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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2017
Should egalitarian justice be qualified by an agent-relative prerogative to act on a preference for—and thereby in a manner that gives rise to or preserves a greater than equal share of the goods of life for—oneself, one's family, loved ones, or friends as compared with strangers? Although many would reply that the answer to this question must be ‘yes’, I shall argue here that the case for such a prerogative to depart from equality is much less far-reaching than one might think. I have in mind a prerogative to depart from a specific form of equality: namely, equality of opportunity for such advantages as resources or welfare. I mean to refer to the strong form of equal opportunity elaborated and defended by Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen whereby, roughly speaking, two people have equal opportunity for advantage if they face the same choices and will end up at the same level of advantage if they make the same choices.
2 For the purposes of this discussion, I set to one side prerogatives to advance projects or follow through on commitments which one regards as of fundamental importance but whose importance is unrelated to one's own welfare or the welfare of those close to oneself. These cases give rise to an interesting and interestingly different set of problems for egalitarians.
3 In speaking of a prerogative to depart from equality, I invoke a concept that bears obvious affinities to the now-familiar notion of an agent-relative prerogative to refrain from maximizing an impartial good such as utility. On the latter, see Scheffler, Samuel, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, and Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 9.Google Scholar
4 See Arneson, Richard, ‘Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare’, Philosophical Studies 56, No. 1 (05 1989), 77–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 See Cohen, G. A., ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics 99, No. 4 (07 1989), 906–944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Here I state a sufficient condition rather than a necessary and sufficient condition of equality of opportunity for advantage. It is not a necessary condition for at least two reasons, one of which is that people who do not face the same choices might nevertheless face choice sets which are equally valuable in terms of their opportunity for advantage. A second reason is that people who face the same choices and end up with different levels of advantage will nevertheless enjoy equality of opportunity for advantage if these choices involve gambles of a certain type. It would take some effort to spell out a set of necessary and sufficient conditions of equality of opportunity for advantage, but it is not necessary to expend this effort for present purposes.
7 In cases of extreme scarcity where survival is at stake, might one have an agent-relative prerogative simply to grab those resources which are necessary for one's own survival or that of one's loved ones rather than to draw lots with one's competitors? I believe that such grabbing might be excusable, given the high cost of not grabbing, but that it would not be justifiable. In other words, one ought to draw lots, though we might understand if someone could not bring himself to do the right thing in such extreme circumstances. See Otsuka, Michael, Libertarianism without Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 4, for a relevant discussion of the morality of the killing of innocents in self-defence.
8 Estlund, David, ‘Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen's Critique of Rawls’, Journal of Political Philosophy 6, No. 1 (03 1998), 99–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 104. In this article, Estlund does not himself affirm that Paul has a justified prerogative to benefit Pauline in this case. Rather, he merely endorses the conditional claim that if one shares G. A. Cohen's commitment to a prerogative to pursue one's self-interest to some reasonable extent, then one ought also to affirm Paul's prerogative to benefit Pauline in this case. See ibid., 101.
9 See Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971), 75–83 and passim.Google Scholar
10 Here I draw a distinction which is inspired by a distinction which G. A. Cohen has drawn in a different context between the ‘special burden’ and ‘standard’ cases of talented individuals who are motivated to work in a matter which benefits the least well off only if they are paid an above-average income for this work. See Cohen, , ‘Incentives, Inequality, and Community’Google Scholar, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, XIII, Peterson, Grethe B. (ed.) (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992), 263–329, at 296–299.Google Scholar
11 Where Pauline's becoming a clothing maker would move her from below-average to average opportunity for welfare.
12 Where Pauline's becoming a clothing maker would move her from average to above-average opportunity for welfare.
13 Given the stipulations of Estlund's example, this would not be enough to allow Pauline to quit her job as an accountant and become a full-time clothing maker, but perhaps it would benefit Pauline in somewhat less dramatic fashion by enabling her to take time off from work to enrol in a few design school classes and engage in a bit of freelance but poorly remunerated clothing design.
14 See my discussion of the second of two examples in Section II below involving Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.
15 For the sake of simplicity, I shall assume in this example and the ones that immediately follow that the individuals in question live on an isolated island and that farmable land of uniform quality and its fruits are the only resources available to them. But my points generalize to cases involving a fuller range of resources.
16 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 160–164.Google Scholar
17 Egalitarians would endorse such taxation even when we ignore any inegalitarian advantage apart from higher earning power which greater talent confers. For simplicity, I shall assume that Wilt's greater talent confers no advantage apart from greater earning power.
18 I shall say more about the relation between self-ownership and prerogatives in the next section.
19 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, op. cit. note 16, 237.
20 Ibid., 263.
21 This example is borrowed from Libertarianism without Inequality, op. cit. note 7, 26.
22 See Wolff, Jonathan, ‘Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 27, No. 2 (Spring 1998), 97–122Google Scholar, and Anderson, Elizabeth, ‘What Is the Point of Equality?’, Ethics 109, No. 2 (01 1999), 287–337.Google Scholar
23 See Wolff, Jonathan, ‘Addressing Disadvantage and the Human Good’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 19, No. 3 (2002), 207–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 As the term ‘“separate spheres” egalitarians’ suggests, this approach bears affinities to the account of ‘complex equality’ that Walzer, Michael provides in Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983)Google Scholar. I should note, however, that Walzer does not claim that a norm of equality applies to each of his spheres of justice.
25 For this supposition to hold, we will need to stipulate away practical difficulties akin to those mentioned two paragraphs ago.
26 Libertarianism without Inequality, op. cit. note 7, 15.
27 See ibid., ch. 1, sec. II.
28 See ibid., ch. 1.
29 Except in highly unusual cases such as those discussed in ibid., ch. 1, sec. II, in which there are no worldly resources and one's income consists solely of the products of one's body.
30 See ibid., ch. 1, sec. V.
31 See ibid., ch. 1.
32 Cf. Williams, Bernard, ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’Google Scholar, in Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, Bernard, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)Google Scholar, and ‘Persons, Character, and Morality’, reprinted in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), ch. 1.Google Scholar
33 See Libertarianism without Inequality, op. cit. note 7, ch. 1.Google Scholar