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Justice and Equality: Some Questions About Scope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

Larry S. Temkin
Larry S. Temkin
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Rice University
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Can a society be just if it ignores the plight of other societies? Does it matter whether those societies are contemporaries? Moral “purists” are likely to assume that the answer to these questions must be “no.” Relying on familiar claims about impartiality or universalizability, the purist is likely to assert that the dictates of justice have no bounds, that they extend with equal strength across space and time. On this view, if, for example, justice requires us to maximize the expectations of the worst-off group in our society, it also requires us to maximize the expectations of the worst-off group in any society, at any time, so far as it is in our power to do so. Is such a position plausible? Is it more plausible than alternative positions? I am unsure about the answers to these questions, but both the questions, and the answers, are important. Clearly, the nature and extent of a just society's obligations will vary markedly depending on the scope of the correct principles of justice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 72 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1995

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References

1 The view that equality is a part of justice is discussed in my book Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); see, for example, p. 13.Google Scholar I shall not directly defend the view here, since the issue is mainly terminological, and does not affect the substance of my remarks.

2 In Inequality, I discuss a number of issues that might be deemed relevant to inequality's scope. These include whether inequality is individualistic or holistic; the respects in which inequality is complex; whether inequality matters more in poor societies or rich societies; whether population size affects inequality; whether the proper units of egalitarian concern should be complete lives, corresponding segments of people's lives, or simultaneous segments of people's lives; and whether inequality is only bad when it makes someone worse off than she would otherwise be. The issues of scope discussed in this essay – whether inequality matters between people living in different societies or at different times – are largely distinct from these other issues. Correspondingly, most of the considerations presented here are different from, though compatible with, the considerations presented in Inequality.

3 Note that this view need not give any privileged position to any particular society or form of life. Ceteris paribus, the inequality between A and B would count just as much if both were Chilean as if both were American. The point is simply that the extent to which the inequality between people is bad would depend on the nature and extent of the societal relations between them.

4 An extremely interesting discussion of our attitudes and biases about time appears in Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), Part 2; see esp. ch. 8.Google Scholar

5 The quotations are from pages 12,15, and 18, respectively, of Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), emphases added.Google Scholar

6 Rawls writes: “The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts” (A Vieory of Justice, p. 102).Google Scholar

7 Strictly speaking, this is misleading. Although the theory Rawls presents in A Theory of Justice would not itself require us to aid the blind in other societies, Rawls acknowledges that his theory is not intended to capture the whole of our notion of justice. Thus, it is, I think, compatible with Rawls's position, that the full and complete theory of justice would support the sort of claim advocated by the position described in the previous paragraph. Still, for this essay's purposes the interesting point to note is how Rawls has provided a model for thinking about justice which would make a society responsible for both naturally and socially produced conditions within that society, without entailing a similar responsibility for naturally or socially produced conditions in other societies.

8 See Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar Nozick, of course, is not an egalitarian. Neither, for that matter, is Rawls, (see pp. 8, 31–33, and 245–48Google Scholar of my Inequality for reasons supporting this claim). It is still worth considering their positions, however – not merely because they have been so influential, but because one might share their views regarding natural justice and still believe equality is one ideal, among others, that should be given some weight. The point of my remarks is to illustrate how certain views regarding equality's scope may seem more or less plausible depending on one's views regarding natural justice (and vice versa).

9 It is not easy to spell out the criteria we would use to identify the misfortunes for which we are, in the relevant sense, responsible. But I take it the issue is not merely one of unavoidability or some social role in the causal nexus. That is, on the view in question, I take it there might be cases where we are not required to ameliorate the effects of some “natural” misfortune, even if that misfortune was socially preventable. For example, even if society could develop and distribute a vaccine which would prevent natural blindness, there might be no requirement regarding justice that it either do so or improve the lot of those bom blind.

10 Unfortunately, as I note in Inequality, “it is one matter to note that egalitarians have such a view, and quite another to unpack what it involves” (p. 13).Google Scholar Some of the complexities involved in the egalitarian's view were discussed in my article “Inequality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2 (Spring 1986), pp. 99–121.Google Scholar as well as in my book Inequality.

11 In my experience, there are many who are principally concerned with social, rather than natural, inequalities. For example, they will strongly object to institutions that discriminate against the handicapped, but will not feel an obligation to remedy natural handicaps. Or they will find vast inequalities between athletes and ditch diggers unjust, and strongly objectionable, in a way that they do not regard similarly large inequalities between the healthy and the congenitally ill. (Of course, some hold the reverse view, objecting to some natural inequalities, but not to so-called “market” produced inequalities, like those between athletes and ditch diggers.)

12 Some worry that NTNS egalitarianism has the counterintuitive implication that it is better not to want one's descendants to be better off than one's own generation, all other moral factors considered. But this does not follow. First, there is nothing wrong with wanting an outcome that might not be best from an impersonal perspective. For example, I might want to win the lottery, even if I knew a better outcome would result if it were won by a needy family, or a deserving charity. Second, and more importantly, as indicated above, I believe the egalitarian's core belief is that it is unfair or unjust for some to be worse off than others through no fault of their own. It is undeserved or nonvoluntary inequalities that are morally objectionable. Thus, if we want our children or descendants to fare better than us, and voluntarily take steps to bring this about, there need be no objection to the resulting inequality, even on NTNS egalitarianism. For more discussion of the “no fault” clause, see Section 1.2 of my Inequality.

13 The ones suggested above are merely illustrative. No doubt there are many ways the views presented could (or might need to) be revised or filled out, as well as other views that might be advocated.

14 Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar Note that, like Nozick and Rawls, Gauthier is not an egalitarian. Indeed, on page 270 of his book Gauthier explicitly acknowledges that “[e]quality is not a fundamental concern of our theory.” Still, Gauthier has offered an important and influential theory. Moreover, I think ne might be attracted to the sort of contractarian position Gauthier has offered, and still (want to?) be an egalitarian. Correspondingly, it is worth considering the connections, if any, between a theory like Gauthier's and inequality's scope.

15 Gauthier, , Morals by Agreement, p. 268.Google Scholar Note that, for Gauthier, morality is tied to mutuality in the sense that “moral constraints aris[e] … from what are … conditions of mutual advantage” (p. 268) among mutually unconcerned agents. Roughly, among purely self-interestcd agents, there will be certain moral constraints it will be to each of their advantages to adopt, so as to best promote their individual goals. That is, it is to their mutual advantage, as rational mutually unconcerned (self-interested) agents, to accept certain moral constraints.

16 Ibid., p, 298. Playing the devil's advocate, Gauthier adds the following:

Although an individual can do much to benefit or harm his descendants, only those whose lives overlap with his can benefit or harm him in return.… [Hence, i]n maximizing his utility without regard for future generations whose lives will not overlap with his own, he runs no risk of obtaining a sub-optimal outcome. Any constraint he might accept would result in a simple transfer of utilities from himself to future persons; it could not lead to mutual benefits.… So an individual does his descendants no injustice in not concerning himself with them. If the world is not left a fit place for their habitation, much less their well-being, this merely characterizes the circumstances in which they find themselves; their rights are not affected.

17 For a fascinating, though hardly neutral, account of the conflict regarding resource consumption between “doomsters” – like the ecologist Paul Ehrlich – and “boomsters” – like the economist Julian Simon – see Tierney, John, “Betting the Planet,” New York Times Magazine, 12 2, 1990.Google Scholar

18 Recall that Gauthier explicitly acknowledges that “each individual might be prepared to agree with his contemporaries that they should exhaust the world's resources without thought for those yet to be born” (p. 299). For Gauthier, everything is up for grabs, in the sense that it is only rational for me to constrain my behavior when it is “within the scope of expected benefit” (p. 268).Google Scholar That is, I and my contemporaries have reason to negotiate consumption of the world's resources, as long as it is in our mutual interests to do so.

19 A and B are overlapping generations if there is a time when at least some members of both A and B are alive.

20 Unfortunately, I must leave aside the many issues associated with the interesting and deep question of how best to understand the phenomenon of time's passage. Those whose Metaphysical views challenge the “standard” view about time's passage – who think, perhaps, that time's passage is an illusion – may want to revise or reject the following argument.

21 Gauthier, , Morals by Agreement, p. 268.Google Scholar Put crudely, one might say that the difference between future and past generations is like the difference between someone who will come into a great deal of money in later years, and someone who once had a lot of money but is now bankrupt and will remain so. A self-interested merchant (like the present generation?) has reason to interest the former in his wares, and to try to strike a deal with him, but not the latter.

22 I have been pointing out some of the implications of a view like Gauthier's for equality's scope. I have not been assessing the plausibility of such a view. However, let me observe the following. As noted above, Gauthier has a way of responding to the charge that on his view present generations could exhaust the world's resources without regard to future generations. But his position depends, I think, on the premise that there will be future generations whose interests need to be considered. It seems to me that on Gauthier's view present overlapping generations could agree to divide up the world's resources between, say, the next eight generations, as long as they took steps to ensure that there would not be a ninth generation. Perhaps they might be able to set some kind of ecological or genetic timebomb which would accomplish their end.

One might respond by arguing that such a move would be blocked by the interests the eighth generation would have in having a ninth generation with whom to cooperate, but I doubt such a response will work. First, it seems to me that for Gauthier members of the present overlapping generations only need to worry about the interests of the eighth generation insofar as those interests may ultimately affect the bargains available to present generations through their effect on the bargaining of intermediate generations. But as rational agents the members of each generation must play the hand they are dealt. They must bargain based on the options available to them. If having a ninth generation is not an option for the eighth generation, it is unclear that this would, or even could, have an overridingly adverse affect on the agreements available to the present overlapping generations. Second, as mutually unconcerned individuals, members of the eighth generation might actually be better off with an agreement extending to them the right to consume one eighth of the world's resources but depriving them of the opportunity of cooperating with future generations, than they would be under an agreement giving them an opportunity to cooperate with future generations, but at the cost of their having to share the world's resources with many generations to come. Third, for the reasons described by Parfit in Reasons and Persons, ch. 16, pp. 351–80, it may be that from the standpoint of mutually unconcerned individuals, members of the eighth generation would wholeheartedly approve of the agreement in question, because they would not be alive if an alternative agreement had been adopted involving the continuance of the human race beyond eight generations. Others would constitute the eighth generation on an alternative agreement, not they. Thus, it might be that every person who would ever live would approve of the agreement that would end the human race after eight generations and divide up the world's resources between them.

As I interpret Gauthier's view, there would be nothing morally objectionable about such an agreement. I find such a position untenable, and think it indicates an important area whe Gauthier's view needs to be revised or supplemented, if not rejected.

23 I do not mean to suggest that the only factor influencing people's judgments about such cases is the factor of “identifiable” versus “statistical” lives. As suggested, I think there is something especially appealing about the dramatic nature of the high-cost rescue missions. Thus, I think many would approve of dramatic rescues of identifiable people even when the money could be used in perfectly ordinary ways to save the lives of other identifiable people, say, John, Mary, and Tim in the burn ward at St. Mary's Hospital. The issue of “identifiable” lives versus “statistical” lives is one factor that seems to play a role in people's thinking about certain cases; it need not be the only one, or even the most important.

24 It is not uncommon for discussions to blur together, or perhaps even treat as synonymous, the issues of “identifiable” versus “statistical” lives and “actual” versus “possible” lives; and there are, I think, important connections and similarities between them. But they are not the same issue. A possible person may be identifiable. For instance, with in vitro fertilization, we may know the particular sperm and ovum from which a possible person will develop, and her parents may have already given her a name! By the same token, statistical lives are frequently actual lives. The ten statistical people who will die this year if we do not alter a certain intersection may all be living, breathing, actual people, we just do not yet know who they are. The fact that we cannot identify them in advance of their deaths does not make them merely possible people (though their deaths, of course, are merely possible until they occur).

25 Unless, of course, they ruled out egalitarianism completely, which some such reasons may do, but certainly not all.

26 Epstein, Richard, “Justice across the Generations,” in Justice between Age Groups and Generations, Philosophy, Politics, and Society, 6th series, ed. Laslelt, Peter and Fishkin, James (New Haven. Yale University Press, 1992). pp. 84–106.Google Scholar

27 In Epstein's defense, let us acknowledge that discussions about future generations often take place in a context where the dominant concern is that present generations will consume so much of the world's resources as to leave future generations with lives that are (a) low in quality, (b) so miserable as to be not worth living, or (c) (much) worse off than ours. In such a context, an argument establishing that efforts to promote equality within future generations will inevitably lead to those generations being even worse off (both in absolute terms and relative to the present generation) must seriously worry egalitarians and nonegalitarians alike. More particularly, it appears that in such contexts claim (3) would hold, as the intragenerational equality of the future generations would be at odds with the intergenerational equality between those generations and the present one. However, the context in question is not the only relevant one for discussions about future generations, and the concern stated above, though legitimate, is partly misplaced and partly misleading. For example, many would agree, at the outset, that we ought not to leave future generations worse off than past or present ones; their question would be whether – given likely advances in science and technology – we have an obligation to leave future generations better off than past or present ones, and if so, to what extent. Such a starting-point is markedly different from the one noted above, and, as we have seen, it has rather different implications for a claim like (3).

28 One is reminded of the old joke that growing old isn't so bad when one considers the alternative. The alternative, of course, is understood to be death, as many believe – to put the point crudely – that it is better to be old than dead, but better to be young than old.

29 Other interesting and important considerations relevant to the desirability of transfers between young and old are discussed in chapter eight of my Inequality.

30 Temkin, Larry S., “Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 16, no. 2 (Spring 1987), pp. 138–87.Google Scholar

31 This is the principle according to which, roughly, one outcome is better (or worse) than another, only if it affects people for the better (or worse).

32 As will be clear from the ensuing discussion, in saying that a moral factor plays a “genuinely significant” role in our all-things-considered judgments, I am saying that it does more than merely “break ties” yielded by other moral factors or ideals. Thus, to believe that feveral ideals are each genuinely significant is to believe, among other things, that (at least in some cases) “slight” losses with respect to some ideals could be outweighed by “sufficiently high” gains with respect to other ideals. For example, if equality, utility, and perfection are each genuinely significant, then there may be some cases where one situation is (slightly) better than another with respect to two of the ideals, yet worse all things considered, because it is “sufficiently” worse with respect to the third ideal.

33 There are various ways one might try to respond to this kind of argument, other than simply rejecting the view that temporal proximity can be morally relevant along the lines suggested. Unfortunately, I cannot pursue the matter here, though I believe it raises many important issues. See my “Intransitivity.”

34 Intertemporal dilemmas have been discussed by many writers. Two of the most influential works addressing this topic are Nagel, Thomas's The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)Google Scholar, and Parfit, 's Reasons and Persons.Google Scholar See also Elster, Jon's important Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, and Schelling, Thomas's fascinating “Ethics, Law, and the Exercise of Self-Command,” in Liberty, Equality, and law: Selected Tanner Lectures on Moral Philosophy, ed. McMurrin, Sterling M. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press; and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 163–99.Google Scholar

35 For further considerations relevant to assessing these positions, see my discussions of deontological, impersonal, impartial teleological, and person-affecting egalitarianisms in Inequality. Note 15 on pages 253–54 reflects some key considerations that push me toward NTNS egalitarianism, notwithstanding deep reservations I have about such a position.