On Dworkin’s brute-luck–option-luck distinction and the consistency of brute-luck egalitarianism

Politics, Philosophy & Economics

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 283-312

  Sandbu, Martin E ^a  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

Author keywords

brute luck; Dworkin; egalitarianism; option luck; reasonable prospect; resource equality

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248047335     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X04046243     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Amartya K. Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
2. Gerald A. Cohen, ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics 99 (1989): 906-44.
3. Dworkin's seminal contributions are collected in Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
4. Cohen, ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, p. 933.
5. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue.
6. See, in particular, Marc Fleurbaey, ‘Equality of Resources Revisited’, Ethics 113 (2002): 82-105; Michael Otsuka, ‘Luck, Insurance, and Equality’, Ethics 113 (2002): 40-54; Peter Vallentyne, ‘Brute Luck, Option Luck and Equality of Initial Opportunities’, Ethics 112 (2002): 529-57; Robert van der Veen, ‘Equality of Talent Resources: Procedures or Outcomes?’ Ethics 113 (2002): 55-81.
7. Otsuka, ‘Luck, Insurance, and Equality’.
8. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 73.
9. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 77.
10. Otsuka, ‘Luck, Insurance, and Equality’, p. 44.
11. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 76; emphasis added.
12. Cohen, ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, p. 931.
13. Cf. Dworkin's definition of option luck as the outcome of risks that one ‘should have anticipated and might have declined’. See Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 73.
14. Nothing, that is, given their necessarily imperfect knowledge about the consequences on accident risk of the various things they may choose to do.
15. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 77.
16. See also Dworkin's refutation of Van der Veen's and Otsuka's claims that resources have to be equalized ex post in ‘Sovereign Virtue Revisited’, p. 120-5. The ex ante view of equality is essential to Dworkin's theory and cannot be rejected without jettisoning Dworkin's approach altogether. The present article, while attempting to remain faithful to the Dworkinian structure, analyses the requirements that a plausible ex ante view of equality has to meet in the special cases I consider.
17. This seems to be Otsuka's view of reasonability. He says that ‘If the cost of such [a fully compensating] insurance premium entails the impoverishment or indentured servitude of the individual, then such insurance would be unreasonably expensive’. See Otsuka, ‘Luck, Insurance, and Equality’, p. 44, footnote 18. Strictly speaking, his condition is not a property of the price of insurance, since the same policy would not be ‘unreasonably expensive’ for someone who was left with a satis factory stock of resources. What is unreasonable is the prospect whose only riskfree option is below some minimum entitlement (the entire set of available options).
18. The thought that efficiency concerns can provide a basis for reasonability criteria is similar to a suggestion made by Vallentyne, who also discusses what can count as ‘reasonable avoidability’. Vallentyne asks: ‘But what makes a choice reasonable? One view is that it is in the agent's best interest. Another view is that it is adequately (either in absolute terms, or relative to the best choice) in the agent's interests’. See Vallentyne, ‘Brute Luck, Option Luck and Equality of Initial Opportunities’, p. 6.
19. Susan Hurley provides an incisive discussion of the problems with such an approach. See Susan Hurley, ‘Luck, Responsibility, and the “Natural Lottery”’, Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (2002): 79-94. Important though they are, these problems are outside the scope of this article. As I stated in the introduction, my criticisms are internal to Dworkin's general approach of applying the hypothetical insurance device to the question of what justice requires with respect to the unequal distribution of talents and handicaps. For the purposes of my internal criticisms, I therefore ignore Hurley's otherwise legitimate concerns.
20. Dworkin, ‘Sovereign Virtue Revisited’, p. 111.
21. Fleurbaey, ‘Equality of Resources Revisited’; Van der Veen, ‘Equality of Talent Resources’.
22. Dworkin, ‘Sovereign Virtue Revisited’, pp. 108–11.
23. Cohen, ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, p. 908.
24. Susan Hurley, ‘Luck and Equality’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 75 (2001): 51-72.
25. For an elucidation of the priority view, see Derek Parfit, Equality or Priority, The Lindley Lecture (Kansas City: University of Kansas Department of Philosophy, 1995).
26. This could be implemented, for example, through a Universal Basic Income policy, as envisaged by Philippe van Parijs, Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995).
27. Otsuka, ‘Luck, Insurance, and Equality’; Van der Veen, ‘Equality of Talent Resources’.