Equality, Value Pluralism and Relevance: Is Luck Egalitarianism in One Way Good, But Not All Things Considered?
(2019) Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy — Vol. 22, n° 3, p. 318-334 (2019)
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- Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters – luck equality – it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe however that normative political philosophy must have the ambition, in one way or another, to guide political action. Hence, in this paper we make a negative and a positive point. Negatively, we argue that the inability to offer recommendations on what to strive for potentially weakens Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen's account of luck egalitarianism. In order not to be irrelevant for political practice, a more serviceable version of luck egalitarianism that would allow for all-things-considered judgments is needed. Positively, we examine two possible routes towards such a view. One would be to stick to pluralism, but to discuss possible clashes and find a rule of regulation in each case. Another would consist in giving up value pluralism by identifying an over-arching value or principle that would arbitrate between different values in cases where there are clashes. We suggest that Lippert-Rasmussen’s foundation of equality carries the potential for such an overarching principle.
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Meijers, T., & Vandamme, P.-E. (2019). Equality, Value Pluralism and Relevance: Is Luck Egalitarianism in One Way Good, But Not All Things Considered? Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 22(3), 318-334. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2018.1438804 (Original work published 2019)