend that society adopt more generous distributive policies than the theory requires so as to avoid insulting people. The question is not whether to deviate from what justice requires so as to avoid bad consequences. It is whether a theory of justice based on contemptuous pity for its supposed beneficiaries satisfies the egalitarian requirement that justice must be founded on equal respect for persons.
76. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, p. 242.
77. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 285; Rakowski, pp. 65-66; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 51.
78. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 285; Rakowski, pp. 65-66; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 51.
79. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 285; Rakowski, pp. 65-66; Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, p. 51.
80. Dworkin denies that his is a "starting-gate theory," but only because he would allocate compensation for unequal talents over the course of a lifetime ("Equality of Resources," pp. 309-11).
81. Ibid., p. 299.
82. What if someone runs a health risk that only increases her already significant chance of illness? Let scientific studies apportion the risks of illness due to involuntary causes (e.g., faulty genes) and voluntary causes (e.g. eating a fatty diet), and discount the resources contributed to care for the ill by the proportion to which their risk was one they ran voluntarily (Rakowski, p. 75). Roemer accepts this logic, but insists that people's responsibility for their conditions should be discounted by unchosen sociological as well as genetic influences. Thus, if two people with lung cancer smoke the median number of years for their sociological type (determined by sex, race, class, occupation, parents' smoking habits, etc.), then they are entitled, other things equal, to equal indemnification against the costs of their cancer, even if one smoked for eight years and the other for twenty-five years (Roemer, "A Pragmatic Theory of Responsibility for the Egalitarian Planner," p. 183). His intuition is that people who exercise comparable degrees of responsibility, adjusted to make up for the different social influences on their behavior, should be entitled to equal degrees of compensation against the costs of their behavior. Roemer does not consider the expressive implications of the state assuming that different classes of citizens should be held to different standards of responsible behavior.
83. Hayek, pp. 95-97.
84. Christine Korsgaard, "Commentary on G. A. Cohen and Amartya Sen," in The Quality of Life, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 61.
85. Iris Marion Young, "Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values," Ethics 105 (1995): 535-56, makes a similar critique, unconnected to luck egalitarianism, of contemporary welfare reform movements. Van Parijs's version of luck egalitarianism might seem to escape from Poor Law thinking because it promises an unconditional income to everyone, regardless of whether they work for a wage. However, as noted above, even his view implicitly takes the tastes of the egoistic adult without caretaking responsibilities as the norm. For the gap between the minimum wage and the unconditional income will be set by the incentives needed to bring the marginal footloose egoist into the labor market. The fate of non-wage-earning dependent caretakers will thus depend on the labor/leisure trade-offs of beach bums, rather than on their own needs. The more attached to leisure the beach bum is, the lower must the unconditional income be.
86. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990).
87. John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515-72, p. 525. The use of 'equally' to modify 'moral agents' might seem otiose: why not just say that all competent adults are moral agents? Egalitarians deny a hierarchy of types of moral agency - e.g., any theory that says there is a lower type of human only able to follow moral commands issued by others and a higher type able to issue or discover moral commands for themselves.
88. Elizabeth Anderson, "The Democratic University: The Role of Justice in the Production of Knowledge," Social Philosophy and Policy 12 (1995): 186-219. Does this requirement mean that we must always listen patiently to those who have proven themselves to be stupid, cranky, or dishonest? No. It means (1) that everyone must be granted the initial benefit of the doubt, (2) a person can be ignored or excluded from discussion only on demonstrated grounds of communicative incompetence or unwillingness to engage in fair discussion, and (3) reasonable opportunities must be available to the excluded to demonstrate their communicative competence and there by win back a place in the conversation.
89. Nancy Fraser, "From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Postsocialist' Age," in her Justice Interruptus (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 11-39; Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
90. Nancy Fraser, "From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Postsocialist' Age," in her Justice Interruptus (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 11-39; Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
91. Korsgaard.
92. Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 39-42, 49.
93. Margaret Radin, "Market Inalienability," Harvard Law Review 100 (1987): 1849-1937. A person might have to forfeit some of her market inalienable freedoms, however, if she is convicted of a serious crime.
94. Sen, Inequality Reexamined, pp. 79-84.
95. I shift from talk of "citizens" to talk of "workers" in part because the moral implications of regarding the economy as a system of cooperative production cross international boundaries. As the economy becomes global, we are all implicated in an international division of labor subject to assessment from an egalitarian point of view. We have obligations not only to the citizens of our country but to our fellow workers, who are now found in virtually every part of the globe. We also have global humanitarian obligations to everyone, considered simply as human beings - to relieve famine and disease, avoid fomenting or facilitating aggressive warfare, and the like. Alas, I do not have the space to consider the international implications of democratic equality.
96. Cohen, "Incentives, Inequality, and Community," p. 348.
97. Rakowski, p. 79.
98. Ibid.
99. What about rich people who build their vacation homes in disaster-prone areas? They haven't been commissioned by others to live there, nor does it seem fair to force taxpayers to insure their luxurious estates. Democratic equality cannot allow even unproductive citizens to lose everything, but it does not indemnify them against all their losses either. It only guarantees sufficient relief to get them back on their feet, not to shod them in luxurious footwear. If even this relief seems too expensive, an egalitarian state can forbid people from inhabiting disaster-prone areas, or tax people who do to cover the excess costs of disaster relief. What it may not do is let them live there at their own risk and then abandon them in their hour of need. Such action treats even the imprudent with impermissible contempt.
100. Marilyn Waring, If Women Counted (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990).
101. Joan Williams, "Is Coverture Dead?" Georgetown Law Journal 82 (1994): 2227-90, p. 2227.
102. Okin, pp. 180-82
103. Nancy Fraser, "After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment," in her Justice Interruptus, pp. 41-66.
104. Rakowski, p. 153.
105. It might be thought that poor societies cannot afford even basic capabilities for all workers. However, Sen's studies of the standard of living in India and China show that even extremely poor societies can supply an impressive set of basic capabilities - decent nutrition, health, literacy, and the like - to all of their members, if they apply themselves to the task. See, e.g., Amartya Sen, Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985).
106. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 75-78.
107. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic, 1983); Mickey Kaus, The End of Equality (New York: Basic, 1992).
108. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic, 1983); Mickey Kaus, The End of Equality (New York: Basic, 1992).
109. Roemer, "A Pragmatic Theory of Responsibility for the Egalitarian Planner," pp. 179-96.
110. Thomas Scanlon, "Preference and Urgency," Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 655-69, pp. 659-60.
111. This point is entirely distinct from the rig it to refuse medical care. It is one thing for an individual to exercise the right to refuse medical care when offered, quite another for others to refuse to offer medical care when needed.
112. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
113. Peter De Marneffe, "Liberalism, Liberty, and Neutrality," Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1990): 253-74, pp. 255-58.
114. Rawls.A Theory of Justice, p. 102.
115. Some exceptions would have to be made for those so severely mentally disabled or insane that they cannot function as agents. In addition, children are entitled not immediately to all of the freedoms of adults, but to the social conditions for the development of their capacities to function as free and equal citizens.
116. Arneson, "Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare," pp. 159, 187, 190-94.
117. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," pp. 236-37.
118. Scanlon, p. 659.
119. Joseph Raz, "Rights and Individual Well-Being," in his Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), pp. 52-55.
120. Owen Wrigley, The Politics of Deafness (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1996), discusses the potentials and problems of reconceiving disability (being deaf) as community (being Deaf) after the manner of identity politics.
121. Anita Silvers, "Reconciling Equality to Difference: Caring (f)or Justice for People with Disabilities," Hypatia 10 (1995): 30-55, p. 54, n. 9.
122. Ibid., p. 48.
123. Ibid., p. 49.