¹ Another possible example is the legal duty of pregnant women to bear the fetus to term in countries that restrict abortion rights. See Regan, Donald H., “Rewriting Roe v. Wade ,” Michigan Law Review, vol. 77, no. 7 (August 1979), pp. 1569–1646.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed As of 1969, sixteen European countries enforced a legal duty to undertake easy rescue: Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Russia, Turkey, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Romania, France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, various cantons of Switzerland, and Finland. See the citation in Feinberg, Joel, Harm to Others, vol. 1 of The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 256 Google Scholar, n. 2.

² The definitive text on egoistic contractarianism is Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar Gauthier announces that he is interested in determining what rational individuals (who are not assumed to take an interest in one another's interests and who are fully informed about all relevant facts) would agree to by way of constraints on utility-maximizing behavior. However, the full information stipulation lacks a good rationale; in fact, Gauthier does not steadily adhere to it.

³ Hence, strong and symmetrical constraints on the information available to bargainers, such as those introduced by John Rawls for moral reasons in his contractarian enterprise, would be alien to the egoistic contractarian enterprise.

⁴ I borrow this usage from Allan Gibbard, who takes a property right to be roughly “a right which a person has with respect to a specific thing.” See Gibbard, , “Natural Property Rights,” Nous, vol. 10, no. 1 (March 1976), pp. 77–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see esp. p. 77. A similar usage is implicit in Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 171.Google Scholar Property rights in this weak sense need not be alienable or freely transferable. A feudal lord who is entitled by custom to require serfs on his manor to work a certain number of hours per year on his demesne has property rights in the bodies of those serfs.

⁵ Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 169.

⁶ Ibid., p. 170.

⁷ See Musgrave, R. A., “Maximin, Uncertainty, and the Leisure Trade-Off,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 88, no. 4 (November 1974), pp. 624–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see esp. p. 631. See also Pazner, Elisha A., “Pitfalls in the Theory of Fairness,” Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 14, no. 2 (April 1977), pp. 458–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 272–73. In a society regulated by Nozick-style libertarianism, individuals with the same talent (identical twins raised in the same circumstances) might well not enjoy identical prospects of good fortune. It all depends on how individuals happen to exercise their rights. Employers, for their own reasons, might offer lucrative opportunities to twin A but not twin B, philanthropists might lavish gifts on A not B, and so on. But the rationale for assigning libertarian rights to employers and philanthropists does not include the aim of discriminating against the B's of the world or ensuring that their lives go worse than the lives of others. Hence Nozickian libertarianism satisfies weak, not strong, horizontal equity.

⁹ For further discussion and clarification, see Arneson, Richard, “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 56, no. 1 (May 1989), pp. 77–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arneson, , “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 19, no. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 158–94Google Scholar; Arneson, , “Primary Goods Reconsidered,” Nous, vol. 24, no. 3 (June 1990), pp. 429–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arneson, , “Neutrality and Utility,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 20, no. 2 (June 1990), pp. 215–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Arneson, , “A Defense of Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 62, no. 2 (May 1991), pp. 187–95.Google Scholar See also Cohen, Gerald A., “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics, vol. 99, no. 4 (July 1989), pp. 906–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar My discussions of John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin are indebted to Cohen's excellent critiques of these authors. So far as I am aware, the locus classicus on the topic of egalitarian variants of utilitarianism is Weirich, Paul, “Utility Tempered with Equality,” Nous, vol. 17, no. 3 (September 1983), pp. 423–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Hence, egalitarian welfarism might recommend legally enforced obligations to aid the needy, even if Richard Epstein's speculation that such redistributive policies always issue in net utility loss were to prove correct. See Epstein, Richard, “Luck,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 6, no. 1 (Autumn 1988), pp. 17–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ For description and discussion of the notion of self-ownership, see Cohen, G. A., “Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality,” ed. Frank, Lucash, Justice and Equality Here and Now (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 108–35Google Scholar; Cohen, , “Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality: Part II,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 1986), pp. 77–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and my “Lockean Self-Ownership: Towards a Demolition,” Political Studies, vol. 39 (March 1991), pp. 36–54.

¹² I thank Gregory Kavka for bringing this example to my attention.

¹³ Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a helpful exposition of Rawls's system, see Buchanan, Allen, Marx's Critique of Justice (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980)Google Scholar, ch. 6.

¹⁴ Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 250. The next quote in the text is from Rawls, John, “Social Unity and Primary Goods,” ed. Amartya, Sen and Bernard, Williams, Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 159–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see p. 162.

¹⁵ Rawls, “Social Unity and Primary Goods,” p. 162.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 272.

¹⁸ For an argument to the conclusion that Rawls ought to endorse the claim that individuals are morally obligated to put their talents to socially productive use in their choice of careers and life plans, see Carens, Joseph, “Rights and Duties in an Egalitarian Society,” Political Theory, vol. 14, no. 1 (February 1986), pp. 31–49.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Anthony Kronman claims to find another argument in Rawls's text for its egalitarian redistributive component. He suggests that Rawls holds that (1) the satisfaction of each citizen's particular aims is intrinsically morally worthy; (2) each citizen deserves consideration for her claim to satisfaction of her particular ends in virtue of her moral capacities to choose her ends and to develop a sense of justice; (3) since citizens all equally possess these capacities, their claims to consideration of their aspirations to satisfaction are equal; so (4) the just society should provide equally the material means enabling citizens to satisfy their aims (unless unequal distribution improves the position of the worst off). This interpretation of Rawls understates his opposition to welfarism and the importance of the idea of primary social goods in this connection. See Kronman, , “Talent Pooling,” ed. Pennock, J. Roland and Chapman, John, Human Rights: NOMOS XXIII (New York: New York University Press, 1981), pp. 58–79.Google Scholar

²⁰ See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 303–15.

²¹ See the discussion and references to Rawls's text in Hubin, D. Clayton, “Minimizing Maximin,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 37, no. 4 (May 1980), pp. 363–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² See especially Rawls, John, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77, no. 9 (September 1980), pp. 515–72.Google Scholar

²³ Rawls, John, “Reply to Alexander and Musgrave,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 88, no. 4 (November 1974), pp. 633–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see p. 648 for the first quote, p. 647 for the second.

²⁴ On this point, see the discussion in Barry, Brian, A Treatise on Social Justice, Vol. 1: Theories of Justice (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), p. 234 Google Scholar, and “Appendix C: Economic Motivation in a Rawlsian Society,” pp. 393–400.

²⁵ Musgrave, “Maximin, Uncertainty, and the Leisure Trade-Off,” p. 632.

²⁶ Kymlicka, Will, “Liberalism and Communitarianism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 18, no. 2 (June 1988), pp. 181–204 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see p. 183. Kymlicka credits Ronald Dworkin for this idea.

²⁷ On this issue, see my “Primary Goods Reconsidered,” pp. 440–41.

²⁸ This way of putting the question glides past a significant alternative: namely, the idea that a theory of justice should use the functioning capabilities of individuals as the basis of interpersonal comparison, rather than either primary goods or welfare. Amartya Sen argues persuasively for this alternative in “Equality of What?”, in his Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), pp. 353–69; and in “Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 82, no. 4 (April 1985), pp. 169–221. This essay does not address Sen's proposal. I briefly discuss it in “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare” at pp. 90–92.

²⁹ Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 94.

³⁰ See Rawls, John, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (Spring 1987), pp. 1–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 17, no. 4 (Fall 1988), pp. 251–76; and “The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus,” New York University Law Review, vol. 64, no. 2 (May 1989), pp. 233–55.

³¹ For further discussion, see my “Neutrality and Utility.”

³² This is the thrust of Nagel's criticism of Rawls in his review essay, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review, vol. 82, no. 2 (April 1973), pp. 220–34; see p. 228. Ignoring this point vitiates the criticism of Nagel in De Marneffe, Peter, “Liberalism, Liberty, and Neutrality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 19, no. 3 (Summer 1990), pp. 253–74Google Scholar; see pp. 257–58.

³³ For this suggestion, see “Reply to Alexander and Musgrave,” p. 654; also “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” p. 257.

³⁴ For this reply, see Rawls, “Social Unity and Primary Goods.”

³⁵ For further discussion, see my “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare.”

³⁶ Daniels, Norman, “Equality of What? Welfare, Resources, or Capabilities?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 50, Supplement (Fall 1990), pp. 273–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Scanlon, Thomas, “The Significance of Choice,” ed. McMurrin, Sterling M., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 8 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), pp. 149–216 Google Scholar; and Scanlon, , “Equality of Resources and Equality of Welfare: A Forced Marriage?”, Ethics, vol. 97, no. 1 (October 1986), pp. 111–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ See the following essays by Dworkin, Ronald: “What Is Equality? Part I: Equality of Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10, no. 3 (Summer 1981), pp. 185–246 Google Scholar; “What Is Equality? Part II: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4 (Fall 1981), pp. 243–85; and “What Is Equality? Part III: The Place of Liberty,” Iowa Law Review, vol. 73, no. 1 (October 1987), pp. 1–54.

³⁸ Here and elsewhere in this essay, I provisionally accept an arbitrary limitation of scope on the writ of principles of equality: I suppose they govern a single society taken in isolation. How to apply principles of equality globally and whether there is any plausible rationale for limiting the scope of equality to a single society are matters left to further discussion.

³⁹ See Dworkin, “What Is Equality? Part II: Equality of Resources.”

⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 293–95.

⁴¹ Ibid., pp. 338–44.

⁴² For a defense of maximin, see Cohen, Joshua, “Democratic Equality,” Ethics, vol. 99, no. 4 (July 1990), pp. 727–51.Google Scholar

⁴³ The most thoroughgoing critique of Dworkin along this line is that of G. A. Cohen in “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” pp. 906–44; see especially pp. 916–34. For further instructive criticism of Dworkin, see Roemer, John, “Equality of Talent,” Economics and Philosophy, vol. 1, no. 2 (October 1985), pp. 151–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roemer, , “Equality of Resources Implies Equality of Welfare,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 101, no. 4 (November 1986), pp. 751–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alexander, Larry and Schwarzschild, Maimon, “Liberalism, Neutrality, and Equality of Welfare vs. Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 16, no. 1 (Winter 1987), pp. 85–110.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Van Parijs, Philippe, “Equal Endowments as Undominated Diversity,” Alternatives to Welfarism: Essays in Honour of Amartya Sen, a special issue of Recherches Economiques de Louvain, vol. 56, no. 3/4 (1990), pp. 327–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar