Equality

Question 1

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

three kinds of equality that might be thought to
be important.

1. basic rights

Answer 1

1. the most basic = equality in the possession of certain basic rights (what prof Freund calls the basic liberties). Primarily political and legal equalities and can include certain equalities of an economic nature i.e. equality to make contracts etc.

In this conception the important kinds of equality are equality
of political and legal respect, equality of formal treatment by the institutions of society, and equality of liberty from certain kinds of encroachment or interference, either public or private.

Question 2

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

three kinds of equality that might be thought to
be important.

2. equality in the possession of basic
   rights plus the equal apportionment of certain kinds of benefits that are
   also regarded as basic

Answer 2

basic medical care, basic education, care for the aged when they are no longer able to work, and fundamental care for children so that they do not grow up undernourished.

Question 3

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

three kinds of equality that might be thought to
be important.

3. the broadest

Answer 3

The third, and by far the broadest notion of equality, is the equal apportionment of benefits of all kinds, particularly economic benefits.

Question 4

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

what do the three kinds of equality correspond with?

Answer 4

three kinds
of policy, each representing a major position in the American political
spectrum. The three policies, corresponding respectively to the narrowest, intermediate, and broadest conceptions of equality, are conservative, liberal, and social democratic.

Question 5

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

Conservative position

Answer 5

the primary egalitarian
function of government is to secure to everyone the basic rights that are
recognized in the Constitution, but not to redistribute benefits in general so as to insure that equality is achieved beyond the apportionment
of those rights.

by and large it is conceded, and it is probably
the major tenet of the conservative position, that protection of certain
basic rights is something that has to be accorded equally to everyone.
As Professor Freund pointed out, even that is a redistributive policy
because it costs something to insure that everyone has the right to adequate legal representation in court, for example.

But, in the minimal egalitarian view, redistribution beyond that point is not necessary.

Question 6

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

Liberal position

Answer 6

the business of society to
guarantee both the protection of equal rights and equality of opportunity. To provide equality of opportunity it is necessary to compensate
in some way for the unequal starting points that people occupy, both
socially and economically. In order that everyone has a fair chance, it
is thought necessary to provide a certain degree of support for free
medical care, free higher education, etc., in addition to the protection
of basic equal rights. So the liberal position favors equal rights, equality of opportunity, and a social minimum of some sort.

Question 7

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

Social democratic or left-liberal position

Answer 7

exemplified philosophically by Professor John Rawls, the author of A Theory of Justice, whose work to which Professor Freund alluded. And in particular, it is exemplified by Rawls’ so-called “difference principle” according to
which mere equality of opportunity is not equal enough because it allows great differences to emerge from the way in which different people
are able to use the equal opportunities available to them.

According to
the difference principle, inequalities (differences) in the distribution of
general economic benefits are justified only if any further reduction
would lower the level of the people at the bottom. This allows inequalities in the economic domain necessary to provide incentives that produce general prosperity and contribute to everybody’s well-being. But
inequalities that produce a spread in which the disadvantages to the
bottom are offset by advantages to those in the middle and at the top
are not permissible, according to the difference principle. This is more
egalitarian than ordinary liberalism because it requires that social arrangements always favor those in the worst position.

Question 8

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

how great are the moral demands that we, as members of the society, can make on each other and
ask the government to enforce? Are they limited, or are they broad?
And if so, how broad?

re conservative position

Answer 8

it makes it the business of the coercive power of governments to enforce only the basic liberties or the basic rights is
founded on the moral view that what we can claim from one another,
or what we can ask the coercive power of government to force others to accord to us, is limited to a certain set of basic rights upon which others
may not infringe. But we are not permitted to ask the government to
enforce redistributions that will compensate us for disadvantages that
we may have from birth, or that will provide us with general benefits.

Question 9

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

how great are the moral demands that we, as members of the society, can make on each other and
ask the government to enforce? Are they limited, or are they broad?
And if so, how broad?

re liberal and socialist position

Answer 9

the liberal position of equality of opportunity and the more egalitarian difference principle, both maintain that it is the business of society to provide benefits beyond protection against infringement of basic rights. And that depends on the
following moral conception: one moves from basic rights to more general benefits by the argument that most of the inequalities that we find
in our society, the really large-scale ones, are due to factors that are
beyond the individual’s control. It is not that everything that happens
to a person is beyond his control, but the range of possibilities or likely
courses of life that are open to a given individual are limited to a considerable extent by his birth. They are limited by the economic class into which he is born, the kind of environment in which he grows up,
the education of his parents, and also by his genetic endowment. In a
society with a competitive economy, where you end up is to some extent a product of how smart you are and of how well educated you
were as a child. This means that from a moral point of view it is to some extent arbitrary how the benefits are distributed, and therefore, there is nothing wrong with the state tinkering with that distribution. That distribution does not have any moral sanctity of its own, so it is all
right to go against the distribution of benefits to produce a desirable
end.

Question 10

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

what end is legitimate to pursue beyond the protection of fundamental rights?

Is the end
just the general welfare conceived of as the good of the majority, or is
the end itself a kind of economic equality?

Answer 10

The issue is
whether the moral claims represented by economic needs, for example,
or the desire for a good life, are aggregative or individualized. What has
to be decided about these benefits is whether each person individually
has an inviolable claim of some kind, which is represented by his economic needs and which cannot be outweighed by adding together the
lesser claims of a lot of other people, or whether each person’s claims
go into the hopper along with those of others to form an aggregate from
which is picked the heaviest overall weight of claims.

Question 11

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

Is the end
just the general welfare conceived of as the good of the majority, or is
the end itself a kind of economic equality?

individualised claims

Answer 11

represented by things
like the basic rights-the right of free speech, for example. If there is
such a thing as the right of free speech, then it is a right that each
person has and that cannot be overridden by the interests of a lot of
other people. If somebody wants to get up on a soapbox and preach
the Nazi ideology, and if there really is such a thing as the right of free
speech, then he has a right to do so even if a thousand other people will
become extremely upset when he does.

Question 12

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

Is the end
just the general welfare conceived of as the good of the majority, or is
the end itself a kind of economic equality?

aggregative moral claim

Answer 12

kind of thing that you settle by majority rule. If a township with limited funds has to decide whether
to build a swimming pool or to build tennis courts, it makes perfect
sense to ask whether more people want swimming pools than want tennis courts. You do not ask, “Is there some one person who will be more
crestfallen by the absence of a tennis court than by the absence of a
swimming pool?” There is not an individualized claim here. There is
nothing that resembles a right.

Question 13

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

Does the difference principle favour aggregative or individualised weighing of benefits?

Answer 13

The difference principle will accept a sacrifice of total general welfare, if necessary, to produce greater equality in benefits. This implies that if there are
people who are really stuck at the bottom of this society-say, the most impoverished ten percent-and if in order to improve their situation taxes must be levied to have the economic effect of depressing by a
comparable amount the middle fifty percent, then such taxes are justified. They are justified, according to this view, because the claims of
the people at the bottom are claims of a particularly urgent nature, claims to the provision of basic needs that are not aggregatively comparable with those of people higher up. They are individualized claims that have the kind of status similar to claims of right such as the right of free speech.

They can, therefore, outweigh a larger aggregate of benefits to those higher on the economic scale. The most egalitarian result
follows if you think of the provision of economic benefits on the individualized model, which is widely accepted for the preservation of basic liberties, rather than on the aggregative model of tennis courts
versus swimming pools.

Question 14

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

Are any rights commonly accepted as individualised rather than aggregative?

Does this apply in the area of economic
well-being?

Answer 14

For rights like freedom of movement, freedom of work, freedom of
religion, and freedom of speech, most of us accept this individualized
form of the moral claim. These basic rights are thought to be immune
from infringement for the sake of general welfare and prosperity. Even
though broad infringement of the liberty to choose a place of work
might be a useful technique of economic control, it would not be proposed as a permissible method. (Conscription, aimed at security rather
than welfare, is another story.)

According to the ordinary liberal position of equality of opportunity, it does not. It is not permissible to sacrifice the general
welfare simply to produce a lesser aggregate benefit to a minority at the
bottom because economic poverty of a nonextreme degree does not
have the kind of priority over the general welfare that, say, freedom of
speech and freedom of association have.

Question 15

Commentary The Meaning of Equality
Nagel

So the real issue, in abstract form, is this:

The two-tier morality:

Does Nagel side with Rawls?

Answer 15

We have a progression of
general moral claims from most urgent to least urgent. The question is,
first of all, how far into the area of general benefits do our moral claims
on each other go? Do they extend to economic benefits? And second,
at what point in the progression from most urgent to least urgent of
those claims do we draw the line at which they cease to be individualized and become aggregative? At what point do we no longer say, “In order to meet this claim for everyone we may have to sacrifice the general allocation of benefits above that point?”

We have, in other words,
the problem of a two-tier morality, with individualized claims competing against aggregative ones. Professor Freund put it very well when he stated that the collision comes where it seems that a substantial sacrifice has to be made in general utility-in the welfare of the majority
of the society-to provide a benefit to those at the bottom, a benefit that
is thought to be more urgent even if there are fewer of them. And I
agree with him that taken literally, the difference principle, as Rawls defines it, is too radical. Aggregate welfare should be permitted at some level of need to outweigh equality as a goal.

Question 16

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Is equality absolute?

Answer 16

Equality can be defended up to a point in terms of other values like utility and liberty. But some
of the most difficult questions are posed when it conflicts with
these

Question 17

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

4 types of equality

can the first three be defined in formal terms?

What are they dependent on?

Answer 17

political, legal, social, and economic.

The first three cannot be defined in formal terms.

Political equality is not guaranteed
by granting each adult one vote and the right to hold public office. Legal equality is not guaranteed by granting everyone the
right to a jury trial, the right to bring suit for injuries, and the right to counsel. Social equality is not produced by the abolition
of titles and official barriers to class mobility. Great substantive inequalities in political power, legal protection, social esteem and self-respect are compatible with these formal conditions. It is a
commonplace that real equality of every kind is sensitive to economic factors. While formal institutions may guarantee a
minimum social status to everyone, big differences in wealth and income will produce big distinctions above that - distinctions
that may be inherited as well.

Question 18

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

How might we argue in favour economic equality?

Answer 18

1. We might argue that since it cannot be detached from the other 3 equalities, arguing for their importance indirectly argues for elevating the fourth!
2. we might also make a non-egalitarian instrumental argument on grounds of utility

The principle of diminishing marginal utility states that for many goods, a particular further increment has less value to someone who already possesses a significant amount of the
good than to someone who has less. So if the total quantity of such a good and the number of recipients remains constant, an
equal distribution of it will always have greater total utility than a less equal one.

Question 19

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

What must economic equality be balanced against?

1. certain costs

Answer 19

Certain costs

First, attempts to
reduce inequality may also reduce the total quantity of goods available, by affecting incentives to work and invest. For example, a progressive income tax and diminishing marginal utility
make it more expensive to purchase the labor of those whose services are most in demand. Beyond a certain point, the pursuit
of equality may sacrifice overall utility, or even the welfare of everyone in the society.

Question 20

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

What must economic equality be balanced against?

2. certain means

why might these costs be unacceptable?

Answer 20

To achieve even moderate equality it is necessary to
restrict economic liberty, including the freedom to make bequests. Greater equality may be attainable only by more general coercive techniques, including ultimately the assignment of work by public administration instead of private contracts.

Some of these costs may be unacceptable not only on utilitarian grounds but because they violate individual rights. Opponents of the goal of equality may argue that if an unequal distribution
of benefits results from the free interactions and agreements of
persons who do not violate each other’s rights, then the results are not objectionable, provided they do not include extreme hardship for the worst off.

Question 21

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

What does the question of its intrinsic value determine?

Answer 21

what instrumental costs are acceptable. If equality is in itself good, then producing it may be worth a certain amount of inefficiency and loss of liberty.

Question 22

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

2 kinds of arguments in favour of the intrinsic value of equality

1. communitarian

Answer 22

equality is good for a society taken as
a whole. It is a condition of the right kind of relations among its members, and of the formation in them of healthy fraternal
attitudes, desires, and sympathies. This view analyzes the value
of equality in terms of a social and individual ideal.

Question 23

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

2 kinds of arguments in favour of the intrinsic value of equality

2. individualistic

Answer 23

The individualistic view, on the other hand, defends equality as a correct distributive principle - the correct way to meet the
conflicting needs and interests of distinct people, whatever those interests may be, more or less. It does not assume the desirability of any particular kinds of desires, or any particular kinds ofinterpersonal relations. Rather it favors equality in the distribution of human goods, whatever these may be - whether or not
they necessarily include goods of community and fraternity.

NB he focuses solely on individualistic arguments because he thinks it’s more likely to succeed.

Question 24

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Rawls’ theory

• does he assign more importance to equal protection of political and personal liberties or equality in distribution of other benefits?
• his principle for distribution of general goods

Answer 24

assigns more importance to equal protection of political and personal liberties than to equality in the distribution
of other benefits.

Nevertheless it is strongly egalitarian in this respect also. His principle of distribution for general goods, once equality in the basic liberties is secure, is that inequalities are justified only if they benefit the worst-off group in the society (by yielding higher productivity and employment, for example).

Question 25

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Rawls’ theory

• the difference principle

Answer 25

not used to determine
allocation directly, but only for the assessment of economic and social institutions, which in turn influence the allocation of
goods.

While it is counted a good thing for anyone to be made better off, the value of improving the situation of those who are
worse off takes priority over the value of improving the
situation of those who are better off. This is largely independent of the relative quantities of improvement involved, and also of
the relative numbers of persons. So given a choice between making a thousand poor people somewhat better off and making two thousand middle class people considerably better off, the first choice would be preferred.

It should be added that people’s welfare for these purposes is assessed in terms of overall life
prospects, not just prosperity at the moment

Question 26

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Rawls’ theory

• what might a more radical egalitarian position hold?

Answer 26

A more egalitarian position would hold that some
inequalities are bad even if they benefit the worst off, so that a situation in which everyone is worse off may be preferable if the
inequalities are reduced enough.

Question 27

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Rawls’ theory

• what two positions are naturally opposed to Rawl’s theory?

Answer 27

They are positions that do not accord intrinsic value to equality but admit other values whose pursuit or protection may require the acceptance of considerable
inequality. Those values, as I have said, are utility and individual rights.

Question 28

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Rawls’ theory

• must be defended against two alternative positions that don’t accord intrinsic value to equality
  1. the utilitarian view

Answer 28

it does not make sense to
forego greater benefits for the sake of lesser, or benefits to more
people for the sake of fewer, just because the benefits to the
worst off will be greater. It is better to have more of what is good and less of what is bad, no matter how they are distributed.

Question 29

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Rawls’ theory

• must be defended against two alternative positions that don’t accord intrinsic value to equality
  2. individual rights

Answer 29

it is wrong to interfere with people’s liberty to keep or bequeath what they can
earn merely in order to prevent the development of inequalities in distribution. It may be acceptable to limit individual liberty to
prevent grave evils, but inequality is not one of those. Inequalities are not wrong if they do not result from wrongs of one
person against another. They must be accepted if the only way to prevent them is to abridge individual rights to the kind of free
action that violates no one else’s rights.

Question 30

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

• egalitarianism must be defended against two alternative positions that don’t accord intrinsic value to equality

what do both theories point out?

what do the three views fundamentally disagree on?

Answer 30

the costs of pursuing distributive equality, and deny that it has independent value that outweighs these costs. More specifically, the pursuit of equality
is held to require the illegitimate sacrifice of the rights or interests of some individuals to the less important interests of
others. These two theories are also radically opposed to one another.

Together with egalitarianism they form a trio of
fundamentally different views about how to settle conflicts among the interests of different people.

Question 31

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

• what is the nature of the dispute between the three positions?
• what assumption do they share?

Answer 31

question is whether

(a) the worst off have a prior claim, or
(b) the enforcement of that claim would ignore the greater claim of others not among the worst off, who would benefit significantly more if a less egalitarian policy were adopted instead, or
(c) it would infringe the claims of other persons to liberty and the protection of their rights.

It is a dispute about how people should be treated equally, not about whether they should be. The three
views share an assumption of moral equality between persons, but differ in their interpretations of it. They agree that the moral
claims of all persons are, at a sufficiently abstract level, the same, but disagree over what these are.

Question 32

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

• where do the three theories locate the sameness of people?

Answer 32

Defender of rights: the freedom to do certain things without direct interference by others.

The utilitarian: locates them in the requirement that each person’s interests be fully counted as a component in the calculation of utility used to decide which states of affairs are best and which
acts or policies are right.

The egalitarian: finds them in an equal claim to actual or possible advantages. The issue remains acute
even though most social theories do not fall squarely into one of these categories, but give primacy to one interpretation of moral
equality and secondary status to the others

Question 33

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

moral equality of utilitarianism

Answer 33

kind of majority rule:
each person’s interests count once, but some may be outweighed by others. It is not really a majority of persons that determines the
result, but a majority of interests suitably weighted for intensity.

Persons are equal in the sense that each of them is given a ‘vote’ weighted in proportion to the magnitude of his interests.

Although this means that the interests of a minority can sometimes outweigh the interests of a majority, the basic idea is
majoritarian because each individual is accorded the same (variable) weight and the outcome is determined by the largest total.

In the simplest version, all of a person’s interests or preferences are counted, and given a relative weight depending on their weight for him. But various modifications have been
suggested. One doubt voiced about utilitarianism is that it counts positively the satisfaction of evil desires (sadistic or bigoted ones, for example).

Mill employed a distinction between higher and lower pleasures, and gave priority to the former. (Could there be a corresponding distinction for pains?)

Recently, Thomas Scanlon has argued that any distributive principle,
utilitarian or egalitarian, must use some objective standard of interest, need, or urgency distinct from mere subjective preference to avoid unacceptable consequences. Even if the aim is to maximize the total of some quantity of benefit over all persons,
it is necessary to pick a single measure of that quantity that applies fairly to everyone, and pure preference is not a good
measure. ‘The fact that someone would be willing to forego a decent diet in order to build a monument to his god does not
mean that his claim on others for aid in his project has the same
strength as a claim for aid in obtaining enough to eat (even assuming that the sacrifices required of others would be the
same).’

The moral equality of utilitarianism consists in letting each person’s interests contribute in the same way to determining
what in sum would be best overall.

Question 34

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

moral equality of rights

Answer 34

very different to utilitarianism in both in structure and in content.

• not majoritarian but aggregative
• do not provide an assessment of overall results but determine the acceptability of actions directly

The moral equality of persons under this conception is their equal claim against each other not to be interfered with in specified ways. Each
person must be treated equally in certain definite respects by each other person.

The utilitarian constructs an impersonal point of view in which those of all
individuals are combined to give judgments of utility, which in turn are to guide everyone’s actions. For a defender of rights, the
respects in which each person is inviolable present a direct and independent limit to what any other person may do to him. There is no single combination of viewpoints which yields a common
goal for everyone, but each of us must limit our actions to a range that is not unacceptable to anyone else in certain respects

Therefore, the morality of rights is limited - eaves a great deal of human life
ungoverned by moral restrictions or requirements. That is why, if unsupplemented, it leads naturally to political theories of limited government, and, in the extreme, to the libertarian theory of the minimal state..The justification of broad government action to promote all aspects of the general welfare
requires a much richer set of moral requirements

Question 35

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

moral equality of egalitarianism

• comparison with utilitarianism and rights

Answer 35

It employs a much richer version of each person’s point of view than does a theory of rights. In that respect it is closer to
utilitarianism.

It also resembles utilitarianism formally, in being applied first to the assessment of outcomes rather than of
actions.

But it does not combine all points of view by a majoritarian method. Instead, it establishes an order of priority
among needs and gives preference to the most urgent, regardless
of numbers. In that respect it is closer to rights theory.

Question 36

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

moral equality of egalitarianism

• what is required?

Answer 36

A sort of unanimity to determine a priority of interests

But, should a single, objective standard of
urgency should be used in construing the claims of each person, or whether his interests should be ranked at his own estimation
of their relative importance.

In addition to the question of objectivity, there is a question of scale. Because moral equality is
equality between persons, the individual interests to be ranked
cannot be momentary preferences, desires, and experiences. They must be aspects of the individual’s life taken as a whole:
health, nourishment, freedom, work, education, self-respect, affection, pleasure. The determination of egalitarian social policy requires some choice among them, and the results will be very
different depending on whether material advantages or individual liberty and self-realization are given priority.

Question 37

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

which of the three approaches does Nagel choose?

Answer 37

He says that we don’t have to choose!

A plausible social
morality will show the influence of them all. This will certainly not be conceded by utilitarians or believers in the dominance of rights. But to defend liberal egalitarianism it is not necessary to show that moral equality cannot be interpreted in the ways that
yield rights or utilitarianism. One has only to show that an egalitarian interpretation is also acceptable. The result then depends on how these disparate values combine.

Question 38

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Discussion of Rawl’s theory

1. the intuitive argument
   (a) undeserved advantages

Answer 38

One point Rawls makes repeatedly is that the natural and social contingencies that influence welfare - talent, early environment, class background - are not themselves deserved. So
differences in benefit that derive from them are morally arbitrary.

They can be justified only if the alternative would leave
the least fortunate even worse off. In that case everyone benefits
from the inequalities, so the extra benefit to some is justified as a means to this.

A less egalitarian principle of distribution, whether it is based on rights or on utility, allows social and natural contingencies to produce inequalities justified neither
because everyone benefits nor because those who get more deserve more.

Question 39

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Discussion of Rawl’s theory

1. the intuitive argument
   (b) against utilitarianism re social choice

Answer 39

The other point is directed specifically against utilitarianism.

Rawls maintains that utilitarianism applies to problems of social
choice - problems in which the interests of many individuals are
involved — a method of decision appropriate for one individual.

A single person may accept certain disadvantages in exchange for greater benefits. But no such compensation is possible when one person suffers the disadvantages and another gets the
benefits.

Question 40

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Discussion of Rawl’s theory

• Nagel’s response to Rawls’ 2 intuitive arguments
  (a) undeserved advantages

Answer 40

assumes that inequalities need justification, that there is a presumption against permitting them. Only that would imply that undeserved inequalities are morally arbitrary in an invidious sense, unless otherwise justified. If they were arbitrary only in
the sense that there were no reasons for or against them, they
would require no justification, and the aim of avoiding them
could provide no reason to infringe on anyone’s rights.

In any case the utilitarian has a justification to offer for the inequalities
that his system permits: that the sum of advantages is greater than it would be without the inequality. But even if an inequality
were acceptable only if it benefited everyone, that would not have to imply anything as strong as the Difference Principle.

More than one deviation from equality may benefit everyone to some extent, and it would require a specific egalitarian assumption to prefer the one that was most favorable to the worst off.

Question 41

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Discussion of Rawl’s theory

• Nagel’s response to Rawls’ 2 intuitive arguments
  (b) re utilitarianism

Answer 41

does not say why this method of summation is
not acceptable for the experiences of many individuals. It
certainly cannot be justified simply by extension from the individual case, but it has enough prima facie appeal to require
displacement by some better alternative. It merely says that more of what is good is better than less, and less of what is bad is
better than more. Someone might accept this conclusion without having reached it by extending the principle of individual
choice to the social case. There is no particular reason to think that the principle will be either the same or different in the two
cases.

Question 42

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Discussion of Rawl’s theory

• Nagel’s response to Rawls’ contractarian argument

Answer 42

His Original position, his version of the social contract, is a constructed unanimity condition which
attributes to each person a schematic point of view that abstracts from the differences between people, but allows for the main categories of human interest.

The individual is expected to choose principles for the assessment of social institutions on the
assumption that he may be anyone, but without assuming that he has an equal chance of being anyone, or that his chance of being in a certain situation is proportional to the number of
people in that situation.

The resulting choice brings out the priorities that are generally shared, and combines interests ranked by these priorities without regard to the numbers of people involved. The principles unanimously chosen on the basis of such priorities grant to each
person the same claim to have his most urgent needs satisfied prior to the less urgent needs of anyone else. Priority is given to
individuals who, taking their lives as a whole, have more urgent needs, rather than to the needs that more individuals have.

There has been much controversy over whether the rational choice under the conditions of uncertainty and ignorance that prevail in the Original Position would be what Rawls says it is, or even whether any choice could be rational under those
conditions. But there is another question that is prior. Why does
what it would be rational to agree to under those conditions determine what is right?

Question 43

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Comes back to general discussion

Answer 43

acceptance of egalitarian values need not imply
total exclusion of the others. Egalitarians may allow utility
independent weight, and liberal egalitarians standardly acknowledge the importance of certain rights, which limit the means
that may be used in pursuing equality and other ends (such a view is taken by Dworkin)

Question 44

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

is a theory of rights adequate?

Answer 44

No - it leaves out too much that is morally relevant. A moral view that gives no weight to the
value of overall outcomes cannot be correct

Question 45

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Scenario of the handicapped child and sibling

Answer 45

I have two children, one of
which is normal and quite happy, and the other of which suffers from a painful handicap. Call them respectively the first child
and the second child. I am about to change jobs.

Suppose I must decide between moving to an expensive city where the second child can receive special medical treatment and schooling, but where the family’s standard of living will be lower and the
neighborhood will be unpleasant and dangerous for the first child - or else moving to a pleasant semi-rural suburb where the
first child, who has a special interest in sports and nature, can have a free and agreeable life. This is a difficult choice on any
view. To make it a test for the value of equality, I want to suppose that the case has the following feature: the gain to the first child of moving to the suburb is substantially greater than
the gain to the second child of moving to the city. After all, the second child will also suffer from the family’s reduced standard
of living and the disagreeable environment. And the educational
and therapeutic benefits will not make him happy but only less miserable. For the first child, on the other hand, the choice is
between a happy life and a disagreeable one.

Let me add as a feature of the case that there is no way to compensate either child significantly for its loss if the choice favoring the other child is made. The family’s resources are stretched, and neither child has anything else to give up that could be converted into something of significant value to the other.

If one chose to move to the city, it would be an egalitarian decision. It is more urgent to benefit the second child, even
though the benefit we can give him is less than the benefit we can give the first child. This urgency is not necessarily decisive.
It may be outweighed by other considerations, for equality is not
the only value. But it is a factor, and it depends on the worse off position of the second child. An improvement in his situation is more important than an equal or somewhat greater improvement in the situation of the first child.

Question 46

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Scenario of the handicapped child and sibling - third child added

Answer 46

another happy,
healthy one, and I am faced with the same choice in allocation of indivisible goods. The greater urgency of benefiting the second child remains. I believe that this factor is essentially unchanged
by the addition of the third child. It remains just as much more urgent to benefit the second child in this case as it was when
there were only two children.

Question 47

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Would the simplest method be re improvements?

is this plausible?

Would such a view still select the least unacceptable position from each point of view?

Answer 47

to count any improvement in the situation of someone worse off as more urgent than any improvement in the situation of someone better off; but this is
not especially plausible.

It is more reasonable to accord greater
urgency to large improvements somewhat higher in the scale
than to very small improvements lower down.

Such a modified
principle could still be described as selecting the alternative that
was least unacceptable from each point of view. This method can be extended to problems of social choice involving large numbers of people. So long as numbers do not count it remains a
type of unanimity criterion, defined by a suitable measure of urgency. The problem of justifying equality then becomes the
problem of justifying the pursuit of results that are acceptable to each person involved.

Question 48

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Can we ignore numbers completely?

Answer 48

It seems to me that
no plausible theory can avoid the relevance of numbers completely. There may be some disparities of urgency so great that
the priorities persist whatever numbers are involved. But if the
choice is between preventing severe hardship for some who are
very poor and deprived, and preventing less severe but still substantial hardship for those who are better off but still struggling for subsistence, then it is very difficult for me to
believe that the numbers do not count, and that priority of urgency goes to the worse off however many more there are of
the better off.

It might be suggested that this is a case where equality is outweighed by utility. But if egalitarian urgency is
itself sensitive to numbers in this way, it does not seem that any form of unanimity criterion could explain the foundation of the
view.

Question 49

Nagel Equality in Mortal Questions

Nagel’s conclusion

Answer 49

equality is only one value and this is only one
method of choice. We can understand a radically egalitarian system just as we can understand a radical system of rights, but I
assume neither is correct.

Utility is a legitimate value, and the majoritarian or conglomerate viewpoint on which it depends is
an allowable way of considering the conflicting interests of numbers of different people at once. Still, the explanation of
egalitarian values in terms of separate assessment from each point of view is a step toward understanding; and if it does not imply that these values are absolute, that is not necessarily a drawback.

Question 50

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

What does Nozick argue re distribution?

Answer 50

Most goods, Nozick argues, are not up for distribution, or redistribution. They are goods to which particular people already
have entitlements, or special claims

Question 51

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Desert

Answer 51

we must give everyone their due, and people’s dues depend entirely on the differences between them, and on what they have
done. As before, it is these other facts which are morally decisive.

NB Parfit sets aside Nozick’s argument and Desert arguments and says we should imagine there being no different between people

Question 52

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

parfit’s numerical representation of Nagel’s scenario

Answer 52

Move to the city: 1st child 20; 2nd child 10

Move to suburb: 1st child 25; 2nd child 9

For Nagel, it is more urgent to tend to the handicapped child the lesser benefit matters more.

Question 53

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

To count as egalitarian in his sense, what kind of equality must be believed in?

Answer 53

Being equally well-off;

not just believing in equal rights everyone’s interests being given equal weight/

Question 54

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

what 2 ways may we believe in equality?

Answer 54

We may believe that inequality is bad. On such a view, when we should aim for equality, that is because we shall thereby make the
outcome better. We can then be called Teleological - or, for short
Telic - Egalitarians.

Our view may instead be Deontological or, for
short, Deontic. We may believe we should aim for equality, not to make the outcome better, but for some other moral reason. We
may believe, for example, that people have rights to equal shares.

(We might of course have beliefs of both kinds. We might believe we should aim for equality both because this will make the outcome better, and for other reasons. But such a view does not need a separate discussion. It is enough to consider its components.)

Question 55

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic arguments

Answer 55

The Principle of Equality: It is in itself bad if some people are worse off than other

• he ignores the complications of relative badness

Question 56

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic

Does the principle of equality tell us whether being equally well-off or bad-off is better?

Answer 56

No - although it’s clearly worse to be equally bad-off, this cannot be grounded in egalitarian terms

We may need to rely on utility - (need not be thought narrowly in utilitarian terms) - simply net sum of benefits

We can accept a pluralist view of being interested in utility and equality!

Question 57

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic

when the values of quality and utility conflict

Answer 57

if we give weight equally to both equality and utility, we have no principled way to assess their relative importance.

To defend a particular decision, we can only claim that it seems right (what Rawls calls intuitionist)

Question 58

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic

the bad effects of inequality

Difference with regarding it as intrinsically bad

Answer 58

If people are unequal, for example, that can produce
conflict, or envy, or put some people in the power of others. If we value equality because we are concerned with such effects, we believe that equality has instrumental value: we think it good as a
means.

For true Egalitarians, equality has intrinsic value. As Nagel claims, it ‘is in itself good’.

• thus, it is bad even where it has no bad effects

Question 59

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic

Are Nagel’s individualistic and communitarian arguments for equality telic?

(i) individualistic

Answer 59

Nagel’s example is the claim that, when there is inequality, this weakens the self-respect of those
people who are worse off.

But what is claimed to be bad here is not inequality itself, but only one of its effects. Nor, to judge this
effect bad, need we be egalitarians. Other effects we may think bad
only because our conception of well-being is in part egalitarian.
Thus we may think it bad for people if they are servile or too
deferential, even if this does not frustrate their desires, or affect
their experienced well-being. But though such a view is, in one way, egalitarian, it too does not claim that equality has intrinsic value.
As before, it claims only that inequality has bad effects.

Question 60

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic

Are Nagel’s individualistic and communitarian arguments for equality telic?

(ii) communitarian

Answer 60

Nagel’s second type of argument is communitarian. According to this argument, he writes, ‘equality is good for society taken as a whole. It is a condition
of the right kind of relations among its members, and of the formation in them of healthy fraternal attitudes, desires, and sympathies. ‘

• this still only claims that equality is good for its effects

Question 61

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic

the Divided World

(i) a telic response

Answer 61

The two halves of the world’s population are,
we can suppose, unaware of each other’s existence. Perhaps the

Atlantic has not yet been crossed. Consider next two possible states
of affairs:

(1) Half at 100 Half at 200
(2) Everyone at 145

Of these two states, (1) is in one way better than (2)) since people
are on average better off. But we may believe that, all things considered, (1) is worse than (2). How could we explain this view?

If we are Telic Egalitarians, our explanation would be this. While it is good that, in (I), people are on average better off, it is bad
that some people are worse off than others. The badness of this inequality morally outweighs the extra benefits.

In making such a claim, we could not appeal to inequality’s effects. Since the two halves of the world’s population are quite
unconnected, the inequality in (1) has no bad effects on the worse off group. Nor does the equality in (2) produce desirable fraternal
relations between the two groups. If we are to claim that (1) is worse because of its inequality, we must claim that this inequality
is in itself bad.

Question 62

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Telic

the Divided World

what if we said world (1) is not worse off… does this mean equality is not inherently bad?

Answer 62

We may believe that, if two groups of people are quite unrelated, it is in no way bad if they not equally
well off. This might be why, in my example, we deny that (1) is worse than (2).

If that is our reaction, might we still believe that, when it holds between related groups, inequality is in itself bad? This seems unlikely. Why is it only in these cases that we object to inequality?
Why would it make a difference if these groups were not aware of
each other’s existence? The obvious answer is that, in such cases, inequality cannot have its usual bad effects. It would be coherent
to claim that inequality is in itself bad, but only when it holds between related groups. But, though coherent, this view does not
seem plausible, since it would involve a strange coincidence.

We might claim, more plausibly, that inequality is in itself bad, but only when it holds within one community. But that would suggests that our real view is that such inequality involves social injustice.

And we may then be Deontic Egalitarians.

Question 63

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Deontic

Answer 63

we should sometimes aim for equality, that is
not because we shall thereby make the outcome better, but is always for some other reason. On such a view, it is not in itself good
if people are equally well off, or bad if they are not.

Such a view typically appeals to claims about justice. More exactly, it appeals to claims about comparative justice. Whether people
are unjustly treated, in this comparative sense, depends on whether
they are treated differently from other people. Thus it may be unfair
if, in a distribution of resources, some people are denied their share.

Question 64

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

evaluation of inequality under telic and deontic view

what if nothing can be done to change the inequality?

Answer 64

On the Telic View, inequality is bad; on the Deontic View, it is unjust

When we claim
that inequality is unjust, our objection is not really to the inequality itself. What is unjust, and therefore bad, is not strictly the state
of affairs, but the way in which it was produced.

For Deontic Egalitarians, if nothing can be done, there
can be no injustice. In Rawls’s words, if some situation ‘is unalterable. . . the question of justice does not arise.’

Question 65

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

inequality in natural endowments

Answer 65

Some of us are born more talented or healthier than others, or are more fortunate in other ways. If we are Deontic Egalitarians, we shall not believe that such inequality is in itself bad. We might
agree that, if we could distribute talents, it would be unjust or unfair to distribute them unequally. But, except when there are bad effects, we shall see nothing to regret in the inequalities produced
by the random shuffling of our genes.

Many Telic Egalitarians take a different view. They believe that, even when such inequality is unavoidable, it is in itself bad.”

Question 66

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Rawls on natural inequality in inherited talents

Answer 66

‘The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust. . . These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.’

This suggests that he is deontic, but he continues:

Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because. . . the basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found
in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies.’

This use of the word resign seems to assume that natural inequality is bad. And Rawls elsewhere writes that, in a society governed by
his principles, we need no longer ‘view it as a misfortune that some
are by nature better endowed than others’. These remarks suggest that Rawls is in part a Telic Egalitarian.

Question 67

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Parfit distinguishes between 4 scenarios of inequality stemming from different sources

Answer 67

1. manna falling from the sky - windfall cases. Differences in the bounty of nature
2. we each do equal amounts of work but there is productive luck - hardly differs windfall cases
3. genetic luck - some may say infusion of work means we should not redistribute but like Rawls and Nagel might argue that we should as they are like native resources which like manna fell upon us
4. inequality differs from how hard we work - differential effort - many who appeal to the arbitrariness of the natural lottery stop here. But, we might argue that the ability to make the effort is itself a product of a natural ability

Question 68

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Parfit distinguishes between not having a moral claim to our greater resources and pursuing equality

Answer 68

The reasoning appeals to the claim that certain kinds of inequality have a morally arbitrary cause. Such a claim might show that such inequality is not justified. But it may not show that such inequality is unjustified, and ought to be redressed. These are quite
different conclusions.

If such inequality is not justified, people have no positive claim to their advantages, or to the resources which they now control. But this conclusion only clears the decks. It means that, if there is
a moral reason for redistribution, those who are better off can have
no principled objection. It would be a further claim that there is such a reason, and that the aim of such redistribution should be to
produce equality

Question 69

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Parfit on why utilitarians and egalitarians are similar

Answer 69

Both Rawls and Utilitarians would argue that we do not have a claim to greater rewards simply because we are born with greater talents

Question 70

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Why does the telic/deontic distinction matter?

telic view has wider scope

Answer 70

if we think it in itself bad if some people are worse off than others, we may think this bad whoever these people are. It may seem to make no difference where these people live: whether they are in the same or different communities.

We may also think it irrelevant what the respects are in which some people are worse off than others: whether they have less income, or worse health, or are less fortunate in other ways. Any inequality, if undeserved and unchosen, we may think bad.

Nor, third, will it seem to make a difference how such
inequality arose. That is implied by the very notion of intrinsic badness. If some state is in itself bad, it is irrelevant how it came
about.

BUT, if deontic, then can have none of these features.

Question 71

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

How many deontic versions are there?

what is the main one?

Other views?

Answer 71

here are many versions of the Deontic View, one large
group are broadly contractarian.

Such views often appeal to the ideas of reciprocity, or mutual benefit. On some views of this kind, when goods are cooperatively produced, and no one has special claims, all the contributors should get equal shares. There are here
two restrictions. First, what is shared are only the fruits of cooperation. Nothing is said about other goods, such as those that come from nature. Second, the distribution covers only those who produce
these goods. Those who cannot contribute, such as the handicapped, or children, or future generations, have no claims.

May be less restrictive i.e. cover all the members of the same community and all types of good but exclude outsiders - but this restriction is immense since biggest inequalities are on a global scale

Question 72

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

the question of causation

Answer 72

Under the telic view, we always a reason to prevent or reduce inequality

Under the deontic view, since the view is not about the goodness of outcomes, it may cover inequalities that results from acts are only those that are intentionally produced- thus one might have no issue with the natural lottery

Question 73

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Parfit’s possible response to the view that we would have no duty to redistribute natural inequality

Answer 73

If we know we should share 50%, and a gust of wind distributes unequally, is there no duty to pool the shares and redistribute?

Question 74

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Possible arguments against redistribution

1. what is natural is right
2. act/omission
   - example supporting this distinction
   - does it apply to inequality?
3. people acquire entitlements

Answer 74

we might assume that what is natural is right, or that the status quo is privileged - assumptions that are now hard to defend.

They might appeal to the difference between acts and omissions, or between negative and positive duties, or something of the kind.

• In some cases, such a view is plausible. Suppose that some natural process threatens to kill many people. We could save them if
  we intervened, and killed one person as a means to save the many. Many believe that, even though the deaths of many would be a
  worse outcome than the death of one, we ought not to intervene in such a way. We should allow this natural process to bring about
  the worse of these two outcomes.
• implausible to apply this to inequality! no killing/breach of bodily integrity in redistributing
  3. adverse possession
  4. Lochean mixing labour with item

Question 75

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

2 objections to the telic view

• what would the wides Telic view hold? (plucking eyes out)
• how might we avoid this?

Answer 75

any inequality is bad. It is
bad, for example, that some people are sighted and others are blind. We would therefore have a reason, if we could, to take single eyes from some of the sighted and give them to the blind. That may seem a horrific conclusion.

Limiting it to inequality of resources, but the distinction is arbitrary.

Question 76

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

2 objections to the telic view

What does Parfit think re redistributing eyes of newborns?

• does this annihilate the telic view?

Answer 76

‘Suppose that, after
some genetic change, people are henceforth born as twins, one of whom is always blind. And suppose that, as a universal policy, operations are performed after every birth, in which one eye from the sighted twin is transplanted into its blind sibling. That would be a
forcible redistribution, since new-born babies cannot give consent. But I am inclined to believe that such a policy would be justified.’

Not necessarily, pluralists might hold that it is counterbalanced by some other principle of greater weight - if we all had one eye it would ‘in one way’ be better.

Question 77

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

2 objections to the telic view

The levelling down objection

Answer 77

‘more serious’ objection

If inequality is bad, its disappearance must be in one way a change for the better, however this change occurs. Suppose that those who are better off suffer some
misfortune, so that they become as badly off as everyone else. Since
these events would remove the inequality, they must be in one way welcome, on the Telic View, even though they would be worse for some people, and better for no one. This implication seems to
many to be quite absurd

even in its pluralist form, it seems absurd to say it’s better if everyone lost their eyesight or we all lost our resources so we were on an equal footing

Question 78

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Is the deontic view susceptible to the levelling down objection?

Answer 78

No

we do not believe that
inequality is bad, so we are not forced to admit that, on our view, it would be in one way better if inequality were removed by levelling down.

We can believe that we have a reason to remove inequality only when, and only because, our way of doing so benefits
the people who are worse off. Or we might believe that, when some people are worse off than others, through no fault or choice of theirs, they have a special claim to be raised up to the level of the
others, but they have no claim that others be brought down to their level.

Question 79

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

How does Parfit use the levelling down objection in his divided world scenario?

Answer 79

In outcome (1) there is inequality. But, since the two groups are unaware of each other’s existence, this inequality was not deliberately
produced, or maintained. Since this inequality does not involve wrong-doing, there is no injustice. On the Deontic View, there is nothing more to say. On this view, we cannot claim that (1) is worse than (2). If we believe that (1) is worse, and because of the inequality, we must accept the Telic form of the Egalitarian View.
We must claim that the inequality in (1) is in itself bad.
We might, however, give a different explanation. Rather than believing in equality, we might be especially concerned about those people who are worse off. That could be our reason for preferring (2).
Let us now consider this alternative.

Question 80

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

The Priority View

• how does it differ from utilitarians?

Answer 80

Benefiting people matters more the worse off
these people are.

For Utilitarians, the moral importance of each benefit depends only on how great this benefit would be. For Prioritarians, it also depends on how well off the person is to whom this benefit comes.
We should not give equal weight to equal benefits, whoever receives them. Benefits to the worse off should be given more weight.

Question 81

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

The Priority View

• limitation of this view?

Answer 81

Like the Egalitarian Pluralist View, this view is, in Rawls’s sense, intuitionist. It does not tell us how much priority we should give to those who are worse off. On this view, benefits to the worse off could
be morally outweighed by sufficient benefits to the better off. To decide what would be sufficient, we must simply use our judgement.

Question 82

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

The Priority View

• to whom should we give priority?
• What is Nagel’s view?

Answer 82

Here are three answers:

(1) those who are worse off in their lives as a whole,
(2) those who are worse off at the time,
(3) those who have needs that are morally more urgent.

Nagel writes ‘Priority is given to individuals who, taking their lives as a whole, have more urgent needs’

The more urgent needs of someone who, on the whole, is better off, take priority over the less urgent needs of someone who
is worse off.

Question 83

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

The Priority View

• how does it relate to equality?

Answer 83

On the Priority View, it is morally more important to benefit the people who are worse off.

But this claim, by itself, does not define a different view, since it would be made by all Egalitarians. If we believe that we should aim for equality, we shall think it more important to benefit those who are worse off. Such benefits reduce
inequality. If that is why we give such benefits priority, we do not hold the Priority View.

On this view, as I define it here, we do not believe in equality. We give priority to the worse off, not because
this will reduce inequality, but for other reasons. That is what makes this a distinctive view.

Question 84

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

The Priority View

• can we hold a mixed view?

Answer 84

Yes

We may give priority to
the worse off, partly because this will reduce inequality, and partly for other reasons. But such a view does not need a separate discussion. It is enough to consider the pure version of the Priority View.

Question 85

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

The Priority View

• what is the chief difference between egalitarian and prioritarian view?

Answer 85

the Priority View, we do not believe in equality. We do not
think it in itself bad, or unjust, that some people are worse off
than others. This claim can be misunderstood. We do of course think it bad that some people are worse off. But what is bad is not
that these people are worse off than others. It is rather that they are worse off than they might have been.

The chief difference is, then, this. Egalitarians are concerned with relativities: with how each person’s level compares with the level of
other people. On the Priority View, we are concerned only with people’s absolute levels.

• gives the altitude example to

People at higher altitudes find it harder to breathe. Is this because they are higher up than other people? In one sense, yes. But they would find it just as hard to breathe even if there were no other people who were lower down.
In the same way, on the Priority View, benefits to the worse off
matter more, but that is only because these people are at a lower absolute level. It is irrelevant that these people are worse off than
others. Benefits to them would matter just as much even if there were no others who were better off.

Question 86

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Utilitarians often aim for equality because it has bad effects but not always -

Answer 86

i.e. by virtue of diminishing returns, often makes sense to distribute to those who have less, but not always, since there may be a case where giving more to someone with more might be justified, thus increasing inequality + the correlation is merely a coincidence

Under the prioritarian view, there is no coincidence! But, not doing so because of inequality per se. This view is however structurally bias towards equality so could be called egalitarian in the looser sense (possibly ‘non-relational egalitarians’)

Question 87

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

How does Parfit suggest Nagel is really a prioritarian?

Answer 87

even if the handicapped child had no siblings, and thus there was no inequality, there is the same need to address their handicap!

Question 88

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

is Cohen an egalitarian or prioritarian?

Answer 88

Egalitarian

He suggests that ‘the right reading of egalitarianism’ is that ‘its purpose is to eliminate involuntary disadvantage’.

This is comparative/relational in nature

Question 89

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Rephrasing the levelling down objection

Answer 89

He invite us to ask whether is it is bad for us if, unknown to us, there is someone who is better off than us

• Parfit says no - the mere fact of inequality is not in itself bad for those who are worse off.

They might be naturally unfair, but it would not be better for them if the others were worse off.

Question 90

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Another objection to Telic egalitarianism is that they claim inequality is bad even when it is not bad for people

Answer 90

If everyone’s position improves, but there is now greater inequality, Telic Egalitarians would still sat that in one sense, the latter situation is worse

Strong egalitarians would say the latter outcome is WORSE

MODERATES, as pluralists, balance this inequality with the increase in aggregate welfare, but this must be qualified:

where one party loses another and the other gains, even if the gain is enormous creating inequality, that is justified.

But, where one party loses slightly for the massive gain of another, MODERATES might argue this is worse

(1) all at 100
(2) half at 100 half at 200
(3) half at 70 half at 200

Question 91

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

How might egalitarians respond to argument that a situation can’t be worse off if the people aren’t worse off?

Answer 91

(1) Defending a meta-ethical view or (2) that it conflicts with other views

Temkins gives (2) as an argument, and says the person-affecting claim (if an outcome is worse for no one it cannot be in any way worse) is incompatible with many of out views i.e. ‘proportional justice’

i.e. if hitler could be punished, would it be better if he were? If we accept the retributive view, we must reject the person affecting claim- we believe that if people are not punished as they deserve this would be bad, even if it is not bad for anyone

Parfit himself rejects retributivist view, but nonetheless acknowledges that some might support it, and so the person-affecting claim is less strong than the levelling down objective

Question 92

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

Does Parfit think that the levelling down objection is fatal?

Answer 92

He says that it has great force but is not decisive.

Question 93

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

what alternatives do we have if we reject telic egalitarianism?

Answer 93

either become deontic or prioritarian

the prioritarian view might view everyone at 145 better than 50 at 100 and 50 at 200 (even if the other doesn’t know) because that 45 is worth more to those with less- benefits to the worse off do more to make the outcome better! This is why it often coincides with equality

Question 94

Parfit ‘Equality or Priority?’

How to distinguish it from Rawl’s view?

Answer 94

Rawl’s difference theory is an extreme version of the priority view: one which gives absolute priority to those who are worse off.

there are 3 qualification however:

1. only apply the difference principle to the basic structure of society,
2. only in conjunction with Rawl’s other principles, which require equal liberty and equality of opportunity and
3. do not apply this principle to individuals but only representative member of the worst off group

Question 95

Egalitarianism and the Levelling Down Objection
ANDREW MASON

Summary of telic and deontic egalitarians

Answer 95

Telic Egalitarians accept what Parfit calls the Principle of Equality, namely,
that it is in itself bad if some people are worse off than others. Deontic
Egalitarians, in contrast, do not endorse this Principle. When they object
to inequality, they do so on the grounds that it is unjust or involves wrong-
doing, not because it is intrinsically bad (Parfit 1995: 4

Question 96

Egalitarianism and the Levelling Down Objection
ANDREW MASON

Summary of why Parfit thinks the distinction is important

Answer 96

mainly because Telic Egalitarian-ism is vulnerable to what he calls the Levelling Down Objection while
Deontic Egalitarianism can avoid it altogether (Parfit 1995: 16-18).

The Levelling Down Objection starts from the observation that in principle
equality could be brought about by reducing the better off to the condition
of the worst off, thereby making some worse off and none better off. For
example, equality of vision between the blind and the sighted could be
created by destroying the eyes of the sighted. The Levelling Down Objec-
tion maintains that, other things being equal, this would not in any respect
constitute an improvement. Deontic egalitarians, unlike Telic, can escape
this objection because they can maintain that ‘we have a reason to remove
inequality only when, and only because, our way of doing so benefits the
people who are worse off’ (Parfit 1995: 18)

Question 97

Egalitarianism and the Levelling Down Objection
ANDREW MASON

If the deontic egalitarian view can evade the levelling down objection, is it home free according to Parfit?

Answer 97

Parfit argues that, although Deontic Egalitarianism can evade the Levelling Down Objection, it may lack the resources to object to kinds of
inequality which many egalitarians have found troubling, for example,
inequalities that are not humanly produced, or inequalities that obtain
between members of different communities which are not the product of
wrongdoing of any kind (Parfit 1995: 18-19). Some egalitarians have especially disturbed by the vast inequalities that obtain across the globe, yet Deontic Egalitarians are hard pressed to explain what is objectionable about them

This is because the contractarian version of deontic egalitarianism maintains that when goods are cooperatively produced, the contributors should
receive equal shares unless any of them have special claims. Thus, it has no basis for objecting to inequalities unless a case can be made that the people to whom they are obtain are engaged in some appropriate cooperative venture.

Question 98

Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection*

Temkin

Answer 98

I claim that at the heart of the Levelling Down Objection is a
person-affecting view I call the Slogan. The Slogan has enormous appeal, but I argue that there is reason to doubt the Slogan and the arguments invoking it. Thus, both the Slogan and the Levelling Down Objection can be resisted. If I am right, the Levelling Down Objection is not the devastating objection many have thought it to be. Correspondingly, one need not reject or seriously revise egalitarianism because of the Levelling Down Objection.