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Egalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Dennis McKerlie
Dennis McKerlie
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

Several writers have tried to describe the foundations of an egalitarian moral view. Their aim is to explain the way of thinking on which distinctively egalitarian conclusions depend. Egalitarianism is frequently located by reference to utilitarianism. The basic features of the utilitarian view are reasonably well understood and most of us find it at least plausible. Egalitarians want to show that their own view differs from the utilitarian view in some fundamental respect. They hope to convince us that the egalitarian stand on that fundamental matter is at least as plausible as that of utilitarianism.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 223 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984

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References

1 Nagel, Thomas, “Equality”, in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 106–127Google Scholar.

2 “The reasoning which balances the gains and losses of different persons as if they were one person is excluded” (Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971], 28).Google Scholar “The model … renders plausible the extremely strict position that there can be no interpersonal compensation for sacrifice” (Nagel, Thomas, The Possibility of Altruism [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970], 142)Google Scholar.

3 Nagel, , “Equality”, 125 and 126Google Scholar.

4 In his example of a parent's choice between benefiting a handicapped child and a normal child (ibid., 124) Nagel thinks that the egalitarian principle would choose a smaller benefit for the handicapped child rather than a larger benefit for the normal child. However, he also says (ibid., 125) that the egalitarian view would choose a great benefit to someone badly off rather than a small benefit to someone who is even worse off, so his view is not consistently maximin.

5 Ibid., 123 and 126-127.

6 Ibid., 124

7 Ibid., 125

8 The standard economic measures of inequality are clearly explained in Sen, A. K., On Economic Inequality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), chap. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 However, some of their disagreements result from confusing the question of how inequality is to be measured with the question of whether egalitarianism tells us to minimize inequality. For example, one criticism of the Gini coefficient as a measure of inequality is that it does not give greater weight to inequalities among the badly-off than to inequalities among the better-off. Surely, this is a bad reason for rejecting it as a measure of inequality. The objector presumably believes that it is more important to redress inequalities among the badly-off, so his view is really that egalitarianism as a moral view is not just a matter of minimizing inequality.

10 The central claim of the third egalitarian view—the thought that the value of an increase in the amount of a good thing might be inversely proportional to the amount of the good thing already present—was clearly stated by McTaggart in attempting to explain how a certain amount of love might be better than any amount of other good things (McTaggart, J. M. E., The Nature of Existence, vol. 2 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927], chap. 65, sections 851–853).Google Scholar More pertinently, this kind of egalitarianism is explained and defended–under the name “weighted utilitarianism”—by Weirich, Paul (see his paper “Utility Tempered with Equality”, Nous 17/3 [September 1983], 423–439).CrossRefGoogle Scholar It also seems at least strongly analogous to some theories of social choice that use a "non-linear" social welfare function.

11 For discussion of problems about population and an explanation of the “repugnant conclusion” see Parfit, Derek, “Future Generations: Further Problems”, I'liilosopy & Public Affairs 11/2 (Spring 1982), 113–172Google Scholar.