Making Justice Sensitive to Responsibility

When, if at all, can the fact that a person is responsible for his or her disadvantage justify leaving him or her to bear that disadvantage? Possibly no other question has caused more controversy among political theorists of egalitarianism in the last two decades. This article aims to show that it is possible to move beyond the answer to this question that is usually (rightly or wrongly) attributed to luck egalitarians without accepting the conclusion that a concern with responsibility is only marginal to theories of egalitarian justice. I identify the conditions under which disadvantage brought about through the exercise of responsibility should be accepted as just and show why egalitarians concerned with fair shares must sometimes accept as just even grave disadvantages.     

Unequally egalitarian? Defending the credentials of social egalitarianism

Abstract

In his new book, Luck Egalitarianism, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen responds to challenges raised by social egalitarians against luck egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is the view according to which a just society is one where people relate to each other as equals, while the basic premise of luck egalitarianism is that it is unfair if people are worse-off than others through no fault or choice of their own. Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the most important objections to luck egalitarianism made by social egalitarians can either be largely accommodated by luck egalitarians or lack the argumentative force that its proponents believe them to have. While Lippert-Rasmussen does offer a version of luck egalitarianism that seems to avoid some of the main lines of criticism, he mischaracterizes parts of both the form and the content of the disagreement, and thus ultimately misses the mark. In this paper, we provide a substantive, a methodological and a political defense of social egalitarianism by elaborating on this mischaracterization. More work must be done, we argue, if social egalitarianism is to be dismissed and its concerns genuinely incorporated in the luck egalitarian framework. Until this is done, the supposed theoretical superiority of luck egalitarianism remains contested.     

Capabilities Theory and the Limits of Liberal Justice: On Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice

In Frontiers of Justice, Martha Nussbaum applies the “Capabilities Approach,” which she calls “one species of a human rights approach,” to justice issues that have in her view been inadequately addressed in liberal political theory. These issues include rights of the disabled, rights that transcend national borders, and animal rights issues. She demonstrates the weakness of Rawlsianism, contractualism in general, and much of the Kantian tradition in moral philosophy and shows the need to move beyond the limitations of narrow rationalism, nationalism, and speciesism. Nevertheless, Nussbaum fails to elaborate adequately the grounds for her own capabilities position or to face fundamental theoretical questions about the nature and implications of that position.     

Opportunity,responsibility and the market: interrogating liberal equality

This article scrutinizes the claim that liberal egalitarians are now the last real torchbearers for the principles of egalitarian reform. This claim might appear eccentric on the surface, but is increasingly common in leftist circles following the recent abandonment of such principles by formerly socialist parties. Programmes of 'social inclusion', for instance, are now widely criticized for substituting a desire to tackle economic inequalities with an incitement for us to become obedient, productive citizens. Focusing here on the claim that liberal egalitarians pose a radical alternative to this kind of discourse, I show that the real deficiencies of much liberal egalitarianism not only resemble but in many ways actually provide the sort of discourse within which parties like New Labour operate.     

Equality,value pluralism and relevance: Is luck egalitarianism in one way good,but not all things considered?

Abstract

Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters – luck equality – it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe that normative political philosophy must have the ambitionto guide political action. Hence, in this paper we make a negative and a positive point. Negatively, we argue that the inability to offer recommendations on what to strive for potentially weakens Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s account of luck egalitarianism. In order not to be irrelevant for political practice, a more serviceable version of luck egalitarianism that would allow for all-things-considered judgments is needed. Positively, we examine two possible routes toward such a view. One would be to stick to pluralism, but to discuss possible clashes and find a rule of regulation in each case. Another would consist in giving up value pluralism by identifying an over-arching value or principle that would arbitrate between different values. We suggest that Lippert-Rasmussen’s foundation of equality carries the potential for such an overarching principle.     

Debating Opportunities, Outcomes and Democracy: Young and Phillips on Equality

Within recent egalitarian theory, the ideal of equal opportunity holds considerable sway. Liberal egalitarians increasingly concentrate on refining this ideal, as do a number of Marxist theorists. At the same time many radical critics are unhappy with various aspects of this hegemony of equality of opportunity, and this article examines the reasons for their unhappiness, as well as two possible solutions. The first would be to reject equal opportunities in favour of another conception of equality, or to argue that the ideal can only play a limited role within an egalitarian project. Another would be to try to radicalise the idea of equal opportunities: to argue that equality of opportunity can be a transformative ideal if it is interpreted sufficiently broadly or deeply. We can identify Anne Phillips with the first approach, and Iris Young with the second. On the question of whether equality of opportunity can provide an overarching normative framework for egalitarian politics, Young's response is in the positive, whereas Phillips' is in the negative. The article critically addresses this dilemma, and concludes by siding with Phillips, by arguing that equality of opportunity is not capable of standing in as an overarching normative principle for egalitarian politics.     

Justice as fairness and bad luck

Abstract

One major way of arguing for the moral attractiveness of luck egalitarianism is indirect; it consists in showing that the view follows from competing views on distributive justice which one actually endorses. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (KLR) claims that luck egalitarianism is indirectly supported in this way by Rawls’s intuitive argument for the difference principle. That argument begins by asserting that the impact of social and natural contingencies on distributive shares is unjust. After clarifying the notion of indirect support, I argue against KLR’s claim. Whether the argument goes on to support luck egalitarianism is a matter of interpretation which can only be decided by looking closer at what Rawls has to say about the difference principle than KLR’s own treatment of the argument allows. In its most plausible reading, the intuitive argument veers away from luck egalitarianism in favor of a non-egalitarian view of the difference principle as a principle of compensating advantage. On this view, inequality due to bad luck is not in any respect unjust when the least advantaged cannot be made better off under alternative arrangements. In conclusion I explain why there are good reasons of fairness to understand the difference principle in this way.     

Ecomodernist citizenship: rethinking political obligations in a climate-changed world

Green accounts of environmental citizenship typically seek to promote environmental sustainability and justice. However, some green theorists have argued that liberal freedoms are incompatible with preserving a planetary environment capable of meeting basic human needs and must be wound back. More recently, ‘ecomodernists’ have proposed that liberalism might be reconciled with environmental challenges through state-directed innovation focused on the provision of global public goods. Yet, they have not articulated an account of ecomodernist citizenship. This article seeks to advance the normative theory of ecomodernism by specifying an account of ecomodernist citizenship and subjecting the theory’s core claims to sympathetic critique. We argue that state-directed innovation has the potential to reconcile ambitious mitigation with liberal freedoms. However, full implementation of ecomodernist ideals would require widespread embrace of ecophilic values, high-trust societies and acceptance of thick political obligations within both national and global communities. Ecomodernism’s wider commitments to cosmopolitan egalitarianism and separation from nature thus amount to a non-liberal comprehensive public conception of the good. Furthermore, ecomodernism currently lacks an adequate account of how a society that successfully ‘separates’ from nature can nurture green values, or how vulnerable people’s substantive freedoms will be protected during an era of worsening climate harms.     

Does justice stand alone?

A common feature of leading liberal-egalitarian political theories is the sharp priority they attribute to justice, and to distributive justice in particular. In this article, I argue that liberal egalitarians have yet to offer a persuasive argument for prioritizing justice, and distributive justice in particular, in this way. I focus on assessing arguments advanced in the seminal work of John Rawls and employ the pluralist liberalism of Isaiah Berlin to illustrate that Rawls’ arguments are not even persuasive for reasonable liberals like Berlin, let alone for non-liberals. The upshot of my argument is not that liberals should abandon the pursuit of greater equality of wealth and income, but only that such goals should still be balanced against the claims of other fundamental values, such as individual liberty and the common good (contrary to those who want to give sharp priority to distributive justice).     

Taxation and Distributive Justice

Distributive justice concerns the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. Opposition to higher rates of taxation, or even existing levels of taxation, is often made on grounds that such taxes are unfair burdens. This fairness argument can be given a number of further, more-specific formulations. Libertarians, such as Robert Nozick, argue that taxation of income is unfair because it violates individual rights. They invoke an entitlement argument that presumes that the appropriate baseline of property rights is pretax income . Others take issue with specific policies that are supported by taxation, such as welfare provisions, and argue that welfare reform is necessary because tax burdens are only legitimate when they satisfy some form of reciprocity thesis . These arguments are critically assessed here in relation to three recent books – The Cost of Rights , The Myth of Ownership and The Civic Minimum – which explore different arguments often invoked in defence of tax cuts. Themes that raise important questions about taxation and justice are also examined – private property, welfare reform and inheritance. The real challenge facing justice theorists is to take scarcity seriously; thus, I emphasise the shortcomings of simply endorsing a 'cost-blind', rights-oriented conception of justice, which currently dominates debates in normative political theory.     

Justice as a claim to (social) property

Abstract

Margaret Kohn argues for a reappraisal of early twentieth-century left-republican French political theory, known as ‘solidarism’. Solidarism recognises private property as legitimate, but at the same time argues that the collective nature of economic production gives rise to a claim to social property. It is social property that should underlie the case for social justice and social rights, not the standard liberal claims to individual autonomy. This paper provides an appraisal of Kohn’s recovery of solidarism, taking as its main theme the relation between property and social justice. The paper first offers a typology of four theories of justice (right- and left-libertarianism, luck and relational egalitarianism) and discusses the relation of each of these to the concept of property. Then it argues that solidarism is akin to left-libertarianism in the way it formulates justice as a claim to social property. Finally, it argues that solidarists cannot escape grounding their theory in a non-property based fundamental principle, which makes the theory much less distinctive from egalitarian theories of justice than may appear at first sight.     

Preserving fairness: Williams against Cohen on just inequality

The view that the choices people make affect what it is fair for them to receive has widespread appeal. This very general thought has found particular and acute expression in the context of distributive justice in the form of the influential view that has become known as luck egalitarianism. In a surprising development, one of luck egalitarianism’s foremost advocates – G.A. Cohen – appeared, in one of his final papers, to reject the commitment to the fairness of chosen inequalities that defines luck egalitarianism. In opposition to the luck egalitarian view, Cohen suggests that choice merely deprives the disadvantaged of a complaint against being worse off, rather than rendering such inequality fair. Against Cohen’s revised view, Andrew Williams has argued that Cohen’s move underestimates an account of equality under which what individuals choose to do with their equal allocation affects what it is to treat them fairly. Here, I seek to show how the Williams response fails to undermine Cohen’s claims about the relation between fairness and choice. I draw on this analysis to show how the disagreement between Williams and Cohen on this issue illuminates a broader methodological divergence over how to approach questions of justice and fairness.     

Politics and the State

Political theorists disagree about whether 'politics' and 'the political' should bedefined narrowly or broadly. Defenders of broad conceptions argue that narrow definitions exclude phenomena that ought to be included and lead us to misunderstand the relationship between different forces in society. Defenders of narrow conceptions argue that broad definitions collapse the distinction between the social and the political, and deprive politics of any distinctive identity. I shall argue that neither of these arguments is successful and that disputes over whether we should adopt a narrow or a broad view of politics are, for the most part, merely verbal.     

Luck egalitarianism and what valuing responsibility requires

Luck egalitarianism originated in an attempt to respond to the conservative objection that egalitarianism fails to respect the value of responsibility. In response, luck egalitarians have introduced a distinction between choice and circumstances and recommend redistribution only when inequalities are not the result of choice. I will argue, however, that this standard formulation of the luck egalitarian aim is problematic, and ought to be revised. Valuing responsibility requires more than redistribution – it requires giving priority to ensuring equality of opportunity for advantages at the level of institutions. Preventing unfairness has normative priority over efforts to alleviate it. Compensation’s role is secondary to the prior normative importance of ensuring that people are responsible for the advantages they have.     

Reconciliation Arguments in John Rawls’s Political Philosophy

Abstract

Recently debates about the worth of “ideal theory” have directed attention to the functions that an account of a perfectly just society can serve. One function is that of “reconciliation”: learning that a seemingly undesirable feature of the social world would exist even in the perfectly just society can show us the value that it has in the present as well. John Rawls has emphasized reconciliation as among the roles of political philosophy. For instance, Rawls claims that his theory of justice can reconcile us to the pluralism of liberal democracies. In this essay, I argue that Rawls’s political theory also can reconcile the inhabitants of liberal democratic societies to the fact that such societies may be cognitively confusing on account of their complexity. Then I contend that Rawls’s work offers valuable theoretical resources for analysing a society’s transparency or lack thereof.     

Liberalism and religion: the plural grounds of separation

ABSTRACT

In what sense, and to what extent, should a liberal state be secular? Many interpret liberal-egalitarian political theory as dictating a radical separation between church and state. Against this view, Cécile Laborde has powerfully argued that, in fact, liberal-egalitarianism is not committed to strict separation as such. Laborde understands the liberal-egalitarian commitment to separation as ultimately grounded on a principle of neutrality. However, she argues that the conception of neutrality to which liberal egalitarians are committed is much more ‘restricted’ than it is often thought. If a commitment to separation is derivative from a commitment to neutrality, then, if neutrality is restricted, secularism is minimal. This means that not all forms of religious establishment should be regarded as impermissible from a liberal-egalitarian perspective. Contra Laborde, I argue that restricted neutrality should not be understood as the only ground of separation. Separation has plural grounds. Forms of religious recognition that do not violate any of the requirements of restricted neutrality may still be regarded as impermissible from a liberal-egalitarian perspective, if they (1) violate a basic commitment to fairness, (2) treat citizens in a patronizing way and/or (3) violate, in their justification, a requirement of sincerity, as grounded on reciprocity.     

The rights of (future) humans qua humans

Human rights are rights held “simply in virtue of humanity.” In unpacking this claim, we find that theories of human rights disclose (1) something about what we understand a minimally decent human life to be and (2) who we consider to belong within a community of rights-bearers. In this article, I address two interrelated questions: When and why do future persons have standing as rights-bearing members of a shared moral community? Are the rights held by future generations best expressed in the “greening” of existing rights or in a new distinctly environmental right? I argue that human rights theorists miss an important element of the human qua human if they take ecological embeddedness to be contingently rather than necessarily relevant to human rights. I therefore argue that there are reasons to favor a new distinctly environmental human right.     

The Scope of Public Reason

This paper presents two conceptions of the scope of public reason. The narrow view asserts that the ideal of public reason must regulate questions of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, but should not apply beyond this limited domain. The broad view claims that the ideal of public reason ought to be applied, whenever possible, to all political decisions where citizens exercise coercive power over one another. The paper questions whether there are any good grounds for accepting the narrow view. I survey and reject three potential reasons. The priority argument for the narrow view claims that constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice are the only proper subjects of public reason because they have a special moral priority for our reasoning about justice. The basic interests argument supports the narrow view by arguing that public reasons only exist at the level of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. Finally, the completeness argument defends the narrow view on the grounds that public reason can only be complete if it abstains from most legislative questions. I conclude that there are no good reasons for accepting the narrow view of the scope of public reason, whereas there are several reasons to prefer the broad view.