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Welfare Should Be the Currency of Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard J. Arneson
Richard J. Arneson*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA92093-0119USA
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Extract

Some theories of justice hold that individuals placed in fortunate circumstances through no merit or choice of their own are morally obligated to aid individuals placed in unfortunate circumstances through no fault or choice of their own. In these theories what are usually regarded as obligations of benevolence are reinterpreted as strict obligations of justice. A closely related view is that the institutions of a society should be arranged in a way that gives priority to helping people placed in unfortunate circumstances through no fault or choice of their own. Any theory of this type needs a way of assessing individuals’ circumstances to determine who is fortunate and who is unfortunate.

I shall argue that the standard for assessing people's circumstances to determine what they owe and are owed according to distributive justice should be the welfare or well-being level that they can attain, given their circumstances. This claim, that the ‘currency of justice’ should be welfare, has attracted criticisms that some have thought decisive. My counterclaim is that if we adopt an objective account of welfare and properly accommodate concerns about individual responsibility, the criticisms can be drained of their force.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 497 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2000

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References

1 My suggestion that some objections to employing welfare as the standard of interpersonal comparison for a theory of justice are overcome by adopting an Objective List account of welfare raises the question how my account is related to the views of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum on these issues. Sen is an implicit ally, because in his writings he stops short of asserting that the theory of justice needs an objective theory of good. Nussbaum explicitly advances an approach to distributive justice along the lines I favor. For my responses to Nussbaum, and Sen, see my ‘Perfectionism and Politics,’ Ethics III (2000) 37–63Google Scholar. For Sen's, views, see Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1992)Google Scholar. For Nussbaum's, views, see her ‘Nature, Function, and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, supp. Vol. 1 (1988) 145–84Google Scholar; also ‘Aristotelian Social Democracy,’ in Liberalism and the Good, Douglas, R. Bruce Mara, Gerald M. and Richardson, Henry S. eds. (New York: Routledge 1990) 203–52Google Scholar; ‘Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism,’ Political Theory 20 (1992) 202-46; and ‘Women and Cultural Universals,’ in Nussbaum, Martha Sex and Justice (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999) 29–54Google Scholar

2 Sen, Amartya ‘Equality of What?’ reprinted in Sen, Choice, Welfare, and Measurement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1982) 353–69Google Scholar

3 Dworkin, Ronald ‘What Is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981) 185–236Google Scholar; ‘What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981) 243-85; and ‘What Is Equality? Part 3: The Place of Liberty,’ Iowa Law Review 73 (1987) 1-54

4 On Lockean natural rights theory, see Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974)Google Scholar. On Hobbesian contractarianism, see Gauthier, David Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986)Google Scholar.

5 Walzer, Michael Spheres of justice: A Defense of Equality and Pluralism (New York: Basic Books 1983)Google Scholar

6 On prioritarianism, see Parfit, Derek ‘Equality or Priority?’ Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas 1994Google Scholar. See also Weirich, Paul ‘Utility Tempered with Equality,’ Nous 17 (1983) 423–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 This terminology is used in Roemer, John E. Theories of Distributive Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1996), ch. 5Google Scholar.

8 See Sen, Amartya ‘Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984,’ Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985) 169–221Google Scholar.

9 Amartya Sen's writings develop this objection. See Sen, ‘Rights and Agency,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (1982) 3–39Google Scholar; also Sen, ‘Well-being, Agency and Freedom.’

10 Sen, ‘Well-being, Agency and Freedom,’ 203Google Scholar

11 The example and the point it illustrates is borrowed from Cohen, G.A. ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,’ Ethics 99 (1989) 906–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see 917-18.

12 This point is drawn from Arneson, ‘What Do Socialists Want?’ Politics and Society 22 (1994) 549–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Dworkin, ‘What Is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare’

14 See Arneson, ‘Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1990) 158–94Google Scholar; see esp. 180-3.

15 See Rawls, John ‘Social Unity and Primary Goods,’ reprinted in his Collected Papers, Freeman, Samuel ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999) 359–87Google Scholar, esp. 368-71; Dworkin, Ronald ‘What Is Equality: Part 1: Equality of Welfare’; also Rakowski, Eric Equal Justice (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991).Google Scholar

16 Dworkin, Ronald ‘Foundations of Liberal Equality,’ in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 11, Peterson, Grethe B. ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1990) 1–119Google Scholar

17 Railton, Peter indicates how the embrace of an objective account of human good enhances the plausibility of consequentialist moral views in his ‘Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,’ reprinted in Consequentialism and Its Critics, Scheffler, Samuel ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988) 93–133.Google Scholar

18 Mill, J.S. On Liberty, in Collected Works, vol. 18 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1977) 213–310Google Scholar

19 See Rawls, John Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press 1993), Lectures I and VGoogle Scholar.

20 For good recent discussions, see Hurka, Thomas Perfectionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993)Google Scholar; and Sher, George Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 For arguments for this claim, see John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Lectures I and V; also Cohen, Joshua ‘A More Democratic Liberalism,’ Michigan Law Review 92 (1994) 1503–1546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 A companion essay, ‘The Currency of Justice: Problems with Opportunity for Welfare,’ is available from the author.