Political Philosophy
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The practical upshot of Dworkin’s luck egalitarian theory, then, is that we should distribute taxes and benefits in ways which are endowment-insensitive – i.e. which do not rely on people’s natural endowments – and ambition-sensitive – i.e. that people receive an amount proportionate to the choices they have made about how to live their lives.
What is the point of equality?
In 1999 Elizabeth Anderson published an important critique of luck egalitarianism (Anderson 1999). She argues that luck egalitarianism suffers from three main flaws:
1 It fails to treat people with equal concern and respect. In particular, luck egalitarians must by definition refuse to help certain needy people, namely those needy people who are needy as a result of the choices that they made.
People who need medical help because they chose to smoke and eat unhealthily all their lives are not entitled to help, for example, because it is their own fault that they are ill. Luck egalitarians therefore allow disadvantage and suffering and, hence, fail to show equal respect for those who are the victims of their own choices.
2 The reasons it gives for helping the victims of bad brute luck are disrespectful. Although those people who suffered from inferior natural endowments would be given help by a luck egalitarian state, they would be given help precisely because the state, and society in general, labels them as inferior. In other words, Anderson argues, the luck-egalitarian state expresses condescending and offensive pity toward those who have suffered from bad luck, because it has to identify and single them out as specially entitled to aid.
3 It requires the state to make intrusive and demeaning investigations into, and judgements about, people’s lives. A luck-egalitarian state will have to collect information about people’s choices and motivations, and will have to use that information to assess whether the person concerned made a reasonable or unreasonable decision. In refusing to assist people who are in need as a result of their own choices, the state effectively judges that such people made the wrong choices, that they used their freedom inappropriately. Although luck egalitarians attempt to ensure that people take responsibility for their actions, in effect they do so in a patronizing fashion, helping only those who choose wisely and smugly saying ‘I told you so’ to those who choose poorly.
‘Recent egalitarian writing has come to be dominated by the view that the fundamental aim of equality is to compensate people for undeserved bad luck – being born with poor native endowments, bad parents, and disagreeable personalities, suffering from accidents and illness, and so forth… [I]n focusing on correcting a supposed cosmic injustice, recent egalitarian writing has lost sight of the distinctively political aims of egalitarianism. The proper negative aim of egalitarian justice is not to eliminate the impact of brute luck from human affairs, but to end oppression, which by definition is socially imposed. Its proper positive aim is not to ensure that everyone gets what they morally deserve, but to create a community in which people stand in relations of equality to others.’
Elizabeth Anderson, ‘What is the Point of Equality?’, Ethics 109/2 (1999), pp. 287–337, at pp. 288–9.
Conclusion
Luck egalitarianism is a further refinement of the kind of liberal egalitarianism advocated by Rawls by political philosophers who share Rawls’s general intuition about the importance of luck and choice, but who think that Rawls’s own theory is incapable of dealing with this issue. Their contribution is to emphasize more strongly than Rawls the importance of individual responsibility when determining the distribution of benefits and burdens in a liberal society, and to further clarify what kinds of bad luck are worthy of compensation. In doing so, luck egalitarians believe that they improve upon Rawls’s egalitarian theory of justice by providing a better solution to the question of how resources should be distributed among the worst-off, by clarifying who the ‘worst-off’ actually are, and who they are not.
Key ideas
Primary goods: Those things which, according to Rawls, all people will need in order to pursue their particular conception of the good regardless of what that conception of the good is. Social primary goods include rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, income and wealth, and a sense of self-worth. Natural primary goods include health and vigour, intelligence, imagination, ambition, appearance and other non-social factors.
Equality of welfare: The idea that the purpose of egalitarian justice is to ensure that all individuals experience the same level of welfare.
Expensive tastes: The problem, first outlined by Ronald Dworkin, that a theory of equality of welfare would require the state to subsidize the expensive lifestyle choices of some people in order to ensure that they experience the same level of welfare as others with cheaper tastes.
Equality of resources: Defended in different forms by John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, among others, the idea that egalitarian justice should be concerned with ensuring that all people have access to those resources that they need in order to live a life that they believe to be worthwhile.
Brute luck and option luck: Brute luck covers those instances of good or bad luck over which the individual has no control. Option luck refers to those cases of good or bad luck which the individual has voluntarily brought upon themselves. In general, luck egalitarians believe that people should be compensated for disadvantages arising out of bad brute luck, but not bad option luck.
Dig deeper
Elizabeth Anderson, ‘What Is the Point of Equality?’ Ethics 109/2 (1999), pp. 287–337.
Richard Arneson, ‘Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare’, Philosophical Studies 56 (1989), pp. 77–93.
G.A. Cohen, On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Michael Otsuka (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
John Roemer, ‘A Pragmatic Theory for the Egalitarian Planner’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 22 (1993), pp. 146–66.
Samuel Scheffler, ‘What is Egalitarianism?’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 31 (2003), pp. 5–39.
Fact-check
1 What is the best definition of luck egalitarianism?
A The view that luck should be equalized
B The view that it is unjust to be unlucky
C The view that inequality is unjust
D The view that inequality resulting from luck is unjust
2 What is the role of luck in Rawls’s theory?
A Rawls argues that inequality resulting from luck is unjust
B Rawls argues that inequality is always morally arbitrary because it results from luck
C Rawls argues that natural endowments are always morally arbitrary because they result from luck
D Rawls argues that social endowments are always morally arbitrary because they result from luck
3 How do luck egalitarians criticize Rawls’s theory?
A For failing to take account of the disabled
B For failing to take account of those who choose not to work
C For failing to place enough weight on personal responsibility
D All of the above
4 What are expensive tastes?
A Tastes for expensive things that are not necessary
B Tastes that are expensive to satisfy
C Tastes that are expensive to satisfy but which do not bring higher levels of welfare
D Tastes that rich people have
5 What is the difference between brute luck and option luck?
A People like option luck and dislike brute luck
B Brute luck is more difficult to avoid than option luck
C Option luck gives people more options
D All of the above
6 Which of the following is an example of bad option luck?
A Being born disabled
B Losing the lottery
C Having poor parents
D All of the above
7 How d
oes Dworkin distinguish between option luck and brute luck?
A Option luck should be compensated but brute luck should not
B Brute luck should be compensated but option luck should not
C Option luck should be allowed but brute luck should not
D Brute luck should be allowed but option luck should not
8 What is the role of insurance in Dworkin’s argument?
A To transform brute luck into option luck
B To transform option luck into brute luck
C To provide a fair share of natural resources
D To eliminate all luck
9 What is wrong with luck egalitarianism, according to Anderson?
A It is disrespectful
B It is uncaring
C It fails to deal with oppression
D All of the above
10 Which of the following policies best fits with luck egalitarianism?
A Removing state-provided healthcare
B Ensuring everyone has equal wealth
C Providing universal healthcare
D Providing unequal access to state-provided healthcare
13
Communitarianism
The 1980s saw the emergence of a fundamental critique of liberal political philosophy: communitarianism. This critique concerns the individualist nature of liberalism. British and American politics in the 1980s was characterized by the rise of neoliberalism: individualism had replaced collectivism, free markets had replaced state planning, freedom had superseded equality, and the minimal state had replaced bureaucratic centralism. But many were concerned about this apparent triumph of liberalism. Traditional communities appeared to be breaking down, along with the collective bonds that held society together. In the rush to emphasize the separateness of persons, it seemed that liberals had lost sight of those common traits which united people together, and which gave a sense of identity and belonging. Communitarianism thus emerged as a critique of liberalism and libertarianism. It is the view that, by emphasizing individual freedom, liberalism and libertarianism undermine the shared sense of identity which people need in order to function as a society.
In this chapter, we discuss the communitarian critique of liberalism through the work of two thinkers.
Spotlight: The decline of community
Robert Putnam has charted the various ways in which the general decline in people’s willingness to engage in collective pursuits like bowling and other team sports has weakened democracy in America and many other countries too (Putnam 2000). Democracy requires us to think of ourselves as a part of a common society, not just as an individual, he argues. But all the traditional places in which we might cultivate this view are declining: we don’t play sports, we don’t attend professional clubs, we don’t join political parties, or go to church, and many of us do not even know the names of our next door neighbours. As a result, Putnam argues, we become preoccupied by our own individual concerns at the expense of our common ones, and we stop participating in civic or political life. Putnam believes that this explains the widespread political disengagement among citizens living in most liberal democratic states.
Michael Sandel and the unencumbered self
The first, and perhaps most influential, communitarian thinker was Michael Sandel. Sandel’s book Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982) criticized Rawls’s theory of justice for its individualist and rationalist foundations. Sandel’s critique is therefore of the metaphysical foundations of liberalism, in particular the conception of the self on which it is founded.
For Sandel, the liberal self is an ‘unencumbered self’. Liberalism is grounded, he says, in a bizarre conception of persons as radically abstract individuals, isolated from all those desires, ideals, beliefs, aims and characteristics which in fact make people who they are. The individual behind the veil of ignorance in the original position is the paradigmatic unencumbered self: unencumbered by her status, her talents and, most importantly for Sandel, her conception of the good. As she does not know what her conception of the good is, she is not bound by its demands. She does not have to consider the moral requirements of her conception of the good when deliberating about justice. She is unencumbered – free from such considerations.
As we saw in Chapter 10, the cause and effect of placing one’s conception of the good behind the veil of ignorance is to enshrine individual freedom – understood for Rawls as the freedom to choose one’s own conception of the good. For Rawls, freedom to choose one’s conception of the good is the most important principle of justice. As a result, Sandel argues, the idea of the unencumbered self assumes a moral status in Rawls’s theory. For Rawls, the freedom to choose our own ends is more important than the ends in themselves. The right is prior to the good, in that no particular conception of the good may define or take priority over the principles of justice. For Rawls, then, the self should be conceived of as a chooser of ends. The individual can stand back from her conception of the good, and exist as a moral entity regardless of that conception of the good. An individual’s identity is not defined by any particular conception of the good. It is, instead, unencumbered.
Sandel argues that the unencumbered self as it appears in Rawls is a metaphysical conception of the person. That is, Sandel reads the ‘unencumbered self’ thesis as being a thesis about the nature of personhood: the idea that people are not determined by their ends, but that they exist prior to their ends and that they choose those ends. It is this idea of the self that, Sandel argues, supposedly justifies Rawls’s prioritization of the right over the good. The right must be prior to the good because individuals, and their ability to choose, are prior to their ends.
‘The theme common to much classical liberal doctrine that emerges from the deontological account of the unity of the self is the notion of the human subject as a sovereign agent of choice, a creature whose ends are chosen rather than given, who comes by his aims and purposes by acts of will, as opposed to, say, acts of cognition… The antecedent unity of the self means that the subject, however heavily conditioned by his surroundings, is always, irreducibly, prior to his values and ends, and never fully conditioned by them.’
Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Sandel thus interprets the Rawlsian conception of the self as a metaphysical theory about the inherently autonomous nature of personhood. There are, he says, three problems with such a view:
1 It understands agency to be a voluntarist, rather than a cognitivist, process. Firstly, the idea of the unencumbered self implies that a person voluntarily chooses her ends – that it is up to her which ends she will follow and which conception of the good she will adopt. In fact, Sandel argues, people often discover their conception of the good rather than choose it. They find that they believe in certain things, and that they hold certain values. For example, people do not usually choose which religion to follow by considering a variety of alternatives. Instead, they are usually born into a particular religion, which they learn about and operate in throughout their lives. Indeed, some religions and other conceptions of the good hold precisely that they are not chosen but inherited – children are automatically members. Human agency (the process of acting in the world) is therefore not simply a process of rationally choosing one’s ends and then pursuing them, but rather one of pursuing the ends that are embodied in the various communities and groups to which we belong. The unencumbered self therefore misrepresents the relationship that people may have with their ends and, moreover, rules out certain conceptions of the good that are based not on choice but on inheritance.
2 It suggests that persons cannot be constituted by their ends. Secondly, Sandel argues that the idea of the unencumbered self means that a person must always be able to exist independently of her conception of the good. In other words, Rawls’s theory cannot allow for the possibility that a person’s identity could be constituted by her conception of the good. A particular value or end could never b
e integral to someone’s identity. Sandel argues that this is an impoverished understanding of the self. Instead, he argues, it is often the case that we conceptualise ourselves through our ends and values, and that we experience conflict between our values as a conflict in our identity. Christians, for example, are not people who happen to possess certain religious beliefs, rather, they are Christians: their beliefs (at least partly) constitute their identity. Rawls does not allow us to be constituted by our ends, and he therefore does not allow us to be constituted by ends that we have in common with others, by our membership of a community. Rather than being able to stand back from our ends, Sandel argues, we may not be able to understand ourselves without them. Moreover, many of the ends that constitute our identity will be communal.
3 It rules out certain forms of political community. Rawls envisages society as a system of co-operation for mutual advantage against a background of competing and contradictory conceptions of the good. In modelling the original position around this idea, Rawls effectively rules out the idea that a political society could be formed around a conception of the good, by people who share that conception. In other words, Rawls’s insistence that the right must be prior to the good rules out any societies which are based on a particular good and organized so as to further it. So, although Rawls allows individuals to follow a particular religion, for example, he does not allow them to form communities which enshrine this religion in their political arrangements. Sandel argues that this is a highly substantive, non-neutral restriction, and one that rules out many conceptions of the good that involve the idea of political or communal embodiment.