Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T23:03:38.492Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inequality: Do Not Disperse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2020

David O'Brien Open the ORCID record for David O'Brien [Opens in a new window]
David O'Brien*
Affiliation:
Tulane University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many egalitarians incorporate a concern for interpersonal welfare inequality as part of their favored axiology – that is, they take it to be a bad-making feature of outcomes. It is natural to think that, if inequality is in this sense a bad, it is an impersonal bad (one that makes an outcome worse, while not in itself being worse for any person). This natural thought has been challenged. Some writers claim that egalitarian judgments can be accommodated by adopting an expanded view of a person's good, according to which being worse off than others is one of the factors that, in itself, makes one's life go worse. The putatively impersonal bad of inequality is thereby “dispersed” among individuals. I argue that this dispersion strategy fails. In a slogan: if you care about inequality, do not disperse it.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 193 - 203
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Broome, J. 1991. Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty, and Time. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 2004. Weighing Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 2008. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1989. On the currency of egalitarian justice. Ethics 99: 906–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, R 1981. What is equality? Part II: Equality of resources. Philosophy and Public Affairs 10: 283–345.Google Scholar
Hausman, D. and Waldren, M. 2011. Egalitarianism reconsidered. Journal of Moral Philosophy 8: 567–586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirose, I. 2015. Egalitarianism. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
McKerlie, D. 1989. Equality and time. Ethics 99: 475–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, S. 2016. Death and the Afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Segall, S. 2016. Why Inequality Matters: Luck Egalitarianism, Its Meaning and Value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Temkin, L. 2003. Egalitarianism defended. Ethics 113(4): 764–782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Temkin, L. 1993. Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Temkin, L. 2015. Rationality with respect to people, places, and times. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45(5–6): 576–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar