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Egalitarianism with a Human Face

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Egalitarianism with a Human Face EGALITARIANISM WITH A HUMAN FACE SUBMITTED BY GABRIEL WOLLNER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON FOR THE PH.D. IN PHILOSOPHY Abstract My thesis vindicates the ideal of egalitarianism with a human face by answering the threefold challenge that contemporary egalitarians fail to capture what really matters when it comes to distributions of burdens and benefits among human beings, that egalitarian concerns apply only within specific institutional contexts, and that there is no account of human nature that would furnish a commitment to distributive equality with a coherent foundation. The ideal of egalitarianism with a human face marks a turn against both non-egalitarian variants of humanism and non-humanist variants of egalitarianism. My thesis is divided into three parts. The first set of arguments offers a powerful line of reasoning in support of the claim that our concern for the well- being of other people is egalitarian. I argue that the principle of equality is in two important respects superior to both the priority view and a contractualist commitment to strict priority. The second set of arguments maintains that whether or not our concern for other people is egalitarian does not depend on wether individuals share a common institution. I argue against the recently prominent idea that whether some are worse off than others matters only among individuals who stand in a particular relation to each other. The final set of arguments advocates a common humanity account of basic equality. I argue that the idea of common humanity offers a promising approach to many of the problems associated with the question of basic equality and may be invoked in support of the claim that nobody should be better or worse off than anybody else through no choice or fault of his or her own. 2 Signed Declaration I, Gabriel Wollner, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Gabriel Wollner London, August 2010 3 Acknowledgements Almost five years ago, when I was a first year graduate student at Oxford, Jerry Cohen got me set on the topic of this thesis. I have learned a great deal from Jerry and I am grateful for having been a student while he was still there. When I told Jerry that, having spent my entire student life in Oxford, it was time for a change, he suggested that I apply to University College London for "its philosophy department is a wonderful place and Michael Otsuka a fantastic supervisor." Of course, Jerry was right in both respects. I am grateful to Michael Otsuka for more than thirty supervision sessions and an only slightly lesser number of visits to the Russell Hotel Bar. I would like to thank Mike for brilliant comments, devastating counterexamples, kindness and generosity. Many other people have helped me while I have been working on this thesis, and I am grateful to them all. Unfortunately, there is only enough room to thank very few of them here. Ian Carter, Jerry Cohen, David Holly, Robert Jubb, Hugh Lazenby, Moises Vaca Paniagua and Lukas Stanczyk have provided very helpful comments. Alan Ryan generously discussed earlier ideas, some of which still figure in the first chapter of this thesis. I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent teaching with Peter Niesen. His Kantian scepticism improved my arguments. Jeremy Farris has, more than once, served as an important source of wisdom and encouragement. And finally, there is nobody else that I have spent as much time with discussing philosophy (and drinking beer) as Juri Viehoff. Without my parents, I could not and would not have done philosophy in the first place. Without my girlfriend Lea, I could not and would not have finished this thesis. I would like to thank the AHRC for generous financial support. 4 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Egalitarianism with a human face 1. Preliminary remarks 9 2. The first set of arguments (chapters 1 to 3) 11 3. The second set of arguments (chapters 4 and 5) 14 4. The third set of arguments (chapter 6) 15 CHAPTER 1 Equality, levelling down and person-affectingness 1. Preliminary remarks 17 2. The levelling down objection properly understood 19 3. Does equality give us a reason to level down? 22 3.1 Three arguments for a common good conception of equality 23 3.2 How the common good conception defeats levelling down 26 3.3 Three arguments against Christiano 30 4. Is inequality bad for individuals? 37 4.1 John Broome and the badness of inequality 38 4.2 The badness of inequality and levelling down 41 4.3 Two arguments against Broome 43 4.3.1 The first argument: What is the harm of inequality? 43 4.3.2 The second argument: The remaining badness of inequality 49 5. Conclusion 52 CHAPTER 2 Priority, numbers and the separateness of persons 1. Preliminary remarks 53 5 2. The priority view and the separateness of persons requirement 54 2.1 On why it may not matter whether some are worse off than others 58 2.2 Defending the separateness of persons objection against two critics 61 2.2.1 The "dogma of deontology" objection 61 2.2.2 Deny the shift? 67 3. Nagel's contractualism and the numbers objection 71 3.1 Three instances of the numbers objection 74 3.2 An objection to the "many weaker claims" objection rejected 77 3.3 A response to the intransitivity challenge rebutted 80 3.4 Why pluralism is the only way of responding to the numbers objection 84 4. Conclusion 87 CHAPTER 3 Two arguments for the principle of equality 1. Preliminary remarks 88 2. A first argument for the principle of equality 89 2.1 The trilemma 89 2.2 How to interpret the "slogan"? 93 2.2.1 The "no coherent interpretation" objection to the "slogan" 94 2.2.2 The necessary condition response 96 2.2.3 Why a necessary condition is not good enough 98 2.3 The "slogan" and non-identity 103 2.3.1 The non-identity argument against the "slogan" 103 2.3.2 The benefit of existence and a revised version of the "slogan" 105 2.3.3 The repugnant conclusion rides again 106 2.4 To solve the trilemma is to vindicate the principle of equality 110 3. A second argument for the principle of equality 111 3.1 Pluralist responses 111 6 3.2 Nagel's contractualist pluralism 112 3.3. Two arguments against contractualist pluralism 114 3.3.1 The coherency objection 114 3.3.2 The problematic cases objection 118 3.4 Why the principle of equality is part of the truth 128 4. Conclusion 129 CHAPTER 4 Framing, reciprocity and the grounds of egalitarian justice This chapter has been published in Res Publica: A Journal of Moral, Legal and Social Philosophy, 2010, Vol.16 (4), 281-98 and is here excluded for copyright reasons. 130 CHAPTER 5 Equality and the significance of coercion 1. Preliminary remarks 131 2. The idea of coercion as a trigger of equality 132 3. What is coercion? And what is wrong with it? 135 4. The victim's options account of coercion 142 4.1 The options account and the dilemma of baselines 142 4.2 The natural baseline account and state coercion 146 4.3 Does equality matter for the baseline? A dilemma for the moral account 151 5. The coercer's intention account 155 5.1. How the intention account overproduces judgements of wrongness 157 5.2 How the intention account underproduces judgements of wrongness 160 5.3 The intention account's failure as a trigger of equality 161 6. Conclusion 163 CHAPTER 6 Basic equality, range properties and common humanity 1. Preliminary remarks 165 7 2. The structure of egalitarian argument 166 3. Variation, scope and significance: Three questions for basic equality 171 4. Locke, Rawls and the idea of a range property 176 5. The idea of a range property: Five questions and three problems 179 6. Respect and the basis of equality: Carter's challenging proposal 182 7. A luck egalitarian response to Carter 187 7.1 Against (P2): The failure of opacity respect 188 7.2 Against (P3): The distinction between justification and application 192 7.3 Against (P4): Exploring neglected alternatives 194 8. The common humanity account of basic equality 199 9. Conclusion 214 Bibliography 215 8 INTRODUCTION Egalitarianism with a human face 1. Preliminary remarks Alexander Dubcek believed in socialism as a way of realizing important human values. At the same time he observed that by 1968 socialism in his country had actually become an enemy of these values. His famous advocacy of socialism with a human face captured this dual conviction.1 Dubcek and other reformers in socialist Czechoslovakia set out to revive the humanist sources of socialism and restore the human face that socialism had lost. On the one hand, they had to overcome a deranged socialist status quo and insist that the rule of unaccountable party elites, complete bureaucratic control, inefficient central planning and pervasive censorship did not comply with the "categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being" (Marx 1977, p.68). On the other hand, they had to deflect the specters of a non-socialist alternative and insist that socialism had a unique claim to taking seriously the humanist "teaching that man is the highest being for man" (Marx 1977, p.68). Socialism with a human face marked a turn against both non-human variants of socialism and non-socialist variants of humanism.
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