Hurley on egalitarianism and the luck-neutralizing aim

politics, philosophy & economics

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 249-265

  Lippert Rasmussen, Kasper ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN   (Denmark)

Author keywords

Cohen; Dworkin; egalitarianism; Hurley; justice; luck

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248040236     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X05052543     Document Type: Review

References (13)

1. Susan Hurley, Justice, Luck, and Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
2. Indeterminists may, however, think that there are determinate statistical facts about what people would have been likely to choose in counterfactual circumstances.
3. In her discussion of the indeterminacy problem (JLK: 162-8), Hurley puts forward two other claims that are not felicitously referred to as indeterminacy problems. First, even if facts about counterfactual levels of effort were determinate, it is, given the inseparability of talents and effort, not clear how these facts, together with facts about the actual level of effort, determine the luck-neutralizing level of well-being. Second, even if facts about counterfactual efforts were determinate, it is not clear that they are at all relevant to determining what level (of well-being) is a matter of luck: ‘I would choose to be a brilliant mathematician if I had the talent, or a brilliant artist, musician, novelist, or scientist. So what?’ (JLK: 168).
4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 72.
5. G.A. Cohen, ‘The Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics 99 (1989): 932.
6. The same applies to the interpretations of Arneson and Dworkin proposed below.
7. Accordingly, by ‘a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance’ Rawls (A Theory of Justice, p. 15) may not mean a conception of justice such that, were it implemented, accidents and contingencies would be causally inert or non-existent. He may simply mean a conception of justice such that, were it implemented, the tendency of accidents and contingencies to produce certain highly unequal outcomes would be counteracted.
8. Cohen, ‘The Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, p. 906.
9. Richard J. Arneson, ‘Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare’, Philosophical Studies 56 (1989): 77-93.
10. Ronald Dworkin, ‘What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 10 (1981): 185.
11. Ronald Dworkin, ‘What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 10 (1981): 329.
12. Hence, the fact that Dworkin does not derive equality from a more basic value does not imply that he does not offer an argument for equality that appeals (although not exclusively) to intuitions influenced by or manifesting the luck-neutralizing aim. Compare Richard J. Arneson, ‘Luck and Equality’, Proceedings of Aristotelian Society 75 (2001): 73-90.
13. What Hurley has in mind here are cases in which it is alleged that it is worse for the individual to exist than not to exist. See Hurley, JLK, p. 120.