Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T13:57:43.558Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

INCAS AND ALIENS: THE TRUTH IN TELIC EGALITARIANISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2015

Shlomi Segall
Shlomi Segall*
Affiliation:
The Program in Politics, Philosophy, & Economics (PPE), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The paper seeks to defend Telic Egalitarianism (TE) by distinguishing two distinct categories into which typical objections to it fall. According to one category of objections (for example, levelling down) TE is groundless. That is, there is simply no good reason to think that inequality as such is bad. The other type of objections to TE focuses on its counterintuitive implications: it is forced to condemn inequalities between ourselves and long-dead Inca peasants, or between us and worse-off aliens from other planets. The paper shows that once we unpack these two types of objections to TE they become much less persuasive.

Keywords

equalityDerek Parfitdesertjustificationlevelling down
Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 1 - 19
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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

REFERENCES

Ackerman, B. 1980. Social Justice in the Liberal State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Arneson, R. J. 2002. Why justice requires transfers to offset income and welfare inequalities. Social Philosophy and Policy 19: 172–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, J. Unpublished. Respects and leveling down. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfop0060/pdf/respects%20and%20levelling%20down.pdf.Google Scholar
Brown, C. 2003. Giving up leveling down. Economics and Philosophy 19: 111–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1992. Incentive, inequality, and community. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 13: 263–329.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 2006. Casting the first stone: who can, and who can't condemn the terrorists. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 58: 113–136.Google Scholar
Crisp, R. 2003. Egalitarianism and compassion. Ethics 114: 119–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabre, C. 2006. Global distributive justice: an egalitarian perspective. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31: 139–164.Google Scholar
Forst, R. 2011. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, H. 1987. Equality as a moral ideal. Ethics 98: 21–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, J. The violent visions of Slavoj Zizek. New York Review of Books, 12 July 2012.Google Scholar
Hausman, D. Forthcoming. Equality versus priority: A badly misleading distinction. In Wikler, D. and Murray, C., Goodness and Fairness. Geneva: WHO.Google Scholar
Hausman, D. M. and Waldren, M. S.. 2011. Egalitarianism reconsidered. Journal of Moral Philosophy 8: 567–586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirose, I. 2012. Review of Nils Holtug, “Persons, interests, and justice”’. Economics and Philosophy 28: 98–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtug, N. 2009. Equality, priority and global ethics. Journal of Global Ethics 5: 173–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtug, N. 2010. Persons, Interests, and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurley, S. L. 2003. Justice, Luck, and Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, K. K. 2003. What is the difference between (moderate) egalitarianism and prioritarianism? Economics and Philosophy 19: 89–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolm, S-C. 2005. Macrojustice: The Political Economy of Fairness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mason, A. 2001. Egalitarianism and the leveling down objection. Analysis 61: 246–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKerlie, D. 1996. Equality. Ethics 106: 274–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, D. 1982. Arguments for equality. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 7: 73–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neill, M. 2008. What should egalitarians believe? Philosophy and Public Affairs 36: 119–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otsuka, M. and Voorhoeve, A.. 2009. Why it matters that some are worse off than others. Philosophy and Public Affairs 37: 171–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, D. 1991. Equality or priority?The Lindley Lectures. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 2012. Another defense of the priority view. Utilitas 24: 399–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, I. 2001. Equality, priority, and the person-affecting value. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 4: 23–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, I. 2008. Why leveling down could be worse for prioritarians than for egalitarians. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11: 295–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, I. 2012. Prioritarianism and welfare reductions. Journal of Applied Philosophy 29: 289–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, J. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 2003. The diversity of objections to inequality. In The Difficulty of Tolerance, 202–218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, D. Suarez on justice. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Segall, S. 2012. Why egalitarians should not care about equality. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19: 507–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segall, S. 2013. Equality and Opportunity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segall, S. 2014. In defense of priority (and equality). Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. Firstview Online.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tan, K. C. 2012. Justice, Institutions, and Luck: The Site, Ground, and Scope of Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Temkin, L. S. 1993. Inequality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Temkin, L. S. 2003a. Egalitarianism defended. Ethics 113: 764–782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Temkin, L. S. 2003b. Equality, priority, or what? Economics and Philosophy 19: 61–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tungodden, B. 2003. The value of equality. Economics and Philosophy 19: 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Parijs, P. Unpublished. Talking to Stanley: What do we need for global justice to make sense. http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/Van_Parijs_-_Oxford_1.pdf.Google Scholar
Williams, B. 2005. In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar