Equality and priority

Ratio

Volumn 10, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 202-221

  Parfit, Derek ^a  

^a ALL SOULS COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040349812     PISSN: 00340006     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9329.00041     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Thomas Nagel, Mortal Question, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pages 123-4
2. See also Nagel's Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)
3. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pages 149-50
4. For two such broader accounts of well-being, see Amartya Sen, 'Capability and Well-Being', in The Quality of Life, edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993)
5. Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), Chapter 3
6. and Thomas Scanlon, 'Value, Desire, and the Quality of Life', in Nussbaum and Sen, op. cit
7. We might add, 'through no fault or choice of theirs'. In a fuller statement of this principle, we would need to assess the relative badness of different patterns of inequality. But we can here ignore these complications. They are well discussed in Larry Temkin's Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
8. Cf. Joel Feinberg, 'Noncomparative Justice', Philosophical Review, 83 (1974)
9. Cf. Philip Montague, 'Comparative and Non-comparative Justice', Philosophical Quarterly, 30 (1980)
10. There is an intermediate case. Justice may require a certain outcome, but only because this avoids a procedural flaw. One such flaw is partiality. Suppose that we have to distribute certain publicly owned goods. If we could easily divide these goods, others might be rightly suspicious if we gave to different people unequal shares. That might involve favouritism, or wrongful discrimination. We may thus believe that, to avoid these flaws, we should distribute these goods equally. How does this view differ from a view that requires equality for substantive reasons? One difference is this. Suppose that we have manifestly tried to distribute equally, but our procedure has innocently failed. If we aimed for equality only to avoid the taint of partiality or discrimination, there would be no case for correcting the result. (For discussions of these points, see Robert Goodin, 'Egalitarianism, Fetishistic and Otherwise', Ethics, 98 (1987)
11. and Lawrence Sager and Lewis Kornhauser, 'Just Lotteries', Social Science Information (Sage, London, Newbury Park and New Delhi, Vol 27, 1988).)
12. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), page 291
13. See, for example, David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pages 18 and 268
14. Cf. Nozick, op. cit., page 206 (though Nozick's target here is not the Principle of Equality but Rawls's Difference Principle)
15. Such an objection is suggested, for example, in Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) Chapter 9
16. and Larry Temkin, op. cit. pages 247-8
17. Nagel, op. cit. page 124
18. Cf. H. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Chapter 11
19. Several other writers have suggested such a view. See, for example, Thomas Scalon, 'Nozick on Rights, Liberty, and Property', Philosophy & Public Affairs, 6 (1976), pages 6 to 10
20. Joseph Raz, op. cit
21. Harry Frankfurt, 'Equality as a Moral Ideal', in The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
22. David Wiggins, 'Claims of Need', in his Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987)
23. Dennis McKerlie, 'Egalitarianism', Dialogue, 23 (1984)
24. and 'Equality and Priority', Utilitas, 6 (1994)
25. For a later discussion of the choice between these views, see Nagel's Equality and Partiality, op. cit., Chapters 7 and 8
26. D.D. Raphael, Justice and Liberty (London: Athlone Press, 1980), page 10
27. Richard Norman, Free and Equal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), page 80
28. See, however, the excellent discussion in David Miller, 'Social Justice and the Principle of Need', in The Frontiers of Political Theory, ed. Michael Freeman and David Robertson (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980)
29. Christopher Ake, 'Justice as Equality', Philosophy & Public Affairs, 5 (1975), pages 71 and 77
30. G.A. Cohen, 'On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice', Ethics, 99 (1989)
31. Inequality, page 282
32. See, for example, Antony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus, 1981), page 26
33. McKerlie, 'Egalitarianism', op. cit., p. 232
34. See also Nozick, op. cit. p. 211
35. I am assuming here that inequality is not in itself bad for people. It is not bad for me if, unknown to me and without affecting me, there exist some other people who are better off than me. That assumption is implied, not only by hedonistic theories about well-being, but also by plausible versions both of desire-fulfilment theories, and of theories that appeal to what Scanlon calls substantive goods. For a contrary view, however, which would need a further discussion, see John Broome, Weighing Goods (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) Chapter 9
36. Such as the view advanced in Thomas Scanlon's 'Contractualism and Utilitarianism', in ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)