scholarly journals The Luck Egalitarianism of G.A. Cohen - A Reply to David Miller

SATS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Albertsen
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

AbstractThe late G.A. Cohen is routinely considered a founding father of luck egalitarianism, a prominent responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. David Miller argues that Cohen’s considered beliefs on distributive justice are not best understood as luck egalitarian. While the relationship between distributive justice and personal responsibility plays an important part in Cohen’s work, Miller maintains that it should be considered an isolated theme confined to Cohen’s exchange with Dworkin. We should not understand the view Cohen defends in this exchange as Cohen’s considered view. Accepting this thesis would change both our understanding of Cohen’s political philosophy and many recent luck egalitarian contributions. Miller’s argument offers an opportunity to reassess Cohen’s writings as a whole. Ultimately, however, the textual evidence against Miller’s argument is overwhelming. Cohen clearly considers the exchange with Dworkin to be about egalitarianism as such rather than about the best responsibility-sensitive version of egalitarianism. Furthermore, Cohen often offers luck egalitarian formulations of his own view outside of the exchange with Dworkin and uses luck egalitarianism as an independent yardstick for evaluating principles and distributions.

Personal Responsibility in Health and Health Care: Luck Egalitarianism as a Plausible and Flexible Approach to Health

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Albertsen
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Oral Health ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Transplant Recipients ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Lower Priority ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

Allocating health care resources based on personal responsibility is a prominent and controversial idea. This article assesses the plausibility of such measures through the lens of luck egalitarianism, a prominent responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. This article presents a framework of luck egalitarianism in health, which integrates other concerns of justice than health, is pluralist, and is compatible with a wide range of measures for giving lower priority to those deemed responsible. Applying this framework to oral health, the allocation of livers among potential transplant recipients and travel insurance demonstrates that this version of luck egalitarianism is a much more attractive and flexible theory than much of the contemporary discussion allows. This also pertains to its ability to provide plausible answers to two prominent critiques of harshness and intrusiveness. The discussion also shows that the luck egalitarian commitment to eliminating the influence of luck on people’s lives is likely to require substantial redistribution.

LUCK-EGALITARIANISM: FAULTS AND COLLECTIVE CHOICE

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Collective Choice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Standard Formulation ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

A standard formulation of luck-egalitarianism says that ‘it is [in itself] bad – unjust and unfair – for some to be worse off than others [through no fault or choice of their own]’, where ‘fault or choice’ means substantive responsibility-generating fault or choice. This formulation is ambiguous: one ambiguity concerns the possible existence of a gap between what is true of each worse-off individual and what is true of the group of worse-off individuals, fault or choice-wise, the other concerns the notion of fault. I show that certain ways of resolving these ambiguities lead to counterintuitive results; and that the most plausible way of resolving them leads to a theory of distributive justice in which responsibility plays a role significantly different from that in standard luck-egalitarian thinking. My main conclusion here is that luck-egalitarianism is best formulated as the view that it is [in itself] bad – unjust and unfair – for an individual to be worse off than others if, and only if, her being worse off does not fit the degree to which she is at fault in a not purely prudential sense.

Justice, Luck, and Pairwise Comparisons

2021 ◽  
pp. 163-201
Author(s):  
Gerald Lang
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social System ◽  
Pairwise Comparison ◽  
Pairwise Comparisons ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Complex Theory ◽  
Income Gap ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Structural Aspects ◽  
Option Luck

This chapter extends the anti-anti-luckist programme to political philosophy, and to the doctrine of luck egalitarianism in particular. Luck egalitarianism affirms that unchosen relative inequalities between agents are unjust. It condemns inequalities that are due to ‘brute luck’, and upholds inequalities that are due to ‘option luck’. Though it can be easily enough stated, luck egalitarianism is actually a complex theory with two separate components: egalitarianism and anti-luckism. Standard luck egalitarianism’s commitment to pairwise comparisons makes it vulnerable to what Susan Hurley calls the ‘Boring Problem’. The Boring Problem points out that any two agents in a pairwise comparison are bound to lack control over the relevant income gap between them, because each of them controls, at best, only one side of that comparison. Though Hurley herself is relatively dismissive of the Boring Problem, it is contended here that, when it is properly appreciated, it inflicts huge damage on luck egalitarianism, which needs in turn to be re-organized as a ‘baseline-sensitive’ theory that dispenses with pairwise comparisons. Baseline-sensitive luck egalitarianism makes decent progress on a number of critical fronts, particularly Saul Smilansky’s ‘Paradox of the Baseline’. But even this form of luck egalitarianism is still open to a worry about how it understands the relationship between its egalitarian default and its case for permissible inequalities, and it has less to say than it should about the structural aspects of a social system that generate inequalities.

Strokes of Luck

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Lang
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Moral Point ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

Strokes of Luck offers a large-scale treatment of the role of luck in our judgements about blameworthiness and responsibility, in moral philosophy, and in principles of distributive justice, in political philosophy. It takes an ‘anti-anti-luckist’ stance on these matters, and is opposed to the influential ‘anti-luckist’ views which hold that judgements of blameworthiness, or distributive relations, should be adjusted to annul or neutralize differential luck. It provides a new reading of Bernard Williams’s famous essay ‘Moral Luck’ which emphasizes the dissimilarity of Williams’s aims from the aims of Thomas Nagel and his intellectual descendants. It contends that luck egalitarianism is a structurally flawed programme, and it argues for a revised understanding of John Rawls’s justice as fairness that interprets Rawls’s hostility to factors that are ‘arbitrary from a moral point of view’ in a novel way stationed more closely to his contractarian apparatus, and less closely to luck egalitarian concerns.

scholarly journals Luck Egalitarianism: Two Lines of Critique

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Dmitry Sereda
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Her Family ◽  
The Status ◽  
Luck Egalitarians ◽  
Option Luck

This article is devoted to the stream in political philosophy which came to be known as “luck egalitarianism”. Luck egalitarians are concerned with the questions of distributive justice; their main idea is that no person should be worse-off due to factors which they are unable to influence. Luck egalitarians express this idea via the dichotomy of brute and option luck. The goal of the article is to describe two main lines of critique which luck egalitarianism encounters, and to assess which one is the most dangerous for this movement. Some authors criticize luck egalitarianism from a moral standpoint. They believe that it is overly cruel towards those who suffer due to unfortunate but free choices, humiliating towards those whom it deems to be worthy of help, and that it contradicts our moral intuitions concerning the question of what do people who engage in socially necessary, yet risky professions, deserve. Another important problem for this trend of political thought has to do with metaphysical criticism. Luck egalitarians claim that a person is not responsible not only for the status of her family, her gender, ethnicity, etc., but also for her talents and abilities. The question arises; is there anything for what a person can be genuinely responsible for? Thus, luck egalitarianism encounters the problem of determinism and free will. This problem threatens the identity of luck egalitarianism: if free will does not exist or if it cannot be identified, then the key dichotomy of brute and option luck is meaningless. The article demonstrates that it is the criticism of the second kind which currently poses the greatest problem for luck egalitarianism.

scholarly journals Harsh and Disrespectful

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-679
Author(s):  
David V. Axelsen ◽  
Lasse Nielsen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

Many policies hinge on determining whether someone’s situation is due to luck or choice. In political philosophy, this prevalence is mirrored by luck egalitarian theories. But overemphasizing the distinction between luck and choice will lead to tensions with the value of moral agency, on which the distinction is grounded. Here, we argue that the two most common contemporary critiques of luck egalitarianism, holding it to be harsh and disrespectful are best understood as illustrating exactly this tension. Elaborating on this conflict, we argue that it should lead us to modify how luck and choice are used in theories of justice.

scholarly journals On the Usefulness of Luck Egalitarian Arguments for Global Justice

1970 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Schemmel
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Egalitarian Principle ◽  
Luck Egalitarians ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

Much of the recent philosophical literature about distributive justice and equality in the domestic context has been dominated by a family of theories now often called ‘luck egalitarianism’, according to which it is unfair if some people are worse off than others through no choice or fault of their own. This principle has also found its way into the literature about global justice. This paper explores some difficulties that this principle faces: it is largely insensitive to the causes of global inequality, and it is so demanding that it can only give rise to weak moral claims. I go on to argue that a) understanding justice claims as merely weak claims rests on an implausible and impractical concept of justice, and b) using the global luck egalitarian argument in practical discourse is likely to lead to misunderstanding, and to be counterproductive if the aim is to tackle global inequality. While these considerations do not suffice to make a conclusive case against the luck egalitarian principle, they should be acknowledged by global luck egalitarians – as some similar problems have indeed been by domestic luck egalitarians – and need to be addressed.

scholarly journals Against Institutional Luck Egalitarianism

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Rekha Nath
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Intuitive Appeal ◽  
Institutional Influence ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

Kok-Chor Tan has recently defended a novel theory of egalitarian distributive justice, institutional luck egalitarianism (ILE). On this theory, it is unjust for institutions to favor some individuals over others based on matters of luck. Tan takes his theory to preserve the intuitive appeal of luck egalitarianism while avoiding what he regards as absurd implications that face other versions of luck egalitarianism. Despite the centrality of the concept of institutional influence to his theory, Tan never spells out precisely what it means for an inequality to be produced by an institution. In this paper, I consider different conceptions of institutional influence that ILE might employ. It appears that however this concept is construed, ILE has serious problems. On some conceptions, the luck egalitarian character of the theory is undermined. On others, the theory gives rise to precisely the sorts of absurd implications facing other versions of luck egalitarianism that Tan takes his theory to avoid.

Dworkin and Luck Egalitarianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Arneson
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Brute Luck

Ronald Dworkin is a founding father of what has come to be called “luck egalitarianism,” a family of distributive justice doctrines that hold that the inequalities in people’s condition that are brought about by sheer brute luck falling on them in ways that are beyond their power to control should be reduced or eliminated, but that inequalities that arise through people’s own fault or choice, such that they can reasonably be deemed responsible for their condition, need not be reduced or eliminated. Dworkin himself has come to embrace an alternative view, “justice as fair insurance.” This chapter characterizes Dworkin’s view, compares it to luck egalitarianism, and criticizes both doctrines.

Luck, Nature and Institutions

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia A. Stark
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Luck Egalitarianism ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

AbstractIn addition to having an institutional site or scope, a theory of distributive justice might also have an institutional ‘reach’ or currency. It has the first when it applies to only social (and not natural) phenomena. It has the second when it distributes only socially produced (and not naturally occurring) goods. One objection to luck egalitarianism is that it has absurd implications. In response, Tan has defended a luck egalitarian account that has a strictly institutional reach. I argue, first, that Tan’s view contains two fatal ambiguities and, second, that, to be sound, it requires an institutional currency. This second argument implies that virtually all extant luck egalitarian currencies are incompatible with his approach. I argue, third, that the alleged absurd implications often have little to do with the extent of luck egalitarianism’s reach.

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