Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T10:45:14.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Egalitarians, sufficientarians, and mathematicians: a critical notice of Harry Frankfurt’s On Inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Rondel
David Rondel*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This critical notice provides an overview of Harry Frankfurt’s On Inequality and assesses whether Frankfurt is right to argue that equality is merely formal and empty. I counter-argue that egalitarianism, properly tweaked and circumscribed, can be defended against Frankfurt’s repudiation. After surveying the main arguments in Frankfurt’s book, I argue that whatever plausibility the ‘doctrine of sufficiency’ defended by Frankfurt may have, it does not strike a fatal blow against egalitarianism. There is nothing in egalitarianism that forbids acceptance of the moral platitude expressed in sufficientarianism's positive thesis, (viz., it is morally important that everyone have enough). Nor is there anything in egalitarianism as such that makes it impossible to recognize the banal truth that there are many important things besides equality, and that many dimensions of human affairs are improperly appraised from a relational or comparative point of view. The fact that a relational or comparative point of view is sometimes out of place, however, surely does not mean that it always is. I conclude with the suggestion that egalitarianism is most compelling when it is understood as a normative conception of social relations (rather than, as Frankfurt seems to assume throughout his book, a thesis about the equal distribution of something) and thus presides over precisely those aspects of human affairs for which that relational or comparative point of view is germane.

Keywords

Harry Frankfurtegalitarianismsufficientarianismrespectrelational equality
Type
Critical Notice
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 145 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2016

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

Anderson, Elizabeth. 1999. “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109: 287–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2005. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arneson, Richard. 2000. “Perfectionism and Politics.” Ethics 111: 37–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arneson, Richard. 2002. “Why Justice Requires Transfers to Offset Income and Wealth Inequalities.” Social Philosophy and Policy 19: 172–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benbaji, Yitzhak. 2005. “The Doctrine of Sufficiency: A Defence.” Utilitas 17: 310–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Isaiah. 1996. The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History. Edited by Hardy, Henry. London: Random House.Google Scholar
Brown, Campbell. 2005. “Priority or Sufficiency …or Both?” Economics and Philosophy 21: 199–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casal, Paula. 2007. “Why Sufficiency is Not Enough.” Ethics 117: 296–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christiano, Thomas. 2008. The Constitution of Equality. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1995. Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crisp, Roger. 2003. “Equality, Priority, and Compassion.” Ethics 113: 745–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. 1987. “Equality as a Moral Ideal.” Ethics 98: 21–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. 1988. The Importance of What We Care about. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. 1997. “Equality and Respect.” Social Research 64: 3–15.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry. 2015. On Inequality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Goodin, Robert E. 1987. “Egalitarianism, Fetishistic and Otherwise.” Ethics 98: 44–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtug, Nils. 2007. “Prioritarianism.” In Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality, edited by Holtug, Nils and Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper, 125–156. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Huseby, Robert. 2010. “Sufficiency: Restated and Defended.” Journal of Political Philosophy 18: 178–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, David. 1999. Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas. 1991. Equality and Partiality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Kai. 2003. Globalization and Justice. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 1991. Equality of Priority? The Lindley Lecture. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Anne. 1999. Which Equalities Matter? Oxford: Polity.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 2003. The Difficulty of Tolerance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, Samuel. 2003. “What is Egalitarianism?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 31: 5–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidtz, David. 2008. Person, Polis, Planet: Essays in Applied Philosophy. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.Google Scholar
Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2010. “On the Vanity and Suffering of Life.” In The Essential Schopenhauer: Key Selections from the World as Will and Representation and Other Writings, edited by Schirmacher, Wolfgang, 23–118. New York: Harper Collins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, Liam. 2012. “The Prospects for Sufficientarianism.” Utilitas 24: 101–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1976. The Wealth of Nations. Edited by Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Temkin, Larry. 1993. Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Temkin, Larry. 2003. “Equality, Priority or What?” Economics and Philosophy 19: 61–87.Google Scholar
JrVonnegut, Kurt. 1968. Welcome to the Monkey House. New York: Delacorte Press.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 1995. “Money and Complex Equality.” In Pluralism, Justice, and Equality, edited by Miller, David and Walzer, Michael, 144–170. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar